Long before the 21st century, the internet began to see more of their users being females or women, a Washington Post report written by Deborah Fallows (2005) found that 86 percent of women ages 18 to 29 were online, compared with 80 percent of men in the same age group. This online target market is a fast growing market as more young women ages between eighteen and twenty‑nine, especially in this age of technology have began to see the internet as a direct portal to the rest of the world, socially, politically and economically.
Women usually use the internet as a source of information to get their needs attended to, needs that are not just restricted to shopping on the internet. Women in this age range that is between the ages of eighteen to twenty‑nine are interested in being socially, politically and economically connected to the outside world. On the internet they look forward to getting their wants and needs satisfied and they use the internet, most recently as their number one way of satisfying those needs. Women naturally are always more inclined than their male counterparts to reckon with their emotional side, women who use the Internet use the system to get them to feel more connected to family and friends using online communication tools to stay in touch.
As every other target market, this online target group consisting of young women is also segmented depending on specific personality traits, likes and behaviours. For example, in this target, there are some that are beauty driven; they go online to research and shop for beauty products, and they diligently follow celebrity lifestyle, and deem themselves ¨fashionistas¨. These groups of women are also in search of a meaningful love relationship that they hope will complete their life. Professor of Feminist studies, Tracy Kennedy in her research article titled; ¨An exploratory study of feminist experiences in cyberspace¨ reveals the experiences of women within electronic forums. Tracy L. M. Kennedy. CyberPsychology & Behavior. 2000, 3(5): 707-719. doi:10.1089/10949310050191719. Her research revealed that women are utilizing the Internet to communicate with other women as well as their male counterpart.
Socially women use the internet services or various websites to get connected to other people, either family, friends or total strangers that they would like to know and get intimate with. They use the internet to learn about or organise social events where they could send or get invitations to these events. The internet is also a great way for these women to network both politically and socially.
A major website that caters to the social need for this target is the ¨my space¨.
According to Alexa Internet which is a website ranking system, MySpace is currently the world's sixth most popular English-language website and the sixth most popular website in any language, and the third most popular website in the United States, though it has topped the chart on various weeks. The service has gradually gained more popularity than similar websites to achieve nearly 80 percent of visits to online social networking websites. Alexa Internet's (2005). Website rankings system and top 500 global websites. Retrieved January 25, 2007 from http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/myspace.com. MySpace is a social networking site where people create home pages and embellish them as they would a dormitory room. Myspace.com has thousands of members with hundreds of new members joining everyday; ¨MySpace and other social networking Internet sites have become more popular among young people¨ Sara Schilling Herald staff writer (2004). In the ¨Real Deal¨ list of the top searches in 2007, MySpace garnered the #1 spot, and no other social networking services made it to the top 10. (http://www.askwebhosting.com/story/11573/)
My space dot com creates a great way that these young women need to express themselves without any hindrances. They can be whoever they want on their individual my space pages. They can make friends that in the real world they might be too shy to meet and ask for friendship. MySpace dot com a social media gives these groups of women confidence in themselves as their freedom of speech and expression is greatly maximized through their pages. This web site is easy to use, it is very user friendly and a user could post just about anything without restrictions. The website features include; bulletins where writings can be posted on to a "bulletin board" for everyone on a MySpace user's friends list to see, “Groups”, a feature that allows a group of users to share a common page and message board, “MySpaceIM”, an instant messenger that uses one's MySpace account as a screen name, “MySpaceTV”, a YouTube look-alike video sharing website amongst many other features new and old. My space dot com is also a way for non expensive and personalised advertising. Users can post their own pictures and music to attract modelling and recording label industries to them without the stress of the usual advertising traffic that occurs in the real world. My space dot com does indeed cater to this target market as it helps them find friends, admirers or fans, lovers and family solving their demand for emotion and egoistical attention.
This target group of females that is those in the ages of eighteen to twenty nine has the tendencies to be very inquisitive or curious. Most times they have questions about specific services or products but would rather anonymously research and personal searches and find out about things without physically asking around. Google dot com fulfils their desires of anonymity. The Google website in form of a search engine helps this target search for anything from prom dress to birth control pills. The Google web site caters to both women and men but the target audience in analysis that is the young women use it specifically information that their male counterparts or menopausal women.
Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University and the company was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 7, 1998. Google's initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004, raising $1.67 billion, making it worth $23 billion. Through a series of new product developments, acquisitions and partnerships, the company has expanded its initial search and advertising business into other areas, including web-based email known as Gmail, online mapping, office productivity, and video sharing, MySpace. (2007, December 07). In Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia. Retrieved December 07, 2004, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Space. The Google website also has other different features that enhance the users search such as; local and international news searches, weather and traffic search, sitemaps amongst many more enhancing tools. Google has emerged as the king of all search engines and it has boosted the targets recognition of search in their lives. Google has become the poster child of search, the thing that everyone could identify with, that everyone had used. It has become such a household name especially to our target market that whatever information is needed, it could be resolves by simply saying the two magic words “Google it”. Google has therefore simply helped the target audience feel a better connection with search tools.
Both websites analysed in this paper are geared to the same target market but they both cater in two different ways to the needs and desires of the targets. It will be quite difficult to find love and friendship by using Google search engines, though you could “Google” the friend or lovers’ name and find out more about them if any information has been posted about them. As a matter of fact Google has been known to save or better still warn women against specific people, products or services. As a direct resource and as a member of the target market also analysed in this paper, Google helped me find a link to a very accurate website when I was trying to find a loan company that had scammed me.
As for the MySpace website in comparison to Google, it will be quite tedious to find personalized information without asking directly or being linked from one friend’s page to the other. Both Google dot com and MySpace dot com has indeed pulled all their resources together to help arrest the needs of our target market. Both websites have helped these women to be confident in themselves and their knowledge expanding that knowledge beyond what they would have only imagined. And so in conclusion all there is to say is “kudos” to these brilliant inventions.
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