GenDigital

2010 Youth Macro Trends & Predictions

With 2009 nearly in the books, it's time once again to take stock of what has been a highly eventful year in media, marketing, entertainment and technology. As we prepare to say goodbye to 2009 and welcome in 2010, we are pleased to present the lone qualitative deliverable within the Youth Trends portfolio: the annual Youth Macro Trends & Predictions report for 2010.

The 2010 Youth Macro Trends & Predictions hones in on 12 large scale consumer trends that will shape youth behavior in the year to come. Here's a quick look at the 12 featured in the report. Visit the Youth Trends store to learn more or download a copy.

2010 Youth Macro Trends & Predictions:

- Media & Marketing: Quality over Quantity

- Media Consumption: The CDC (context, distribution and customization)

- Mobile Mainstreaming

- Crowdsourcing

- Values-Driven Discretionary Purchasing

- Controller-Free Video Gaming

- QR Codes

- Exclusive Lifecasting

- All Packed Raring To Go

- Quarterlife Crisis

- Subtle & Softer Fashion

- Eco-Instant Gratification

The Relevance & Staying Power Of Twitter For Teens & College Kids

Lately, it's a rarity for a day to pass without someone asking us about Twitter and the youth market. The questions range from the straightforward and simple (do they use it?) to something more strategic in nature (how do I integrate Twitter into our social media marketing plans in a relevant way that will attract and engage our target audience?).

For starters, in terms of registrations, Twitter's growth among teens and college students has been impressive through the first nine months of the year. At the start of the year, only about 5% had registered for a Twitter account compared to 19% at the end of September. Of course, that's only one data point. The more impactful findings are things like frequency of access, frequency of updates and the number of people the individual is actively following. Basically, how sticky is the platform? From our perspective, these are the more meaningful metrics.

Frequency of Access:

- among the 19% with a Twitter account, only about a quarter (23%) have posted 5 or more updates during the past week and about one in five (19%) said they posted less than 5 updates since first registering an account

Followers & Following:

- teen and college student Twitter users have an average of 57 followers and they follow an average of 61 people, companies and brands

- the most commonly followed non-people are news & information centric: ESPN (net sub-brand mentions), CNN, Fox News, NY Times (net sub-brand mentions), Google (net sub-brand mentions) and Xbox (net sub-brand mentions)

- the most commonly followed "notable" people/personalities are the one's you'd expect them to be: Dave Matthews, Jason Mraz Taylor Swift, John Mayer, LeBron James and Dane Cook

- more than three in ten (32%) say they are at least somewhat interested in using Twitter more to follow updates from friends, brands/companies

So, what's the net here? Well, we think it's a fair assessment to say Twitter, at least among the teen/college segment is still pretty niche in terms of stickiness. It's not necessarily a bad move strategically to include Twitter as one element within a broader social media plan, but in that same breath, probably not the most pragmatic play to make it your sole element.

The updated and expanded  Q4 '09 Youth Social Media Marketing & Insights report will be available to download/purchase the week of November 23rd.

Teen Top Ten List Report: Q3 2009

The latest wave of Top Ten for the teen segment is now available via the Youth Trends Research Store. This wave of Top Ten covers the top TV shows, magazines, web destinations, musical artists, video game titles, movies, celebrities and clothing retailers. The Q3 '09 wave was completed the week of August 17th using a sample of 1,011 teens between the ages of 13 and 18. The final wave of the year for Top Ten will be conducted in the next two weeks.

Mag Publisher Bauer Targets Younger Online Set With 4Tnz Site

Bauer Publishing, home of youth-targeted magazine titles like J-14 and Twist, among others, has recently launched a new standalone site called affectionately: 4tnz.com. The site offers the usual and commonplace mix of videos, photos and quizzes for the teen set. Of course, users need to be at least 13 years of age to register for the site, which probably cuts out about half of the target audience they reach through their magazine titles. While the site is cute in nature, nothing comes off as totally unique and awe inspiring enough to get teens to switch over from using Facebook or MySpace...Facebook continues to have the most of the momentum as it recently over took MySpace as the top social networking site among the teen audience based on our latest wave of Tween & Teen Lifestyle. The teen social networking space, not unlike anything else in the online space is all about scale. The company hopes to achieve scale by frequently updating its original offerings, I think they would have a better chance of jumping the shark if there was a casual or multi player game element included within their offerings since that seems to be thing right now that gets teens talking and gets them coming back.

Tween & Teen Lifestyle Highlights: Part Two

In part two we're taking a look at Internet and online-related trends among tweens and teens. Certainly, Internet access is a non-issue for this audience with nearly nine in ten having access at home and more than nine at ten having access at school. That said, if you take a look at time spent online in a typical week during the school year, you'll see that teens tend to spend much more time online compared to tweens...and why is that? Very simple: social networking sites. In typical week during the school year, teens spend 12.5 hours online while tweens spend only 6.4 hours. The key shift among teen consumption habits is the transition to Facebook from MySpace. Somewhat akin to "American Idol burn out" much of the teen audience has grown tired with MySpace and has moved on to Facebook in the past six months. Now, interestingly enough, with the massive amount attention given to all of these virtual world communities tailor made for kids, truth be told, only a couple are even on their radar--not surprising to us, but needs to be reinforced. It doesn't take a Harvard MBA or cultural anthropologist to figure out the top site tweens visit--it's still Webkinz among both tween boys and tween girls. Neopets, owned by Viacom's interactive unit as well as Nick.com, the online companion to the cable network continue to put in strong year over year performances. Disney's acquisition of Club Penguin last year has done little so far in terms of deeper popularity, the site remains in third place among tween girls and actually dropped from 11th place to 13th place among tween boys since last summer. Another gaming site owned by Viacom to watch out for is AddictingGames, which is fast becoming the top casual gaming site among all youth, not just the kids and teens.

The WB Will Get A New Life Online

Two years ago The WB and UPN announced they would merge to create the The CW Network. In one fell swoop, we said goodbye to a network brand that brought us youth hits like Dawson's Creek and Buffy The Vampire Slayer, among others. Now after a two year hiatus we will be able to see the WB brand again, this time though it will be an online destination, exclusively. Under the Warner Bros. Entertainment umbrella, TheWB.com and KidsWB.com will launch officially next month (they're currently in beta right now) featuring a slate of ad-supported episodes of former hits ranging from Buffy to Smallville to even episodes of the iconic Friends, still after all of these years a top 15 program among teen and college women. Along with the archived shows, The WB hopes to get some mojo by launching new made for online series created by the likes of Josh Schwartz of O.C. fame and McG another top writer/producer. As noted, some pundits express a lot doubt about the viability of new video-based destination site. On the contrary, I think it's a slam dunk. Some of the most streamed episodes online are hits of yesteryear. The WB still has extremely high levels of brand awareness, especially among 18 to 28 year old women. The addition of Friends alone will certainly provide an immediate boost and assuming one of the star writers/producers can create something that sticks, there is no reason not to believe the new sites won't draw in at least a couple of million uniques each month.

WePlay Wants In On Popular (and crowded) Online Youth Sports Space

Oh no, it can't be another one, can it? Apparently it is, and a nice featured story in today's NY Times to go introduce it. The online youth sports category is like an oversold flight from Newark to West Palm Beach (New Yorkers who regularly fly to south Florida on Continental know what I mean). Basically, the aren't enough seats for everyone and if you're stuck in the back, there is no way you're getting the snack you want, some lucky guy sitting 10 rows up just snagged the last one. Since I'm in a metaphorical mood, let's equate the lack of snacks on the jam packed flight to ad dollars for a moment. You have all these youth sports sites launching essentially going after the same marketing dollars. There is not enough to go around and for the most part, all of these sites have built their model exclusively as advertiser supported. Yes, the numbers for involvement (both direct and indirect) for organized youth sports, be it high school or elementary/middle school is huge. There wouldn't be such a thing as a soccer Mom if it weren't for organized youth sports. But take a reality check for a second, do you really think that all of these sites will be able to scale their member bases let alone secure ad dollars? The only edge WePlay has is that they're positioning their offering towards pre-high school kids, parents and coaches as opposed to the emphasis on college recruiting for high school athletes utilized by quasi competitors like MaxPreps and Takkle. In reality though, they'll all be chasing the same ad dollars. WePlay is backed by financial heavy hitters and marquee brands and individuals including Major League Baseball, talent agency giant Creative Artists Agency and even baseball star Derek Jeter. A note of caution though, lining up these marquee investors doesn't automatically guarantee success. As the Times writer points out, during the height of Internet frenzy, venture investors and sports stars launched MVP.com, which I remember quite well. With a ton of money raised, MVP sits alongside other big name causalities like eToys, Digital Entertainment Network and my personal favorite Kibu. Of course, at the end of the day, I'm just a little youth marketing guy so perhaps the stars and big time investors behind WePlay see something I don't.

Fynanz: P2P Student Loans

Ok, the second little critique for the day. Unfortunately, like KidZui, I don't have a very good feeling about this service either. I can't help it (and no I'm not in a bad mood today where I feel like ripping on anything and everything) but please, the name alone is enough to make me hurl. Fynanz? Experienced youth-focused marketers all know by now that if you try to be too cool for school, so to speak, then your dead before you even start. The new service I'm talking about is Fynanz, a P2P lending service for student loans. Following the P2P lending model of established players, mainly Prosper, Fynanz hopes to turn the college student loan industry on its head by providing an alternative P2P channel for students seeking school loans. Their catch, unlike other P2P plays, is that they guarantee the loans which provides a sense of comfort for individual lenders. I still think drawing lenders in will prove to be more difficult than they anticipate. Also, when it comes to financing student loans, our data shows that it is really the parents leading the charge not the student, so from their appearance, it looks like they're targeting the wrong end-user. The service is limited now to students in New York and Florida but the company expects to expand to the rest of the country later this year. Since today is the start of March Madness and everyone seems to be in a bit of a betting mood, I'll give Fynanz a 2 in 10 chance of making a run of it.

KidZui, Latest Online Kids Play Joins Already Crowded Field

KidZui, a San Diego based web start up has just raise a sizable amount of investment capital from some blue chip VCs to join the very crowded kid and tween-focused category led by Club Penguin and Webkinz. The upstart has raised a total of $8 million so far from firms including Maveron, the venture capital firm of Starbucks founder Howard Schultz. Other firms backing KidZui include Emergence Capital Partners and First Round Capital. My first take is that KidZui's institutional backers will probably not see a great return on their investment in the kid-focused start-up. I honestly think their subscription-based model will not work and also question some of the metrics they have released previously. Before jumping into their stats, lets consider their competition. The 900 pound gorilla in the room is Webkinz, which diffrentiates itself from KidZui as a entertainment service with multiple revenue streams. They have an extremely loyal following of kids, just ask any of our younger tween panelists. The other key player in the category is Disney-owned Club Penguin, another subscription based model. Both services have sizable existing membership bases and real revenues. The problem I have with KidZui is their value prop. They aren't really a true subscription based service, instead they're really just a software app. The essence of the app is a filter like service that reviews sites they deem to be kid friendly. In total, according to their release, they have approved half million sites, images and videos. To reach this number they have 200 "editors" which means each editor, on average, has reviewed 2,500 sites, images or videos. That seems a little aggressive. What seems even more unrealistic though is their subscription model. Their hope is that parents sign up for the service by paying $9.95 a month or $99.95 a year, download their browser, have their kids create a profile avatar and surf away on the 500,000 or so sites and surf away. Frankly, I don't think the majority of kids and tweens will find it to be that appealing. With services like Webkinz and Club Penguin there is immediate gratification where as with KidZui, there is no underlying value other than the opportunity for the kid to surf around a site that has been approved for use by a subjective editor. So really, it's more of a filter than anything else designed to give the parent a sense of comfort that their child's Internet use will be based on family friendly fare. I just don't see it, may be I'm missing something, but I have hard time thinking this model will stick.

Wow, AOL Enters Social Media Game With Bebo Acquisition

First off, the lack of new posts over the past week and half is due to "all hands on deck" for preparation of the release of our next wave of Tween and Teen Lifestyle. Now back to the story...I guess the theory of why build when you can buy plays into AOL's thinking as they snapped up Bebo yesterday for a cool $850 million. Bebo is considerably more popular outside of the U.S. especially in Europe. The largest portion of their site traffic comes from the U.K. which had about 11.5 million unique visits in January, 2008. At first glance, the $850 million price tag paid by AOL seems pretty rich. Bebo generated about $20 million in sales last year and about $5 millions in top-line profits before taxes and other items. So AOL is paying about 43 times their '07 revenues. Clearly, AOL brass sees a lot of opportunities for Bebo, otherwise why would they pay such a high multiple. I would have to think will all of the shifting and arranging going on at AOL over the past year, the mobile social networking capabilities and opportunities that Bebo offers has to be one of the most if not the most compelling part of the growth story. I also pretty sure that the strong international component resonates as well, since many international markets are seeing even stronger growth in Internet advertising than the U.S. In the U.K. the Internet ad market is second only to television. The other way of looking at would be that AOL provides the immediate scale that Bebo needs to crack the U.S. market. AOL can integrate their high profile elements like AIM and position Bebo as a strong alternative to MySpace and to a lesser extent, Facebook. But in the end, my gut tells me this is more of a forward thinking mobile social networking play more than anything else. Obviously AOL read all of the industry reports and projections for the fledging category, otherwise I don't see why they would wager this kind of bet.