Millenials to the Rescue
I’m fascinated by the rising generation. I love to study and watch them. I truly believe that they are up to the task to make the world great — not just the USA, not just your local city, but the entire world.
I must disclose that much of my thinking and influence comes from the work of William Strauss and Neil Howe, the authors of Generations and the Fourth Turning. If you want to get a picture of the cyclical regeneration witnessed in human nature across hundreds of years, Strauss and Howe’s work is pretty insightful.
I couldn’t help but think of this when I read the article in the USA Today last week on Millenials. They are active. They are vocal. They are driven to make a difference. In my opinion, they WILL be the drivers of the next societal revolution for human rights, equality, global education, world peace, and overcoming poverty.
This is all framing up and being supported by technology. Think of the way technology is reaching across the youth culture, regardless of geographic boundary:
- U2 requests and gets hundreds of thousands of concert goers to send a text message to support the One Campaign, an effort to rally Americans to fight the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty.
- Students reach out through MySpace to share insights into “their personality” (Harrison Group poll estimates 58 percent of American teens have a profile on MySpace).
- Groups on social networking sites like Facebook and Friendster have linked together active social and civic-minded students on individual campuses and across the world.
- Instant Messaging services like AIM, Yahoo, Windows Messenger allow for a new method of “presence detection” as an increasing percentage of the population spends more time in front of their computer — which they do because the computer is their portal to the Internet.
- Personal blogs provide an outlet for sharing opinions, feelings, and beliefs.
- Real-time journalism through camera phones. For example, the 911 hijacking and terrorist plot was first reported by passengers on board the planes. Also, the London train bombing of 2005 was reported in “first person” by passengers with camera phones, long before CNN, BBC, or other news outlets could arrive.
- Live blogging at conferences. This was an amazing eye opener to me as I was able to “experience” the MacWorld event thanks to Engadget insta-blogging what they were hearing and learning. All this was near real-time to me and far earlier than the “day-old” posts to the news sites.
- Free Voice over IP (VoIP) services like Skype that let people connect across vast geographic boundaries and free of the heavy telecom tolls in Europe and Asia.
- Real Simple Syndication (RSS) makes it easier than ever to let topics from blog authors or like-minded individual across the Internet come to you, creating a very “informed” audience (of both positive and negative positions).
- Podcasts on thousands of subjects and topics, from both professional, academic, and individuals, make it possible to stay current on topics from experts in their fields.
- And of course, wireless phones and data networks. Just walk across any high-school or college campus. They’re all on their phones talking to friends.
Yes, to those of us who are watching, we’re seeing the beginning of a revolution that will be driven by the power and new world-wide-reach of communication technology. The old AT&T ad copy tagline, “Reach Out and Touch Someone,” has an entirely new meaning when you consider all the possibilities offered today.
Technorati Tags: Education, Facebook, Gen Y, Millenials, MySpace, Software
Social Media / Marketing in 2006 Elections
In their 2006 election coverage, National Public Radio (NPR) interviewed Joe Trippi, 2004’s campaign manager for Howard Dean and the author of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything.
Trippi highlights how social media technology introduced in the past two (2) years is changing the relationship with voters (or in marketing lingo: prospects and customers). I found his example of the Nixon and Kennedy debate very telling.
The example:
- Radio listeners thought that Nixon was the clear winner of the debate because of Nixon’s handling of the questions.
- Television watchers, a new medium, clearly placed the win on Kennedy due to his youthful face and clean-shaven , prepped-for-viewers look.
It reminded me of the “marketers” quest for sick web sites, colorful paper collateral with killer logos, and ad copy with the catchiest of phrases or images to attract attention.
Today, the new medium of social media with pages on Facebook and MySpace, podcasts, and the journalistic efforts of millions of opinionated bloggers can add new voices to the traditional “polished” face being presented by media, marketing, and political consultants.
Businesses need to think outside the box of traditional marketing and promotional options. Your target customers will form a relationship with you, but it’s far more likely that marketers will have to rely on much more than sexy-looking marketing. Today it’s honesty, self-publishing customers (through blog posts), and ongoing conversations. Real Simple Syndication (RSS) will turn the Internet upside down, allowing customers and prospects to have information sent to them, rather than rely on Google and other search tools to “find” relevant information.
NPR Story: Technology Pushes Politics into New Frontiers
WSJ reports NEGATIVE growth at Facebook and MySpace
The fickle user. It’s only complicated by the 17-24 year old “flash-in-the-pan” ship jumper. What’s hot todays always cools off. Such is the case with Facebook and MySpace.
Today, the Wall Street Journal offered a look into what’s happening with page views and new member sign-ups. With the world watching, there is a lot of pressure to continue the rapid growth. And as I’ve predicted, it just doesn’t seem like this younger audience wants to be part of this scene once it’s determined the sites are “the thing.”
“Both MySpace and Facebook lost visitors in September, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a Web-tracking service. The number of unique U.S. visitors at MySpace fell 4% to 47.2 million from 49.2 million in August, and the number of visitors to Facebook fell 12% to 7.8 million from 8.9 million.”
Meanwhile, there’s the internal vs. external number debate:
“Facebook spokeswoman Melanie Deitch says the Palo Alto, Calif., company’s own numbers show that the number of registered Facebook users rose 9% to 11 million in September, while the number of individual page views rose 40% to 16.5 billion.”
Facebook’s adding adults and other audiences was a mistake–well maybe not the high school students. Their new services have also been unpopular with their core audience. They should have stayed exclusively a college-student solution and tightened, not opened their service to new audiences.
Here’s to that BILLION dollar Yahoo! acquisition turning into into just hundreds of millions!
Technorati Tags: Education, Facebook, Social Media
Presidential misSpeak
From my George Bush quote of the day calendar:
“Lukas is from the Czech Republic. He said – they tell he talks a lot on the ice. He’s a talkative guy, but he uses unique English to confuse the opponents. Kinda sounds like the strategy I use at the press conferences.”
George W. Bush
May 19, 2004
Referring to Lukas Dora of the University of Denver Men’s Hockey Team, winners of the NCAA national title. White House, Washington, D.C.
Campus Reader Aggregates College Newspapers
I just learned about Campus Reader which pulls news feeds from all the college newspapers and presents the stories in a rich Ajax interface. This is a cool way to see the trends on college campuses across the nation.
The service also provides a way for you to select a geography to get a quick view of the news in your area.
Republicans wake up. Bush has puppeteered you long enough!
I can almost hear the voice in the the background saying, “Surprise, Surprise, Suprise” in the song Vera by Pink Floyd from The Wall.
Republicans with low support. Maybe it’s because we’re tired of Bush. Maybe it’s because your outward support for family values is only a shield for your interest in little boys. Clinton was a moral tragedy, but at least we all knew it.
NEWS ALERT
from The Wall Street Journal
Oct. 18, 2006Public support for Republicans’ control of Congress has eroded to its lowest point since the party took over 12 years ago, a new WSJ/NBC News poll finds, as scandals have taken a toll. With just 19 days until the midterm elections, both President Bush and his party are in worse shape with voters than Democrats were in the October before they lost their House and Senate majorities in 1994.
See the Bush Approval Poll in Wall Street Journal
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Best Quarter in Apple history – 56 percent increase in laptop shipments
What can I say more: Good products sell! The net result, a simple 27 percent increase in profit last quarter.
“This strong quarter caps an extraordinary year for Apple,” Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in a prepared statement. “Looking forward, 2007 is likely to be one of the most exciting new product years in Apple’s history.”
READ — I’m going to deliver that killer Apple smartphone for Brad Baldwin!
Apple is basking in the sales of products that appeal to people who want technology that crosses productivity, entertainment, and creative bounds. I love my Apple. It was interesting to see the following report in today’s Wall Street Journal:
Shipments of iPods climbed to 8.7 million, up 35% from 6.5 million a year ago. The company said it shipped 1.6 million Macintosh computers, up 30% from a year earlier, in the pivotal back-to-school season. Nearly one million of the computers were laptops, which saw a 56% jump in shipments. Overall computer sales rose to $2.2 billion.
Technorati Tags: Apple
Q1 for the “Smart” iPhone
Jesse Tortora, research analyst at Prudential Equities, has reported that Apple will release two phones into the market.
1) a slim phone with a music playback
2) a smart phone, including integrated keyboard, video and music capability
One is predicted to have WiFi.
Analysts expect the phone to be officially announced at Apple’s MacWorld Conference in January of 2007. This certainly would match the prediction from Peter Oppenheimer during a recent analyst call:
“very excited about what we have in the product pipeline.”
Technorati Tags: Apple, Palm, Symbian
Beck’s latest release, The Information. Two thumbs up from me.
I picked up the new Beck disc. First time through I liked it. A bit more hip hoppy that I prefer. I do like some of the songs. Check out the samples on the Beck website.
Treo 680 finally goes antenna-free
Been waiting for an antenna-free forever. The new Treo 680 looks good. As for colors, I’m a target for anything black or silver.
It’s about time for an update to the sync with Exchange — why has it been so long for over-the-air sync of the core four (contacts, calendar, tasks, notes).
It has reasonable specs, but certainly not cutting edge. No WiFi. Palm OS is dated (but very functional and NOT from Microsoft), and still a bit “fat” when compared to Blackberry Pearl. I like that the keyboard lives on — they nailed it a long time ago.
However, I must admit, I just took the SIM out of on my Nokia E61 and moved it back to my ancient Treo 650. Despite all the weaknesses of the Treo, I couldn’t deal with UNBELIEVABLY SLOW CONTACT LOOKUP.