1. Companies who use the advertising model generate their revenue through the advertisements that are present on their site, as consumers do not typically pay for visiting websites. The consumer clicks on the advertisement, sending them to another site, and the first site gets miniscule compensations for doing so. For click through or pay to click advertising, there is a licensing agreement that the businesses must sign, and they must setup an account both with the advertising company and with a payment portal to receive the funds.

2. Google is the primary leader in this field, though Yahoo does come in second before Bing. These search engines continue to generate traffic to the site through the use of consumer searches; the order of the site in the search results is based on a variety of factors including metadata and SEO.

3. I do not think that online retailers should create a social networking feature on their site, as I believe that social media and social networking are already too deeply ingrained with consumerism, and data mining is already prevalent enough. If they wish to create their own social sites, I do not think they would have quite the turnout they are expecting, but that it may aid them in data mining.

4. In light of trends in social media, unfortunately I do not see this limiting, but rather see it growing to ridiculous proportions; products are always updated, modified, or upgraded; creating an endless cycle.

5. I believe that Gupta’s thoughts are accurate, however, I also believe that most companies are not yet listening to him, which means that as more and more do, social media will become even more immersed with advertising and marketing tricks. Unfortunately, I believe that when this occurs, people will not be smart enough to abandon the platform.