Archive for the ‘Teens Teenagers’ Category
It’s no secret that teens are influenced by trend setters, now they can become the trend setter, at least online, by participating in the multiplayer online game Trendetta.
In Trendetta, users are completely in control of the fads and fashions they choose to battle for — today’s hotlist topper may be at the bottom of the heap tomorrow. Players square off against each other to control the whims of public opinion and promote their favorite trends, fashions, musicians and celebs using word of mouth, television, the internet and the much coveted celebrity endorsement. Online players challenge up to three others to challenge for trend supremacy in a turn-based strategy game, while chatting with one another about “What’s Hot” and “What’s Not.” The top players vie to have their trend land a coveted slot on “50 Hottest Trends” list, and to earn a place in the “Trendetta Hall of Fame.”
Why would marketers care? If you want to know what the hot teen trends are, why not let the teens show you firsthand? Since it’s a competition, you might be able to pick out the top teen marketers as well. Source
Will unplugging be the next form of teen rebellion? Will “Turn on, tune in, drop out” be replaced by ‘Turn off, tune out and unplug? Are teens already wise to the fact that the Internet is ‘the man’? In a world in which video surveillance is omnipresent where is a teen supposed to get a little privacy? Where are adults supposed to get any privacy? Is the Google Borg for real? Is GPS and Google maps the realization of Big Brother?
Teens might think so. From New Scientist:
Imagine that Debbie and me somehow go out together. We want to network with our peer group, teenager-wise. I need to figure out what’s hip and with-it and rebellious, and Debbie needs to know what the other cyber-Goth chicks are wearing. Is that okay? No!
It’s not that we can’t do it: it’s that all our social relations have been reified with a clunky intensity. They’re digitized! And the networking hardware and software that pervasively surround us are built and owned by evil, old, rich corporate people! Social-networking systems aren’t teenagers! These machines are METHODICALLY KILLING OUR SOULS! If you don’t count wall-graffiti (good old spray paint), we have no means to spontaneously express ourselves. We can’t “find ourselves” – the market’s already found us and filled us with map pins.
At our local mall, events-management sub-engines emit floods of locative data. So if Debbie and me sneak in there, looking for some private place to get horizontal, all the vidcams swivel our way. Then a rent-a-cop shows up. What next? Should we go to Lovers’ Lane? There aren’t any! They eliminated all those! They were tracked down with satellites and abolished with Google Maps.
I have to admit that if my parents had given me a cellphone with GPS tracking ability when I was 14, the phone would have quickly found its way into the nearest creek or big blue dumpster.
We teenagers have to live in “controlled spaces”. Radio-frequency ID tags, real-time locative systems, global positioning systems, smart doorways, security videocams. They “protect” us kids, from imaginary satanic drug dealer terrorist mafia predators. We’re “secured”. We’re juvenile delinquents with always-on cellphone nannies in our pockets. There’s no way to turn them off. The internet was designed without an off-switch.
Have we gotten so caught up in protecting the children that we’ve forgotten to teach them how to protect themselves? Are we trying to turn the world into a giant nanny? A nanny that consists of lenses, tracking devices and lines of code?
Will the wired and wireless generations yearn to unplug or is it too late?
Shortly after posting The Coming Teen Cell Phone Revolution below, I ran across an article on a company called Bling Software Inc, that is bringing widgets to cell phones. The target market? A “young, urban demographic”
By using new programming tools or rethinking existing ones, companies at this week’s DEMO emerging technologies conference claim they can replicate familiar aspects of today’s desktop computing on the phone’s small screen.
These modules might contain video clips and other interactive features. Users can access them through a slicker graphical interface rather than the text-heavy menus often used to bring content onto cell phones.
Don’t have a smart phone but still want your email? Another company, TeleFlip Inc. is launching a free service that can route emails to cell phones.
Look for the cell phone market to explode with other widgets and services as we move away from the PC and fully embrace the cell phone as the link that keeps us connected.
Windows Vista finally launched to a lukewarm reception, PC prices are at the lowest point they’ve been in years, even laptops are available now for under $600, but I haven’t spoken to a single teenager that’s interested. What are they interested in? Smart Phones, and yes, the newly launched iPhone.
As I’ve reported before, teens are more connected than ever, but not to a PC. This fact hasn’t been lost on marketers. In 2005 advertisers were looking at cell phones as the emerging medium to explore.
A few factors are driving the interest. Increasingly, cell phones are becoming more data oriented and PC-like. Consequently, there is now space that advertiser can use for marketing. “Cell phone screen size is certainly not optimal but it does provide companies with room to advertise their wares,” said David Chamberlain, senior analyst at market research firm In-Stat.
In addition, cell phones are quite popular among a prime advertising Email Marketing Software – Free Demo demographic: youth, including college and high school students. Many college students have abandoned wired connections for wireless ones, and a survey by The American Advertising Federation (AAF) found that 69 percent of high school teens own cell phones. The youth market tends to be quite interested in products with short life cycles, such as music and movies. These products generate a lot of advertising because companies need to quickly create a buzz as new products arrive.
As phones became more like PCs, teens and college students began to abandon the PC for the portability of the cell phone. One key component that was missing from the mix was storage space. Cell phones just didn’t have the space to allow for music and video storage.
Seagate just changed that with the introduction of 10-20 Gig wireless storage devices.
Simply streaming content isn’t working for consumers or businesses, Pait said, so providing lots of space to hold downloaded media is the way forward. Splitting storage from the handset guarantees plenty of space and phones that stay small and stay cheap.
While resistant to advertising, especially on cell phones, the teenagers I’ve spoken to admitted that if monthly rates were reduced or more minutes added to their plans, they’d be willing to use an ad-supported cell plan. Screen size? For a generation that grew up with the Gameboy, the small screens on cell phones aren’t an issue.
One of the most intriguing things I’ve learned about teens in my research of late is that teenagers have a very tight network of friends. There’s a definite trust issue involved. Outsiders are viewed with caution. This outlook extends to the Web.
They may read blogs written by people they don’t know, but they trust blogs written by their friends. While I was exploring this issue I ran across a ClickZ article from 2005 entitled Teens Don’t Blog With Strangers.
While the article may be a bit dated, in this instance it has value because teen attitudes and habits haven’t changed.
“Teen bloggers and blog readers are reading the blogs of their friends,” Pew Internet & American Life Project senior research specialist Amanda Lenhart told ClickZ News. “For young people it’s about reinforcing and keeping relationships, not reading opinions of strangers.”
Lenhart notes that the data about teen blog readership runs contrary to the conventional wisdom about adult blog readers, which holds that adults most often read blogs written by people they don’t know.
Teen skepticism goes beyond far beyond blogs however, as all the ones I’ve spoken to stated that they trust almost no information they find on the Web, which includes advertisements, news and perhaps more significantly, other teens they happen to meet on Myspace or other social networks, although most of them said that they could ‘figure out a poser’ within minutes after trading messages with them.
The most common complaint? Adults that try to speak like teens. In a market that is constantly bombarded with negative press about fraud, poor information, stalkers, etc, it seems like the teens have gotten the message. Which means that marketers are going to have an even more difficult time gaining the trust of the next batch of consumers.
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