Captivating Connections.

about teens (by a teen).

Here's yet another reason nobody should ever dismiss today's youth:

"A research note written by a 15-year-old...has become the talk of middle-aged media executives and investors.

Morgan Stanley’s European media analysts asked Matthew Robson, one of the bank’s interns from a London school, to describe his friends’ media habits. His report proved to be 'one of the clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen. So we published it,' said Edward Hill-Wood, head of the team."

The 'kid' even got an invite to Sun Valley, where "Mr Robson set out a sobering case that tomorrow’s consumers are using more and more media but are unwilling to pay for it.

'Teenagers do not use Twitter,' he pronounced. Updating the micro-blogging service from mobile phones costs valuable credit, he wrote, and 'they realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their tweets are pointless'.

His peers find it hard to make time for regular television, and would rather listen to advert-free music on websites such as Last.fm than tune into traditional radio. Even online, teens find advertising 'extremely annoying and pointless'.

Their time and money is spent instead on cinema, concerts and video game consoles which, he said, now double as a more attractive vehicle for chatting with friends than the phone.

Mr Robson had little comfort for struggling print publishers, saying no teenager he knew regularly reads a newspaper since most 'cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text' rather than see summaries online or on television."

You can find the full report here.

where the kidlets are.

Kids these days. They're all over the place (virtually, at least...)

"Altogether in 2008, an estimated 8 million US children and teens visited virtual worlds on a regular basis, and eMarketer projects that number will grow to over 15 million by 2013.

Virtual world usage among children in the US is already quite strong and getting stronger. eMarketer estimates that 37% of online children ages 3 to 11 use virtual worlds at least once a month. By 2013, 54% will."

traditional media usage levels off.

Well this is interesting:

"Traditional media usage by Internet users in the US remained largely steady in 2008 after falling in 2007, judging by respondents to a Ketchum and USC Annenberg Strategic Public Relations Center survey conducted in late 2008. For instance, less than two-thirds of respondents said they watched major network TV news, about the same as in 2007 but down from the 71% who said so in 2006.

Traditional media use leveled off while use of shopping and social networking Websites rose sharply, increasing their attraction for marketers. Shopping sites, for example, more than doubled in popularity to be visited by 35% of Internet users in 2008. Ketchum and USC Annenberg also noted 44% of shopping site visitors read consumer reviews and comments, expanding the sites’ influence. 

inauguration options.

Can't make it to DC today?

The New York Times BITS column has listed a slew on inaugaral events happening via new media sites. Check them out:

Live Streams: The New York Timeswill be live-streaming Mr. Obama’s speech from its home page; video Web sites Hulu and Joost are among the other sites broadcasting Tuesday’s events.

Live Tweeting: Similar to its coverage of the presidential debates, Current TV is joining with the microblogging site Twitter to showcase inaugural day musings from the Twitter universe, in 140 characters or less. Beginning at 11:30 a.m. E.S.T., the indie media company will handpick selected messages, or “tweets,” and integrate the updates into the channel’s broadcast. To prevent network blackouts, Twitter’s chief executive, Biz Stone, told The Times that the company is doubling its capacity to gear up for the event.

Flickr:The photo-sharing social network, owned by Yahoo, will be hosting a respite from the packed event at a nearby wine bar. Local and visiting Flickeristas can drop in for a coffee or a glass of wine and check out photographs from election night alongside recently snapped images from the induction ceremony displayed in an exhibition of digital frames.

3-D Panorama: Microsoft is joining with CNN to release a digital panorama of the event using Photosynth, software that morphs a series of photographs into a digital, 3-D panorama. The company is soliciting professional photographs from news outlets as well as user-generated content, snapped from cellphones and digital cameras, for the final product.

DIY Inaugural Balls: Still waiting for an inviteto one of Washington’s lavish parties to celebrate the new president? On the off-chance you don’t make it onto a V.I.P. list, you can still attend a party online. Gussy up your avatars and port them into one of the balls happening in Second Life and Wee World. If virtual alter egos aren’t your thing, try your luck finding a nearby shindig using the official Presidential Inaugural Committee’s handy Web tool.

Mobile Applications:UStream.tv, a streaming video site that lets anyone put up a broadcast, like the wriggling brood of Shiba Inu puppiesthat made headlines late last year. The company recently unveiled plans for an iPhone application that will port any of its streaming broadcasts to the Apple device -– including the inauguration. The service also supplements live streams with a chat function so Ustreamers can chit-chat during the festivities.

In the event that you are traveling to the nation’s capital for the event, the free 2009 Presidential Inauguration Guide iPhone applicationis a must-have for out-of-towners. The application serves up public transit schedules and details, locations of parking garages, free Wi-Fi zones and a Zagat guide for the Washington area. The nifty application will also map the current distance between the phone’s owner and the steps of the Capitol building.

It's a good day for America, and social media!

good news for parentals.

Good news for worried parents: All those hours their teenagers spend socializing on the Internet are not a bad thing, according to a new study by the MacArthur Foundation.

'It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or sending instant messages,' said Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, 'Living and Learning With New Media.' 'But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.'

The study, conducted from 2005 to last summer, describes new-media usage but does not measure its effects.

'It certainly rings true that new media are inextricably woven into young people’s lives,' said Vicki Rideout, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation and director of its program for the study of media and health."

No kidding. A lot of the fears parents used to have about the Internet were based on the fact that they didn't understand the medium. Coupling that with all of the articles and attention issues like cycer-stalking and pedaphiles were getting because of media tools like Instant Messaging or online chatrooms, and Internet became the source of much arguement in the household. Now that parents not only are more comfortable using it themselves, but there are protection mechanisms available to ban certian sites or actions, parents are more comfortable letting their kids explore.

want in on the secret?

Want to know a secret? Who doesn't like being in on one?

Check out the secret to branding among tweens and teens, so that you can best connect with them.

From the article:

If you want to communicate with teens and their pre-pubescent counterparts, otherwise known as tweens, you need an expert -- and that doesn't mean a parent. Teen and tween virtual worlds -- and the people who create, monitor and brand on them -- offer a direct, immersive channel for communicating with this unpredictable demographic.

Sites like Gaia Online, Habbo, Whyville, Zwinky and Stardoll have made a science of studying the habits and interests of 9- to 19-year-olds, and they report that their audience is adept at tuning out the old forms of media that don't speak directly to what they want. "Whether it's the tone or style or tastes, you have to be up to speed," says Matt Diamond, CEO of Alloy media, a partner of IAC-owned virtual worlds Zwinky and Meez. "You have to reflect what is going on out there."

Virtual worlds get constant feedback, Diamond adds, and their users insist on controlling their choices, whether it's watching a movie trailer or entering a branded boutique. Thus, brands have to work with what virtual worlds have to offer instead of dictating how they play on a site. On the other hand, virtual worlds have proliferated to the extent that brands can target any niche. Do you have artsy 12- to 17-year-olds in your sights? Want to connect with pop culture sophisticates too young to go to the movies by themselves? What about car enthusiasts who are more interested in fantastic extras than how many miles to the gallon they get? There's a good chance that a certain virtual world can help you connect.

it's all about the kidlets.

I said it long long ago: Virtual Worlds weren't going to overtake our lives as the ultimate way of living.

The same can't be said, necessarily, for our kids:

Remember how we were all supposed to do our real-world shopping in virtual malls and hold our business meetings in virtual offices by now?

Despite the ups and downs of highly detailed 3-D virtual worlds such as Second Life, There.com and Kaneva, that never really happened.

But you or your kid can buy a stuffed unicorn, and then go online and pretend to prance it around in the virtual worlds run by Webkinz, like more than a million other users do each month. You can join a crew of 5.5 million virtual pirates created by users worldwide and do some digital marauding on The Walt Disney Co.'s "Pirates of the Caribbean" site.

You can slide around on ice with virtual friends at "Club Penguin." Or turn yourself into an avatar fairy in Disney's forthcoming "Pixie Hollow" virtual world.

This week, as the anticipated video game "Spore" hits the market in North America, you can build a virtual universe populated with creatures ranging from the smallest of protozoa to the oddest of six-eyed giants that must survive through five stages of evolution. Link up over the Internet with other "Spore" fans worldwide, and Darwin's survival of the fittest becomes as realistic as virtually possible.

Maybe virtual worlds were really all about kids and games after all. 

the wide world of virutal worlds.

Virtual Worlds Management has put together a list of the 100+ youth virtual worlds.

You think THAT'S crazy? Check this out:

"Another 53 are in concepting, development, or testing phases. The general tween category (here looked at as 8 to 12) has the most interest with 62 worlds live or in development, followed closely by kids worlds (7 and under) with 52 worlds live or in development and then teens (13-18 years old) with 44 worlds live or in development."

Are there even enough kidlets out there to populate these things???

Check out the full list ("including the operational status, demographic focus and detailed news coverage") here.

toys and virtual worlds.

Here's a great look at the toy industry and the ups and downs they are poised to experiance byexpanding into virtual worlds:

"Ask 10-year-old kids about their favorite movie or cartoon character—be it the Incredible Hulk or Bratz—and they can identify every brand extension leveraging the character’s likeness. However, as both the toy and branding industries expand into virtual worlds, new dimensions of entertainment and branding are emerging—realms that are full of both pitfalls and profits."

look alively.

Is there anythign Google can't do (or won't try to do)?

Today they've launched their new virtual world that leverages Gchat, called Lively.