Tripp's Blog

In this week’s blog, I’ll be talking about some of my most-used websites and online services, as well as a look at modern digital marketing from my perspective.

Throughout my day-to-day, I use many different apps and websites. The first one that I tend to use every day tends to be Instagram. I probably spend about an hour or two a day on Instagram, either looking for inspiration in sewing, recommendations or reviews on shows and music, or just general entertainment. I have mixed feelings on my experience using Instagram, as on one hand, it’s an amazing tool to stay connected to others, market products, consume entertainment, and find inspiration, but on the other hand, it’s based around an algorithm designed to keep you mentally and chemically hooked and can end up being more harmful than helpful. In terms of marketing on the platform, I think it is second to none. In my experience, the algorithm Instagram uses to decide what ads and products to show you is more effective than other sites I visit and I often find myself more interested in what it has to show me overall compared to other social media sites.

Another website I find myself using daily is Spotify. I love music, and I’m constantly listening to music throughout my day. I would say that overall, my personal experience using Spotify has been overwhelmingly positive. The one caveat, in my opinion, is that I use Spotify Premium, meaning that I don’t see much in the way of ads from Spotify’s end. I think that the nature of music as a medium is not as conducive for ads. Without Premium, I remember myself getting frustrated when hearing an ad, much more than on YouTube or Netflix, for example.

Both these services are things I, and many others, use every single day. In today’s age of technology, we are constantly staring at, hearing, and consuming ads, no matter where we go. I think marketing (especially social media marketing) today is just as important, if not significantly more important, than it has at any point in history.