Matthew Robson, who is working this summer for Morgan Stanley's UK offices, authored a candid report detailing the media consumption habits of typical 15-year-olds. The report included information on their favorite television programs, as well as where they spent most of their time online.
Surprisingly, Twitter received very little praise in the report, with Robson saying not only do most teens not read newspapers and dislike ads, but they also have very little use for the popular micro-blogging service.
Robson says teens shy away from Twitter because most use it from cell phones and, unlike e-mail messages, every text message costs money. Robson said teens would rather send texts between friends than use them for updates "that no one is viewing."
He goes on to say that teens have no interest in physical newspapers and would rather consume their news online. He calls banner ads "annoying and pointless" and says that teens prefer to download or stream their music using free sites/services rather than pay for them.
While Robson's report may seem harsh, I think it's one of the best assessments of the media transition I've read. Everyone talks about the popularity of Twitter and iTunes and fails to mention the fact that banner ads remain a relatively ineffective way to finance content. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a delay in finding new, effective forms of financing online content.
Hopefully Robson's report will not only result in watercooler conversation, but some honest analysis of business models across the media and entertainment industry.
Morgan Stanley executives in the UK were so impressed with Robson's report that they immediately circulated it throughout the C suite, which prompted a number of high-level client inquiries.
2 comments:
I found much of the rest of that report to be incredibly facile. The conclusion I drew was that Morgan Stanley bigwigs were so out of touch that they saw common-sensical findings such as:
"Teenage boys watch more TV during football season"; "Teens don't use the Yellow Pages"; "Teens visit the cinema quite often"...
This possibly marks the first time I've ever agreed with Andrew Keen, though; he said "Anyone who has ever spent more than 30 seconds with any teenager in the last ten years knows that TV is dead, kids won’t pay for music and they consider newspapers as archaic and irrelevant as the House of Lords."
Much ado about nothing.
Bob,
I get your point; however, I think it's vitally important for the future of social media that people start paying attention to business models.
We've been through the "build it, they will come" song and dance numerous times and it's never worked. Companies in the tech space that were once considered marquee brands, like AOL, are now dead and buried for all intents and purposes.
I do think the basic points in the article were valid and show that there's a lot of work left to do in terms of a business model for Twitter.
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