GenY – Is Content Still King?

According to an attitudinal research study completed by Resonate Research, 18-34 year olds purchasing behaviors are influenced by both the products value, the aspirational aspect of a product’s brand message, and also by it’s “cool” factor.

From the press release: This group is more passionate about social issues like energy (36% more than the 35 plus online population), climate change (48% more) and animal rights (24% more). However, in general they are 15% – 25% less likely to make purchase decisions based on their issues of importance. Instead they look to products for external validation, meaning they buy products that convey and reward their success and personal achievement. When compared to the 35 plus online population, 18 – 34 year olds are more likely to purchase based on the following brand attributes: innovation, looks, popularity and prestige. In fact, they are five times more likely than their elders to purchase a product that is viewed as prestigious, and over twice as likely to buy a popular product or a product that is aesthetically appealing.

Digital Magazines and Books need to Evolve!

This was a week for some great ideas to emerge on how tablet platforms and digital readers need to evolve in terms of functionality, features, user experience, social media integration.

Now that the iPad has been on the market for some time and a slew of other tablets are about to drop, usage and behavior patterns are starting to emerge, and ideas on extending tablet functionality are becoming more concrete.

Here at Polymash we have been humbly completing work on extending tablet magazine reader functionality for the information product and educational market, adding plug-in features such as in magazine notepads and social media integration for Apple and Android platforms.

But for a more comprehensive and compelling glimpse at future possibilities, I’d invite you to check out this video from IDEO entitled The Future of the Book

My favorite concepts here:

• The idea that interactivity needs to extend to participatory and community based discussions about the material being read. (Ideo calls this “Nelson”)
• The idea to link to book clubs, reading lists and recommendation engines (Copeland)
• Ideo also proposes a concept (Alice), which allows for co-creating the story, affecting the plot, interacting with characters and so on, and while I love the idea I do see it more in the realm off app and game development.

However long term the creation of truly interactive content will blur the line between app development and content creation…

Frankfurt Book Fair

Also this week the Frankfurt Book Fair took place, and following twitter feeds and blog entries it was apparent that there was much tablet talk and discussion. I’d like to share Joe Wikert’s presentation he gave “My eContent Wish List–Frankfurt TOC 2010” as posted on slideshare, which mirrors some of VIMEO’s vision in a perhaps more pragmatic way:

Having worked with, and around, the limitations of today’s tablet reader technology, the critical element to me is to create platform independent APIs that allow developers to directly access and interface to the publications content

My favorites:

• Platform independent readers, with platform independent APIs
• Better Social Media integration, for example tweeting from within and article or story
• The ability to highlight and annotate content, and then be able to share, archive, collect and search these annotations across publications

There are some great ideas in these presentations, and I hope publishing houses and tool makers in the tablet industry are listening and adjusting to the market needs being formulated.

Debunking some social media myths: Women Over 55 Take Facebook by Storm

Here are some encouraging statistics:

For anyone thinking that Facebook, and “Social Media” in general, is a phenomenon for younger people only, think again!

Does anyone still believe this may be a male dominated and predominantly geeky space? Think again!

Women over 55 are the largest growth statistic on Facebook, and Women outnumber men in every category.

Now, I would love to have these statistics on Twitter!

The number of US women over age 55 using Facebook grew by 175.3% since September 2008, making mature females one of the fastest growing demographic groups on the social network, according to usage statistics released by independent blog Inside Facebook.

The number of men over age 55 also grew dramatically during the same four-month period (up 137.8%), but women over 55 still outnumber men in this age group by almost two-to-one.

Key Facebook stats as of Feb. 1, 2009, from Inside Facebook:

• There are 45.3 million active US Facebook users.
• The number of Facebook users are growing in every age/gender demographic.
• Facebook use among women is growing faster than among men in nearly every age group.
• The fastest growing age group by total users is 26-34-year-olds; 45% of Facebook’s US audience is now 26 years old or older.

Older Users Fuel US Audience Growth

Facebook’s US audience has continued to grow in recent months, fueled primarily by those ages 26+, said Inside Facebook. In particular, the network has rapidly gained popularity in the US with people 45+, growing by more than 165% among both men and women in the last four months.

Women Outnumber Men

Overall, women (56.2%) on Facebook in the US outnumber men in every age group. This number is up from 54.3% late last year.

A practical example of “Crowdsourcing”

In the last couple of years I have been involved with several social community and small businesses wanting to increase or optimize their  web presence.

I seem to repeatedly come across some of the same challenges for such smaller businesses, for example:

• They may have part of the needed expertise, but lack the graphic design skills to produce good graphics for their site, OR
• They have a site but do not know how to search optimize it, OR
• They feel they are not getting enough options and choices, OR
• The prices they are quoted are outside of their range

So, here is an approach to “Crowdsource” the problem with one of the many emerging sites supporting this business model. How does this work?

1.) You post a creative project
2.) Watch the world contribute ideas
3.) Choose the one you like

Here are some ‘Crowsourcing” resources:

• A review of 10 Top Crowdsourcing companies at Innovation Zen

• A practical example of Jeremyah Owyang, crowdsourcing the redesign of his site

Cheers, JB