Who is actually paying attention

Process

It was very difficult trying to decide the most effective way to create my profile picture. Things I had to consider were making the picture to obvious, the cover photo not being related enough, and making sure that they worked well together when viewing my Facebook wall. My original idea was to do power rangers and have the megazord in the back ground but that was too difficult to find pictures that worked. Eventually I figured maybe I could have a picture that stood alone and then have like a disaster picture in for the cover photo, so I was oblivious in the disaster. Godzilla was an obvious choice. 

Product

I enlisted the help of my girlfriend, a friend on my floor, and my room mate in crafting the actual photo. I like having profile pictures including my girlfriend so we figured I could be determined and carrying her away from the disaster scenario. My roommate being an actor helped me with my facial expression and portraying the feeling of the photo. My floor friend took the photos. Finally my girlfriend helped with the Photoshop just because I am more audio focused so I would be useless with Photoshop. 

Effect

What happened was basically what I expected to happen, most people only noticed the profile picture while the cover photo went largely unnoticed. Some friend even commented that it looked like Hiroshima and I was being offensive with the picture. (Which is funny considering Godzilla is an allegory for the atomic bomb). My profile picture at this time has 111 likes while my cover photo has a measly 7. While people may have viewed them together clearly people were more inclined to only like the profile picture. 

Reflection

I learned that people are attracted to interesting looking profile pictures as it ended up being my most liked profile picture on Facebook. I also confirmed my thoughts that most people do not actually visit my Facebook wall and mostly just look at their news feed for updates. Facebook will tend to put trending topics at the top of peoples newsfeed so while my profile picture kept climbing my cover photo got buried.

I’m not sure what I would have done differently. Maybe spent more time with making my profile picture more subtle. Because it is a pretty unique looking profile picture so it may be a bit conspicuous. Also I would have liked to have more control in the project. In order to complete the project I used my ideas and creative input but my girlfriend was the one who did the photo shop and really made it look pretty.