In today’s New York Times, in an article entitled “Someone to Watch Over Me (on a Google Map)”, Theodora Stites writes about the vast array of online social networks she belongs to.
” I log on to my Friendster, Facebook, MySpace and Nerve accounts to make sure the mail bars are rising with new friend requests, messages and testimonials.
I am obsessed with testimonials and solicit them incessantly. They are the ultimate social currency, public declarations of the intimacy status of a relationship. “I miss running around like crazy w/you in the AM and sneaking away to grab caffeine and gossip,” Kathleen commented on my MySpace for all to see. Often someone will write, “I just posted to say I love you.”
I click through the profiles of my friends to the profiles of their friends (and their friends of friends, and so on), always aware of the little bar at the top of each profile indicating my multiple connections. A girl I know from college is friends with my friend from college’s best friend from Minnesota. They met at camp in seventh grade. The boyfriend of my friend from work is friends with one of my friends from high school. I note the connections and remind myself to IM them later. On Facebook, I skip from profile to profile by clicking on the faces of posted pictures. I find a picture of my sister and her boyfriend, click on his face and jump right to his page.
Worth reading because Theodora represents the older end of the sprectrum of “Milleniums.”
Milleniums are Different
Researcher Brent Magid says no other group of consumers will have as profound an impact on the media business over the next 10 years as the Millennial Generation, 9- to 28-year-olds, and he told promotion and marketing executives that it is imperative that they find a way to get their messages across to this group.
Magid, president and CEO of Frank M. Magid Associates, told an audience at the annual Promax conference in New York City Wednesday that this group, which numbers 79 million, one million more than the Baby Boomers in this country, have grown up using multiple media platforms at the same time, and need to be marketed to differently than the older Boomers. Magid said Millennials consume 20 hours of media a day, but that is all done within seven hours of clock time.
“If you are going to be successful [marketing your products]” Magid said, “you must pay attention to this group,” which gets much of its information from word-of-mouth or from social networking sites on the Internet. Magid said 18 million 13-28 year olds use social-networking sites each day. But Magid warned that “the pot of gold is not necessarily [attained by] creating your own page on MySpace.com.”
Sources
Brand Week June 21, 2006*
New York Times Sunday Style Section July 9, 2006*
Related Links
What Makes Millennials Millennials
Get Ready – the Millennial are coming
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