Where Social Media is headed, and what you should do about it

Examining Teenagers’ Social Media Habits – My Interview with RaceTalkBlog

Following my post on ReadWriteWeb regarding the reasons why teenagers do not use Twitter, I was asked to do a Q&A interview with the blog of PR and Social Media firm Racepoint Group. The questions they asked were relevant and interesting, and I believe a lot of people will be interested in seeing them.

I’m copying the interview here so you can check it out, or you can read the original here.

Let me know your own thoughts and views in the comments, because my replies definitely aren’t necessarily the definitive answer.

Enter Ben Haber from Racepoint Group:

We’ve all heard it before: teenagers don’t use Twitter. Is it because they don’t find it useful? Or do they just not have time for it? To help us understand how teens feel about Twitter and other social networks, Michael Moore-Jones, a sixteen-year-old technology and business enthusiast that’s involved in involved in numerous startups was kind enough to answer a few questions for us. Michael lives in New Zealand and blogs regularly at mmoorejones.com. You can also follow him on Twitter at @mmoorejones.

RaceTalk: As you noted in your article on ReadWriteWeb, teenagers aren’t big Twitter adopters. You wrote about some of the major reasons for this (i.e.: they use social media to extend real-life relationships online), but how much of a factor do you think time is? Do teens have the time for another social networks, especially since all of their friends are already on Facebook?

Michael Moore-Jones: I think if teens had a use for Twitter, they would use it regardless of time. With the amount of time that we spend on Facebook, it wouldn’t be hard to siphon off a bit of that time into using Twitter (I do it myself). So no, time isn’t one of the main factors that means teens don’t tweet. If Twitter offered teens something, they’d find the time.

RaceTalk: Teens are a very unique group in that they’ve grown up with social media, rather than being introduced to it (like today’s working generations). As teens get older and begin to enter the real-world do you think their attitude towards Twitter will change?

MMJ: Good question – I think that’s exactly the point my post on RWW was leading to. While it may seem as though once teens enter the working world and realize the value that Twitter offers they may start using it, I believe there is a weird mentality amongst teens about Twitter that means they will never adopt it. In researching the reasons why teens don’t tweet, I asked numerous teens at my school “Do you use Twitter? What do you think of it?”. The response I got was usually a laugh, followed by something along the lines of “Are you kidding me? Twitter is so lame”. A couple of people even said “Isn’t Twitter for little kids?” I think that when the vast majority of a generation shares that view of a web product or service, they won’t adopt it even if they move into a position where it does solve a problem for them. It could even be to do with the branding of Twitter – fluffy blue logo and little birds. Teens don’t like using something that seems immature and young, even if it is useful (part of wanting to be older and grow up). So no, I believe that my generation will never adopt Twitter en-masse, even when we move into the real-world.

RaceTalk: Location-based check in applications like Foursquare and Gowalla have caught a lot momentum during the past year. Are teens interested in these types of networks or are they more likely to use Facebook Places?

MMJ: With location-based services, teenagers are currently using them less than older generations for the reason that they are still mainly for early adopters (Facebook Places is changing this, but not yet). Here in New Zealand Facebook Places hasn’t been rolled out yet so I can’t comment on its usage amongst teenagers, but I do know that Foursquare and Gowalla have not been adopted in a hurry (and the vast majority of teenagers not involved in the tech industry in some way would not have heard of them yet). At the same time (at least in New Zealand and Spain, where I’ve lived in the past couple of years) smartphones are still not ubiquitous amongst teenagers, so many teenagers wouldn’t have the ability to use these services even if they wanted to. Once all teens have smartphones, I believe they will start using a location based service other than Facebook Places (because they want to share their location, but not have it pop up in everyone’s news feed everywhere they go). Heck, the full reasons for that is another entire post so I’ll leave it at that and explain in the comments if people want to know a bit more.

RaceTalk: Of all methods of communication (Facebook messages, IM, email, text, etc.) what do teens generally prefer, and how will this affect communication 10 years from now?

MMJ: Teens will use a medium of communication that suits the content of the conversation (I touched on this in the RWW post, too). So, if teens aren’t at home but want to check up on a plan for later, they’ll send a text. If they are organizing going to the movies with a big group of people, they’ll send out a Facebook message to everyone invited. If they’re at home on a computer and want to be talking to a few people, they’ll use Facebook chat because it’s easier to type than it is to text. There are reasons for using each medium of communication, and which one teens choose to use actually says a lot about what the content of the conversation will be. I believe that the new Facebook Messages is the future, but it could go one of two ways – either all teens will adopt it and it will become the norm, or they won’t like it because it doesn’t allow to the same extent the understanding of the medium of communication being used. It’ll be interesting to watch, but I think at the least Facebook Messages is a great step in the right direction. On another note, once smartphones become the norm amongst teenagers, I believe texting will die and teens will start using instant messaging applications more (such as Blackberry Messenger, or Whatsapp Messenger). It’s instantaneous, and allows a conversation to happen more than with text messaging. Anyway, we’ll see how these predictions play out!

RaceTalk: Moving forward do you think teens would prefer to communicate visually rather than through text (i.e.: receiving picture notifications from a business running a sale rather than text notifications)?  How will this affect the way businesses (especially consumer-facing companies) operate?

MMJ: Another fantastic question. I believe communication through text will always have a place because it serves so many different purposes, but I definitely do think that a lot of communication will move to be done visually. Something that is already occurring is that we’ll see people video calling rather than just calling, and this could work as an analogy for what is to happen with other mediums of communication. I definitely think that with the rise of the smartphone for the masses people will begin to use images a lot more regularly and freely – so we will see people just sending a photo of where they are rather than describing it in text. But again, it all depends on what teenagers are trying to communicate. Relating to your question about how businesses will need to change the way they operate, I don’t think they’ll need to change a great deal in the next few years. Most advertising done online (plus traditional media advertising) includes a visual aspect. Text message advertising in its current state doesn’t work because its been shown that teenagers don’t respond to marketing messages sent via text message, so we could see a rise of mobile advertising of images being sent rather than just text. This will also be very interesting to watch, and we’ll just see what happens.

Why I Believe Teens Don’t And Won’t Tweet [Re: Post on RWW]

Earlier today I had a post published on Read Write Web (see it here), outlining my views on why I believe teens don’t, and won’t, use Twitter.

Key points include:

• Teens’ lives are entirely built around their actual friends, so Facebook is a better solution.
• Self-promotion is not a priority for teens, as they don’t have professional lives to think about.
• Tweets are not a good medium of exchange to real friends for teenagers.
• Facebook’s News Feed is a better solution for discovering interesting content.
• Those teens who do tweet usually have defined interests.
• Could Twitter be the next Bebo or MySpace?

I’m really interested in your views, so make sure you check the post out and leave me a comment with what you think. Cheers!

Looking ahead: 2011 in Social Media & Tech

So 2010 has been a pretty massive year for social media. But it’s obvious that a lot of trends are just at the tipping point to turn into full-scale industries, and I reckon we’ll see the growth of a lot of new areas in 2011.

This is where I see social media and the tech sector heading in 2011. Agree or disagree, leave me your thoughts in the comments.

Geolocation

So this was basically the hot area of social media heading into 2010, but is it still as hot as we move towards 2011? In simple terms, it’s now even hotter. But I believe the value of geolocation services is changing to focus more on what users get out of them in real life. The value of Foursquare, once you move past the faddish badges, is the discounts and specials you get at certain venues for checking in. Facebook has picked up on this in an amazing way with their launch of Places, which gives all businesses the opportunity to easily offer deals. The launch of Facebook Places has, in essence, put geolocation on the simpleton’s map. Foursquare and Gowalla were still catering to the early adopter crowds, but Facebook Places appeals to a much larger crowd.

I believe that in 2011 geolocation, mobile, and social networking are going to collide together and become mainstream. No longer will they be for the early adopter and social media crowds, but Facebook Places will become just as ubiquitous as Facebook Photos is.

Group Buying

A year ago, Groupon had just hit a billion dollar valuation. The other day, they got an offer for almost $6billion from Google. I think that’s a pretty good sign of how big this sector is going to be, if you have Google knocking on the door with a cheque that big for a company that isn’t even two years old.

The question is how group buying sites will be split up globally. Already in New Zealand we have numerous group buying sites popping up, like Groupy and GrabOne. Even 1-Day launched what they’re calling 1-NightOut. All around the world, huge numbers of services that are in essence completely the same are popping up. We have to ask: How many services can fit into the market? Is it first-mover advantage?

In my opinion, Groupon won’t just forget about the global market. I believe they’re going to start buying up smaller group buying sites in countries all over the world, both to stop them from becoming bigger and also to gain those existing networks of venues providing deals.

At the same time, I reckon group buying sites will integrate with geolocation services to make them even more local and relevant. I also believe we may see them move away from the 24hr deal model, to a model that is more based on where you actually visit during a week – so deals could last for a week instead of the current 24hrs.

Social Networking

I’ll pull out a big one: Facebook’s growth will slow, and their userbase will begin to decline towards the end of the year.

I believe that no one wants one social network to rule them all. Just like in real life, where we have different communities based on interests, values, religion etc, the same will happen online. This is a prediction that will come into play long after 2011, but I believe we may see the first signs next year. Facebook will remain large, but other niche social networks will grow in power.

I also think that Twitter will see a significant decline in the number of active users they have, because there are certain aspects of it that are simply faddish. Only certain people get a lot of value out of Twitter, and the rest are using it simply because of the hype and buzz of social media. The full reasons for me thinking this are another post altogether, but if you want to know more, leave a comment!

And what do you think? Am I crazy? Or will I be completely correct? No one knows, but what we do know is that 2011 will be an exciting year in this space.