Get Ready for Generation We
Maybe you know one of these kids: a kid who’s completely comfortable with technology, who uses Wikipedia regularly, downloads music from iTunes and surfs YouTube for videos, sharing comments with friends when he or she finds an interesting clip. These are the kids of Generation X, themselves comfortable with technology. But Generation We takes that one step further and will exist in a world where they expect to control their media experiences. Don’t expect them to be big fans of network TV.
One pundit notes,
This generation hasn’t rejected TV, but the way Generation We watches the tube has evolved from their parents’ days. What’s been called the “Tivo-ization” of households now give kids unprecedented freedom over the handling of their TV diet, so much so that young kids often don’t understand the traditional way of watching shows with a set geography and time. And now that TV shows are migrating to portable devices and are streamed on demand from the Web, the experience for kids is even more interactive and community-based.
Not that TV is totally passe, but the experience is different and will be increasingly group-oriented. Imagine an online, multi-player environment where there’s a whole lot going on around what’s on the screen. That kind of experience exists right now:
Take what MTV Networks is doing with its teen-targeted digital cable channel, The N. It produces television shows that air on cable, but its audience can stream the shows via the Web through its broadband player, The Click. On the site, kids can use a so-called video mix masher to take a scene from a show, put a comment on it and add other scene asynchronously to create their program. Part of it is what The N calls “vomenting,” or adding commentary to shows via text blurbs or audio, ala Mystery Science Theater.”
This is a truly fascinating article. More here.
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