Again -- I couldn't be everywhere at once and had to catch my flight back to NYC in the afternoon, but here is my attempt to summarize what I was able to see on day two of the Ypulse Mashup. We added some more blog posts/coverage that keeps popping up to our roundup post and finished uploading our photos to Flickr. Kicking the day off bright and early, day two of the Mashup was chock-full of fantastic panels, keynotes, and case studies.
MTV Rocking the Youth Vote 2.0 Style
We heard from Ian Rowe, Senior Vice President, Public Affairs and Strategic Partnerships, MTV, and Carl Brown, California Citizen Journalist, MTV Street Team '08, that while there is more interest than ever before in this year's presidential race, local issues are what resonate more with younger voters, i.e. what's happening in their back yard. In response, MTV has created a citizen journalism program to tell these local stories. These video stories are also being distributed by the Associated Press. They showed an example of a local story in southern California about how young activists were fighting the development of a new highway that would have altered the local eco-system. One attendee asked if MTV makes an attempt to show "the other side" in these reports -- the response was not so much in individual reports but more in shaping the project as a whole. We couldn't help but notice how much the CJ story looked like what's happening over at Current TV...
Emerging Teen Technology
Bill Carter, from Fuse Marketing (anchor sponsor for the event), presented results from a survey they did of senior technology executives from companies such as Sony, MTV Networks, Yahoo, and Nokia to find out what's next for teens. They heard that content is what's most important, and that technology should never be use for its own sake without something real to say. The tone of the content is the next most important aspect, and then comes how technology is used to disseminate the content or message. Only half of the brands that are using technology as a platform are backing it up with a real message. Before a company decides to use technology, they need to ask why they want a mobile campaign (side note: I just saw a website banner for a Listerine promo offering a free music download - what a random way to draw in potential users of mouthwash!).
Handheld devices will surpass and potentially replace the desktop. The iPhone is just the beginning of the all in one device. Yet despite the handheld's key feature (allowing teens to be untethered from a desk), only 20% of teens have a smartphone. Other platforms will save -- not kill -- TV networks. Device is inconsequential compared to content, because they are in the content-creation business; they can thrive with technology. Analog-to-digital conversion will soon make it possible to watch live TV on portable devices.
Geo-targeting will go mobile, and the analysis of four billion IP addresses provides street-level targeting. Combine this new technology with teens giving advertisers "permission" to market to them, and growth could be exponential, resulting in continuous, relevant ads and content based on teens' location and interests.
The evolution of music online is just beginning. CD retail sales are declining, but there's growth and more to come in online downloads. Subscriptions (the cable model) will soon rule. There will soon be more than 65 million cable TV subscribers, and cable providers (and iTunes!) will offer unlimited downloads.
In the end, it's about a simple connection to friends. Based on the premise of teens' expectations of connectivity ("IM is not different than seeing someone in person"), easy tools count while additional features don't. The focus is on improving communication across platforms (mobile, Net, PC, Mac), and the ability to update all of your networks (Myspace, Facebook, AIM) at once. In the future, we will finally be universally connected; things don't really start happening until they're happening everywhere.
Newsletter readers: Visit Ypulse.com for the rest.
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