Jonathan McGowan Assignment 3 Soc 167

Assignment 3 Soc 167

Jonathan McGowan

I looked at Blizzard’s Facebook page for this assignment, and have come to the conclusion that while their page is not bad, it’s also not good.  The biggest reason for this is simply that their page does not appeal to the user visually nearly as much as it could.  The graphics are decent, but ultimately the page looks very amateurish.  It could be much more organized, and have a much more appealing cover/profile picture.  What they have is fine for people that are already interested in Blizzard and its products, but they are not attracting any new potential customers with their run of the mill Facebook page.  Beyond this their participation consists only of users commenting on photos that Blizzard chooses to post.  This is not very interactive at all, and enables as many trolls as it does legitimate users that are just trying to get more connected with the company.

The remaining four categories: premiums, user-generated content, customer service “Portal”, and content flow, are all present on Blizzard’s Facebook page, but each of them has significant room for improvement.  Premiums on blizzards Facebook are few and far between, and even where they do exist, it is not simply free in game content for anyone that uses it, it is a link to a raffle they are holding for beta keys to games that are coming out.  This is better than nothing, but it is not as good as interesting content that is accessible by everyone, raffles bring in fewer users than free in game pets for world of Warcraft.  The user-generated content is very limited, and even then it isn’t interesting enough where others could join in, it’s simply a picture here and there of users wearing blizzard gear at one place or another.  The customer service “Portal” is a link to another blizzard Facebook page, it’s hard to tell how effective this is, but at the very least it is present.  Finally Blizzard’s content flow leaves a lot to be desired.  While they do occasionally talk about things that are happening with their company, it has less to do with games they produce, and more to do with advertising.  At times while scrolling through their page it feels as if you’re looking at ads, not the Facebook page of one of the greatest game designing companies in the world. 

Ultimately while Blizzards Facebook page has some of the key qualities needed to have a successful online presence, these qualities are lacking and do not do a good job of attracting new users.  For this reason their Facebook page is neither bad nor good, but resides in neutral territory.

Link to Blizzard’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Blizzard