Web 2.0: the teenagers' web ain't the geek web

I should have blogged it earlier, but it turns out that I was editing another post during the best – best in most revealing – session of the Web 2.0 conference: the conversation between 3 boys and 2 girls of age 17 to 18, and Safa Rashtchy, a Managing Director at Piper Jaffray whose reports are generally must reads.

Kareem Mayam has done a great job in liveblogging the session, which is really worth a read for anyone building consumer Internet services, just to grok how that generation sees/uses the web, and how different their perception is from ours.

Three words: MySpace, Facebook, AIM.

These services were the most often mentioned by the teenagers, and seemed to get the most of their attention. Then came Google, LiveJournal, MSN Messenger/YIM – because friends use them.

Clearly missing: Flickr, Skype, Yahoo, blogs – i.e most of the buzzwords we had been talking about for three days at the conference.

The best moment ? This dialogue towards the end:

Q: Do you use TiVo or Skype?
TiVo: "it's too much money."
Skype: Silence. [and the room went crazy in laughters after 10 secs]

Q: What more do you want out of instant messenger? [Question asked by someone from AOL I would guess]
Sean: "Just that: instant messenger."
Q: would you like to see video on IM?
Sean: Ummm, no, i'm trying to talk to my friends...! [Laughters again, and big applause]

Oh yeah, they hate stupid “Shoot the monkey” ads and they won’t pay for any content unless there is no other way (like ring tones) – but that we knew already. And they spend $50 to $100 a month on their phone bill,…

Among other things, this session helped clarify the valuations of MySpace (provided that they can keep on growing now that they are part of FIM) and the Facebook, and why AIM is such a valuable property for AOL: once a friends network is built on it, it stays on it.

Tags: web2con

Comments

[C. Enrique Ortiz]

This is very good info Jeff, thanks for the pointer! It concurs with my own research into the use of mobility by teens-early 20s...

I would say that there is a lot of opportunity in this space - it doesn't have to be anything fancy, but must be very good at improving "how to communicate and share with friends"... If that's accomplished, *they will come*... In this market, loyalty doesn't have as much weight as is the ability to help them "reach their friends and share with them"...

ceo

[kareem mayan]

Thanks for the link, Jeff.

re: enrique's comment--I can't remember where I read it, but the line was something along the lines of "for every person designing social software, the first thing you should ask yourself is how your software will help its users get laid."

seems even more appropriate for the teenager demo...