Next Great Thing

We recently wrote about how youth are using their phones in Asia, as reported by Synovate. Reports are well and good, great for stats to feed those marketing types who crave quantitative (yes, we are guilty). But the real insights come from the mouths of babes, as it were, qualitative-style. Anastasia Goodstein from YPulse is always one to throw a good panel, and SXSW last month was no exception. At the “What Teens Want Online and On their Phones” panel, she spoke with an insightful and extroverted group of teens from local schools (in Austin) to find out, well, what they want on their mobiles and online. There is a great roundup on Ian Schaefer’s blog, and here are some topline insights we gleaned (hey, better late than never!).

Social Networks:

• Most are on Facebook. Everyone is on MySpace, though the older ones are experiencing some fatigue with the site. The younger ones inflate their ages. None would organize a social even via MySpace bulletin.
• SNS help meet them meet people from their school that they may not already know.

News:

• They use Digg to read about news rather than traditional news sites (CNN.com, NY Times.com, etc.)
• Humor or alternate (not-dry) angles really grab their attention.

Entertainment:

• They watch online video with Veoh being mentioned the most as well as ABCFamily, Disney Channel, and Crunchyworld.
• Favorite shows include foreign dramas, Hannah Montana, Boondocks, Sweet Life of Zack and Cody, Kyle XY and Wildfire.
• When they like a show on TV, they interact with all of its online elements.

Communications:

• Just use email to register for sites and for school assignments, some for family communication. This is similar to what we heard on last year’s YPulse Teen Mashup panel of young entrepreneurs, except they also used it for their businesses when they needed to communicate with adults.
• They said they don’t IM much anymore, which was a bit surprising. I actually spoke with Anastasia about this. She says, “I don’t think IMing is completely out, especially with younger teens and tweens who are less mobile and spending time at home on the computer, but I do think it is quickly being replaced by texting or IMing via cell phone.” Which leads to…

Mobile Phones:

• Can’t live without them.
• Ranged from low-end (an old Sprint, a tracfone) to high (a Blackberry Pearl, aSony Excursion).
• Most did not use many data services due to high costs, most text, but often constrained by price.

Music:

• Can’t live without music, and go to sites like Purevolume and mixmatters to discover it-new and old.

Gaming:

• All the boys were gamers, and mentioned news4gamers, Runescape, and Halo 3*
• All liked playing (free) games on their phones like pac man, diner dash and tetris and flash games from AddictingGames.com and NewGrounds and AlbinoBlackSheep.

Avatars:

• Not hugely popular but most have experience with them whether through games (Gaia Online) or on sites like Yahoo! Avatars and Zwinki.

Social Causes:

• Very important, especially ones that they can act on. FreeRice.com was a big hit.

Advertising:

• Hate the experience interrupting ads. Especially pop-ups, pre-roll and mid-roll.
• Do accept that advertisements are necessary. They just don’t want it slowing down their computers, interrupting their experience, or slowing down the load of the page.
• Think its cool when you get to interact with advertisers. “When they open it up to the public…it makes me respect them more.”
• Want ads on their sites to be contextually relevant.

More youth insights coming soon as we begin to publish the findings from our Global Youth Panel Surveys (look for the first post later this week).