Posts filed under ‘Millennials’
Join Us at the Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup
Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashups are conferences hosted by our friend Anastasia Goodstein, the editor of Ypulse.com, a favorite source of daily coverage of the social and digital trends that define today’s totally wired young people and marketing in the youth space. This year’s national conference, June 1-2 in San Francisco, brings together a diverse mix of brand, corporate and social marketers, media pros, educators and youth advocates. The event is about marketing to tweens, teens and young adults with technology and about understanding and communicating with youth ethically—and in ways that add value to their lives.
We’ll be there, and hope many of you are able to join us! Visit www.mashup.ypulse.com for the details, full speaker lineup, and to register. Anastasia has given us a special 10 % discount code for the OneSeventeen Media community: 117MEDIA.
This year, an (Un)Conference: Tweens Online: Balancing Safety and Fun will precede the main event on Sunday afternoon and Mashup itself will kick off Monday morning with three pre-conference sessions:
- Youth Marketing Boot Camp for fresh insights about teens and the new relationship between young consumers and their technology.
- Urban/Multicultural Mashup features some of the real stars of this space, trend presentations, sessions on mobile and pro-social partnerships and more.
- Ypulse Campus Case Study Slam for insights from lots of pros in the trenches of college campuses, including one dean of admissions in addition to marketers from MySpace Records and Levi Strauss!
Here are just a few of the speakers who will be offering insights into the Digital Generation at the main conference, which starts after lunch (on our own), and continues through Tuesday (when lunch is actually part of lively, user-generated roundtable discussions):
- Don Tapscott, the author of Grown Up Digital, on how this generation is changing the world and its institutions.
- Josh Shipp, a renowned speaker on youth issues who channels his talent for empowering young people into Hey Josh.com, on what teens care about.
- Donna Fenn, who has been interviewing young entrepreneurs over the past two years for her book Upstarts! How the Entrepreneurial Generation is Rocking the World of Business.
- David Brind and Adam Salky, the screenwriter and director of “DARE,” on site for a Q&A after an exclusive screening of this 2009 Sundance Film Festival hit!
- Greg Clayman, Executive Vice President of Digital Distribution and Business Development, MTV Networks.
- Executives from Disney, covering best practices for user-generated campaigns.
- Kit Yarrow, co-author of Gen BuY: How Tweens, Teens and 20-Somethings are Revolutionizing Retail.
- A Youth Panel, ages 13 to 24, rating brand campaigns—and offering feedback on our own youth initiatives!
- Guy Kawasaki, interacting with a another panel of Youth Entrepreneurs.
- Adam Aberman, director of digital strategy at Ashoka’s Youth Venture, and Best Buy’s Tim Showalter-Loch, talking about a very successful pro-social campaign.
- Daryl Butler, who directs retail brand marketing at Nike, on keeping youth marketing simple.
- Bill Carter of Fuse, on cutting spending without losing marketing impact.
We hope to meet some of you in San Francisco! ( Check out the impressive list of 2007-2008 Mashup attendees!)
Youth Bored With Current Social Networks
danah boyd posted an insightful tweet earlier this week that is spot-on with the feedback we’ve received in our case studies and through our Youth Advisory Board:
She’s absolutely correct. Kids aren’t pursuing Facebook and other same-box-new-wrapping social networks with the same zest they did several years ago. Anastasia Goodstein at Ypulse dug a bit deeper into the dwindling flame of passion between kids and social networks saying,
“A bunch of folks (including me) began to comment and speculate about where the love has gone as well as where teens might go (short answer: they haven’t gone to any one new site or space just yet). I feel like we’ve been talking about youth social networking fatigue on and off for awhile, and really, given that they were the early adopters of these sites, it makes sense.”
I concur with Anastasia’s elaborations, and I have seen the same phenomenon among my peer group of twenty-somethings. Specific to Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg (Facebook’s founder), was just a year behind me in college when he first opened Facebook up to college campuses outside of Harvard. My college classmates and I began our Facebook love affairs five years ago and the relationship just isn’t as steamy as it once was. I think for the twenty-something and younger crowd, there’s been a shift of perspective when it comes to Facebook. When Facebook first hit the scene, it was an incredibly enticing way to be a voyeur into the lives of our friends, friends of friends and the cute guy two rows in front of me in biology. As the service as developed and become more widely used, instead of being a novelty, it has become a basic tool that is useful, but not the thrill it once was (in the last month I personally know five friends who “quit” Facebook because they didn’t find it particularly useful and the novelty had dried up).
There’s a logical comparison to be made with email. When people first started using email it was really cool. I remember getting my first account in the seventh grade through AOL and getting such a kick out of sending one line emails to my friends asking tantalizing questions like, “Did you watch Friends last night?” and then eagerly awaiting a response. Now, email is a standard form of communication, and I don’t know anyone who looks at their inbox and squeals in delight. For Facebook’s early adopters, Facebook is the “new email,” meaning that it’s becoming a standard, efficient communication tool, but it is no longer exciting (I do not think Facebook will ever replace standard email). While Facebook is always open in my browser, I’d estimate I easily spend half the amount of time interacting with the site that I did two years ago.
What kids are waiting for is the next-generation of social networking to emerge where they can engage with fresh content and new-opportunities in a social context. PlumbBrain is the next generation of social networking that kids are asking for!
(Image adapted from danah boyd’s twitter)
Risky Behavior Sharing in Social Networks
A common concern about online youth is that they grossly over share information better left private, without considering the long term ramifications of divulging so much. This is a valid concern I often hear adults echo, and an important part of developing PlumbBrain and true digital citizens in our membership is that we at OneSeventeen Media must instruct and guide youth in mindful online sharing.
Voice of America published a piece last week about youth sharing information about “risky behavior” through social networks. The headline alone is alarming, as are the data points explaining that in two separate studies involving MySpace, a respective 41% and 100% of participants shared information on risky behaviors (which are never defined, but look to be sex, drugs, violence and alcohol).
This brief synopsis could worry any layperson unfamiliar with MySpace, but for me it raises significant questions about the data collection methods used in these studies.
How were the youth chosen at random? Were they contacts of the researchers (thereby granting access to profile information) or random MySpace members? I would venture to guess that MySpace members with privacy settings locked so that strangers can’t see their profile information probably share less about risky behavior than those who share public profiles. I would also guess that if all the participants were contacts of an individual the subject pool would be tainted one way or the other.
For one of the studies with Dr. Megan Moreno, the press release from the University of Wisconsin shared more saying,
“While the study examined publicly available profiles of those self-identified as 18 years and older, Moreno believes many profilers were younger, and claimed to be 18 to avoid MySpace security restrictions.”
Again, I would assert that young people who disregard privacy tools by making their profiles public would be more likely to share about risky behavior too. Seattle Children’s Hospital had more to share in their news release, but my questions were still not clarified.
Also, basic profile questions about smoking, drinking and sexual orientation have been a standard part of the MySpace Profile since early on; only recently has it become optional to not include this information in your MySpace profile. For a long while it was also not optional to leave “no response.” If a MySpace member responded to these standard profile questions is that considered sharing about risky behavior? Even if a young person responded that they did not smoke, did not drink and left no response on their sexual orientation, is that still considered sharing information about risky behavior?
Providing some critical clarifying information about the execution of these studies would be helpful in assessing their validity. If anyone has addtional insight to share about the study, I’d love to hear it!
(Graphic created from image found here)
Youth Reflection: Learning from Phelps’s Mistake
Ypulse Youth Advisory Board member, Libby, has some insightful reflections on what Gen Y can learn from the recent scandal caused when a photo of Michael Phelps smoking from a bong was released to the media.
Libby’s reflections are a great example of what I also consider the most important takeaways from Phelps’s experience:
A) be aware of the activities you choose to engage in and their ramifications (it goes without saying that illegal drug use is never a good idea and not condoned by OneSeventeen Media)
B) exert caution in the content you post online and the content others collect and post online about you. Savvier tweens and teens grasp the point about not posting their own lewd content, but extending the criteria to the content others collect is key.
Libby provides an articulate example of the deep understanding of social media sharing today’s youth must sort out to be savvy 21st Century citizens. OneSeventeen Media looks forward to providing a forum and resources to help tweens and teens grow their understanding of digital citizenship.
(Ypulse’s YouTube channel found here)
Meeting the Demands of Millennial Consumers
I’m a millennial — I know, I know! You probably just shuddered in fear of this “dirty word,” but bear with me. My generation (Gen Y) has received some incredibly bad press in the last year, calling us lazy, self-centered and immature for starters. This cartoon sums it up the general critique well:
However, I’ve re-read this piece by my fellow millenial, Tanene Allison several times and enjoyed it every time. Allison points out that our generation is redefining activism, and perhaps the most significant support of her thesis was seen in the election of President Obama.
I believe that every generation has its gripes about the next, but as I’ve read complaints about my peer group, my reoccurring reflection has been, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” We twenty-something-millenials have been early adopters for many of the most successful online sites, tools and products over the last ten years; our constant connectivity is a regular point of tension for critics. However, those of us in our twenties have known life before online-everything while our youngest counterparts have not.
As the younger millennials begin to age and expand their impact as consumers and producers of content and products, the demand for innovative, accessible solutions from all industries is only going to increase. At OneSeventeen Media, our entire team gets it! We are committed to pushing ourselves to develop and expand upon the most innovative approaches to online interactions, creating the next-generation social community our young customers demand. The high expectations of young millennial (and their even younger Gen Z siblings!) motivate us to create dynamic tools that will engage youth and meet their individual needs that are currently unaddressed in the marketplace.
We have only the highest hopes for our world’s youngest generations and we look forward to partnering with them on their roads to success.
(Image found here).
