The Connected Generation

I hear it at least once weekly. A corporate skeptic hears me rattle off Technorati numbers as his face forms a frown. "Yeah, but isn't it mostly kids? Isn't it just the MySpace and LiveJournal kids?  What good are they to MyCo?"

First off, it's not just the kids.  Blogging is growing in just about every way you can measure. But it is true, and extremely important, that blogging's greatest growth is among people under age 25. Forrester's Charlene Li told me that 25 percent of American youth read blogs and that is where the greatest growth is happening.

I maintain that the adoption of young people who use blogs is essential to the future of just about any enterprise, even global business-to-business organizations. Ignore what is happening in online youth communities and blogs and your company can expect a future in the company of dinosaurs.

These kids will graduate in a few fiscal quarters and they will become your customers, your employees and those troublesome entrepreneurs who will challenge staid and aging incumbent cultures. Blogging and online sharing is a big part of their culture, their way of making choices and their approach to buying goods and services. You can find the best and brightest of the emerging generation among others in MySpace and LiveJournal.

Blogging is part of their lifestyle and their habits. The habits we form in our college age days tend to stick with us through life. Large chunks of the social networks we build when we are between the ages of 18 and 25 stick with us through life.  The internet has made these social networks larger and more powerful than back when I started college in 1962.

But habits and social networks have only changed in the mechanics of the formation. On my first day of college I picked and read the first New York Times I had ever read.  I was grateful that it was free to students.  By the time I graduated, the New York Times is part of my habit. I read my first copy 43 years ago while drinking a cup of coffee.  I did the same thing a couple of hours ago. I have been paying to support this habit for the last 39 years, so the Times has had a good ROI on their investment in me.

My granddaughter is only seven, but I doubt traditional newspapers will be much part of her life. But I bet that by the time she graduates college her habits will include blogging, online sharing and things I have not yet imagined that are now arts of the great misnomer we call Web 2.0.

Hers will be the connected generation

She will go online to find people who share her tastes and values.  They will influence each other about where to dine, travel and buy; on what to drive, where to live and work.  She will only want to see advertising in areas where she states her intentions online. She ill be recruited for her first professional job online. On her first day at this new job, she will be given a desk, a computer, a telephone, an email account and a blog account. She will use these tools for different purposes based on her job and her habits.

The blog and connection will just be part of a normal day in a modern workplace.

Companies that do not start altering course to accommodate this day will go the way of the Cadillac division. They kept marketing to the customers they had as those customers aged. They ignored emerging generations who saw better luxury and value in competing luxury cars.  They allowed an image to be embedded that theirs was the car for cigar-smoking, environment damaging, aging white men. The problem was that the image to a great degree was accurate.  Over time, the aging white guys died off and their were too few customers to replace them. Cadillac has had to start all over and continues to struggle, even as their cars get steadily improved reviews and they recalibrate to market to young adults.

Companies that do not understand that every four fiscal quarters, a new generation of potential employees, customers and competitive threats is coming into the workplace may find their customers and employees have all driven their Cadillacs into Jurassic Park.

Comments

[Ewan McIntosh]

Your grand-daughter's generation IS the connected generation. I have the challenge of making blogging and podcasting normal in the classrooms of my small country. We're getting there. Thankfully I will be heading back to a smaller education area where the Head of Education himself blogs and wants EVERYONE to be keeping their learning logs online and making connections with each other and those abroad. Who knows? They might even connect with you, Shel ;-)

[/pd]

not sure if this will interest you. I asked myself the question- will blogging become part of the edcuation curriculum (future paradigm ?)

http://peterdawson.typepad.com/blog/2006/01/worlds_youngest.html

[Ewan McIntosh]

Blogging's already very much of the education world, especially amongst the teachers who are using this as their own professional learning log. Now we are seeing more and more kids doing this, although, for example, in my own school we started field trip blogging to keep in touch with the folks back home in 2002. (http://mgsonline.blogs.com)

[Kelly Joines]

The connected generation is great terminology. Our fast paced society deems it necessary to have a cell phone, laptop, pager, etc. on us at all times. Immediacy is key; we get angry when we can’t reach someone and if we do not get a timely reply our stress levels are raised. I talked to a man the other day who said he cannot even wait 30 seconds for a burger and fries anymore.
Blogging is the next step. It is the next cell phone, pager, email, instant messenger, except that it has potential of connecting people that could have potentially never met. We are able to get ideas, disagree, agree or look at issues through other people's perspectives. On the same note, however, we don’t have to look at people’s differing viewpoints at all. Is this going to create and deepen a biased, narrow viewpoint?
Also with increasing social dependency on online, person to person web sites such as matchmaker, friendfinder, myspace, etc. will future generations become more secluded and socially inept. Does blogging fit into this same category?

[Shel Israel]

Kelly,

Very well said. Maybe the man you met will stop eating junk food and just carry a bag of carrots and celery with him.

[Lisa Harvey]

I agree that being a part the connected generation is incredibly useful, and yet at the same time I've seen this "connectedness" destroy many of my peer’s ability to connect socially in a world not linked by wires. Blogs in particular have allowed us to stop asking our friends and colleagues about their lives on the phone or in person in favor of clicking a link or opening our inbox to the latest passage in their person history. I wont deny that I am guilty of simply reading about someone's life or opinions, rather than actively inquiring about them face to face. I often wonder if we even really register that the writer is actually is a person rather than a faceless ghost writer.
On a side note, I really wonder if blogging is the next step in a society geared towards immediate response. Instant messaging takes place in real time as well, and has existed, at least to my knowledge, for longer. It seems like blogging would have been the precursor to IM… but that simply wasn’t the case.
Blogging is a powerful and wonderful addition to society, but even this tool must be used with care and restraint. Although it allows companies and people who would not normally speak the ability to connect on an intimately detailed level, it will never be able to replace face to face contact.
The most important thing about blogs is the ability they give the average person to communicate their thoughts and ideas to the general public with relative ease. Instead of solely relying on the traditional press to get the voice of the public to those in power, the people can now become the press. I am excited to see what the Blogosphere can do for the voice of the common person. My only hope is that people choose to listen to many voices, instead of only those within their personal circle of influence or interest.