A classic Twilight Zone episode comes to mind.
Posted on 07/13/2009 1:25:51 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
A research note written by a 15-year-old, who was not born when former UK chancellor Nigel Lawson dismissed London analysts as “teenage scribblers”, 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 response was enormous. “We’ve had dozens and dozens of fund managers, and several CEOs, e-mailing and calling all day,” said Mr Hill-Wood, 35, estimating that the note had generated five or six times more feedback than the team’s usual reports.
However, he made no claims for its statistical rigour.
As elderly media moguls gathered at the Allen & Co conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, to fawn over Twitter and fret over their business models, 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.
Executives and investors have grown fascinated by the opinions of teenagers. Rupert Murdoch, 78, has described himself as a “digital immigrant” and his young daughters as “digital natives”, while UBS pulled in an 18-year-old three years ago to demonstrate MySpace to portfolio managers.
Pretty shallow article. A “sound-bite” for ADD readers.
Actually, this will upset a lot of financial people who think they know what the 13-24 demographic is doing in terms of media consumption and use.
The part about Twitter is REALLY going to upset them.
A classic Twilight Zone episode comes to mind.
I often open a thread not for the posted article, but just for the Freepers’ commentary. This time, as often happens, the comments are more useful and entertaining than the actual article.
the reason why TWITTER is going to be upset is because it didn’t name itself SCRIBBLE /sarc
I didn’t say Twitter would be upset. I said the readers of this article (financial people and various persons of corporate employ) would be upset by the part about teenagers not using Twitter. Difference.
yeah, and watch somebody develop SCRIBBLE lol for low-level mutant TWITTER’ers
Kids are today allowed to do pretty much what they want to without consequences. Like being dumbed down to think that Clif Notes style learning is the best way to learn. I think that is sad. They think they can write a book even though they can’t read one unless it’s in shorthand amd abbreviated. Sad that they are not experiencing life to its fullest.
I am not implying that all parents are allowing this to happen.
Nah, there’s just no point in using the service if you have texting, Facebook, Xbox Live voice chat, etc already available to you.
Companies were probably hoping for widespread Twitter adoption so they can use the service as a way of directly contacting hopeful customers, especially since everyone hates advertising.
“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”.
Caption: “Twitter, I’m going to send you to the cornfield! And all you newspapers better be nice to me.”
“Mr Robson had little comfort for struggling print publishers, saying no teenager he knew regularly reads a newspaper...”
I recently visited a site dominated by teens, and a large percentage can’t even write a coherent sentence, let alone carry on a logical discussion. They had the attention span of gnats.
That leads me to believe they don’t have the smarts to figure how to operate a lawnmower, toaster, gun or vehicle. This group was worse than dumbed down; these kids were creating a new stone age complete with grunts and ughs. Give them a video game and pointy stick to dig for grubs, and I’d guess they’d be happy for two minutes.
It was the intent of the public ‘education’ system to reduce our nation to a collection of gibbering idiots. They have succeeded.
Why would these idiots not assume this kid already knew everything there is to know? Mine did by 15.
Freeper comments not withstanding, this 15 year old apparently can write well and has disturbed what “professionals” know about the evolving pattern of media habits of young people.
And he was right. My daughter signed up for a Twitter account, pronounced it “stupid” and has only used it once to support the Iranians. She hates Facebook. Finds it time consuming and “fluffy”. None of her friends use these formats as well.
She loved MySpace for awhile, but that’s using it’s charm.
The teens I know communicate primarily by text. It’s fast and cheap (if you get an unlimited plan) and everyone has it.
I think that this is all a positive trend. I’m seeing kids get out from behind their computers more than I have in years. My son routinely goes fishing, swimming and rock climbing with his friends. The kids are having fun sitting by a fire chatting in the summer evenings rather than playing with technology. This summer is the first time I’ve seen kids excited by, and voluntarily going to, museums. My daughter has started reading. (She just finished Animal Farm and is working on Starship Troopers. Her next book is on Jewish history. She’s teaching a class next month.)
Video games are hot, but my son is less and less interested in buying them. Right now he’s checking out GameStop. (”It’s like renting movies. Who buys every movie they want to check out? Why would you buy every game? Renting makes sense.”)
They are positive about the iPod, but I’m getting the impression that they think that this is where MP3 players should end. The iPod is the best and it’s unnecessary to go further. (They only have two complaints - that the iPod is tied to one particular computer and that the computer has to store all the information on the iPod. In their view, the duplication wastes memory.) The iPhone is less impressive to them. They seem to like the flexibility of the cheaper “pay as you go” phones and plans. Both of my kids have lost or broken phones and they don’t want to deal with the heartbreak of loosing an expensive one.
Everyone is tan in Texas. Kids aren’t getting pudgy in the summer months. I love this new “trend!” :-)
She loved MySpace for awhile, but that’s loosing it’s charm.
I don’t use “Twitter”, and I don’t “Follow” anyone—it seems a “little” narcisistic (and arrogant) to think that I want to know what everyone in the world is thinking, or cares about (since most of what they write about doesn’t really mater in life, anyway). It’s kind of pointless. I use facebook—that’s about all the “social network” I use.
First it was “surfing the web” then “search engines” then “Chatting” then “message boards” then “blogging” then “myspace”, then “texting” then “Facebook” then “twitter” the internet keeps creating new way to not interact with real people. (as I type this on a message board, people need to get out an live their lives, and focus on what mattrer: Their response to God, Family), not stupid stuff which our culture and the silly elite guppie culture focuses on!
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