I grew up in the telephone generation. Written communication was limited to two occasions a year - after Christmas and my birthday when my mother insisted that I sit down and write thank-you notes. If I wanted to communicate with someone, I went to the phone in the kitchen and dialed, or, more likely, waited until I saw them again.
If you define a friend as someone you have frequent communication with, I would say people I knew growing up had four or five real “friends.” And I think the reason for this is the inherent shyness and social awkwardness that is present in everybody. I might have sat next to Bob everyday in math class for a year, but if I had never called him before, to do so would be taking a huge risk of possible awkwardness. The thought of having to explain who you are on the phone to someone can be quite daunting. “Hi, Bob, this is Jim. From math class? I sit next to you? Remember, the skinny guy with the bad complexion?”
Email changed all that. It is much easier to explain who you are in writing, because you don’t fear the awkward silence from the other end if the person doesn’t recognize you, no matter how unlikely that might be. Suddenly, people were comfortable striking up communications with folks they hadn’t talked to in years, or only met briefly, because it was from the comfort of a keyboard. Suddenly, the number of “friends” people could claim skyrocketed. Adding someone I just met to my address book and forwarding jokes was a great way to begin lasting friendships. Even if I never found myself in the same room with that person again.
Now, email is old school. Adults send three emails for every text. With teens, it is the other way around. Young consumers play by their own set of multi-tasking, micro-messaging rules. And most marketers are failing at getting any message through to them. In a world they completely don’t understand, marketers just assume more is better, and they increase the frequency of their old school messages. This is a generation that can do homework, chat on Facebook, keep up with Twitter and text messaging, all at the same time. According to a 2007 study by MTV and Microsoft, 14-24 year olds have an average of 53 people they consider friends. Multi-tasking is all they’ve ever known. They can filter the noise out.
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The smart marketers are getting involved, and they’re getting noticed for it. Every company should have a blog. Every company should be on MySpace. Every company should be on Facebook. And guess what? If you do all that, you’re already behind the curve.
I’ve mentioned my current obsession, Twitter, here before. Some people I follow were having a debate over which theme park within driving distance from Nashville provided the best bang for the buck. I had something to add a few days later, but couldn’t remember who was talking about it. One of the parks was Holiday World, so I did a tweetscan search. Lo and behold, Holiday World had just started using Twitter. I went to their Website. They have a blog. Because this communication is all personal and engaging, I now follow them and added them to my RSS reader. Come summertime, when I need a quick getaway with my kid, you’d better believe Holiday World is going to be top of mind when considering destinations.
There’s always new stuff coming down the pike. The next application I need to explore is something called BrightKite. All the cool kids are doing it. I’ll let you know what I find out. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go Twitter a bunch of friends, many of whom I’ve never actually met, a recommendation of my new friend, Holiday World, a place I’ve never actually been, as a great family vacation destination.
