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The MySpace Generation
They live online. They buy online. They play online. Their power is growing.
You have just entered the world of what you might call Generation @. Being online, being a Buzzer, is a way of life for millions of young Americans across the country...including my 12-year-old daughter. And increasingly, social networks are their medium.
As the first generation to grow up fully wired and technologically fluent, today's teens (and twentysomethings) are flocking to Web sites like MySpace (and many others such as Neo-Pets, Buzz-Oven and thousands more) as a way to establish their social identities. It no longer is base places like MSN or AOL. It's way more advanced than the social billboard clubrooms of CompuServe Or Prodigy of the early 90s.
Today's wired kids get a fast pass to the hip music scene, which carries a hefty amount of social currency offline. It's where you go when you need a friend to nurse you through a breakup, a mentor to tutor you on your calculus homework, an address for the party everyone is going to. For a giant brand like Coke, these networks also offer a direct pipeline to the thirsty but fickle youth market.
Top of the heap among these virtual hangouts is MySpace.com, whose membership has nearly quadrupled since January alone, to 40 million members. (Friendster is so yesterday.) Youngsters log on so obsessively that MySpace ranked No. 15 on the entire U.S. Internet in terms of page hits in October, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Millions also hang out at other up-and-coming networks such as Facebook.com, which connects college students, and Xanga.com, an agglomeration of shared blogs. A second tier of some 300 smaller sites, such as Buzz-Oven, Classface.com, and Photobucket.com, operate under -- and often inside or next to -- the larger ones.
Although networks are still in their infancy, experts think they're already creating new forms of social behavior that blur the distinctions between online and real-world interactions. In fact, today's young generation largely ignores the difference. Most adults see the Web as a supplement to their daily lives. They tap into information, buy books or send flowers, exchange apartments, or link up with others who share passions for dogs, say, or opera. But for the most part, their social lives remain rooted in the traditional phone call and face-to-face interaction.
The MySpace generation, by contrast, lives comfortably in both worlds at once. Increasingly, America's middle- and upper-class youth use social networks as virtual community centers, a place to go and sit for a while (sometimes hours). While older folks come and go for a task, Adams and her social circle are just as likely to socialize online as off. This is partly a function of how much more comfortable young people are on the Web: Fully 87% of 12- to 17-year-olds use the Internet, vs. two-thirds of adults, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
full BusinessWeek story
posted by Unknown @ Friday, December 02, 2005,
