2008: Year of the virtual world for kids?

Move over Second Life. Kid-focused virtual worlds such as Club Penguin, Webkinz, and a string of site start-ups loom as the new and hot Web playgrounds for 2008.

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User-Generated Online Content Is Way Up—Teens Lead The Way

According to a State of the Media Democracy 2007 study recently complete by Deloitte, user-generated content is in big demand on the Web. Over 50 percent of adults now report watching or reading online content created by other Web users including blogs and streaming video. Among Millennials (those ages 13 - 24), that figure rises to 71 percent.

In addition, the study states over 40 percent of all consumers are now creating online content (videos, photos, blogs, etc) for themselves or others. The study also said the traditional media such as TV, magazines and books remain “deeply engaging” to most consumers with 72 percent of respondents reporting they still read print magazines even if those magazines are available online.

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Technology & Internet Trends

At least once a year, its helpful to look at Mary Meeker’s excellent PowerPoint presentation on Technology and Internet Trends. Meeker is a managing director at Morgan Stanley and a leader of the investment bank’s global technology research team. The link above is her slide deck from the Future of Media conference presented last month in New York.

Meeker’s in-depth analysis is viewed from a global perspective, and it provides a great deal of insight into where technology and the Internet are headed. The presentation is filled with salient facts for business executives and marketing professionals, but a few I found particularly illuminating included:

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DIY Recording Fame

Who needs the record label companies to become famous? Not Ingrid Michaelson, a singer-songwriter whose self-produced Girls and Boys recently hit #2 on the iTunes charts. Her road to fame was via a MySpace page.

Earlier this month Sarah VanNevel’s post related the story of Tay Zonday, a singer who rose out of obscurity via YouTube. Ingrid Michaelson’s path using the Internet is a similar story with some even bigger implications. In literally six months, Michaelson went from being an unknown to performing at sold out concerts and having her songs featured on the hit TV series “Grey’s Anatomy” (see her “Keep Breathing” on YouTube).

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The Webcentric World Of B2B Marketing

There has been a sizable shift to an online marketing emphasis in many company budgets in the last several years, and according to results of a new study from B-to-B Magazine (2008 Marketing Priorities and Plans), that shift is continuing unabated. The B-to-B world is rapidly reorganizing around a webcentric nucleus because that model still has all the advantages of the old analog world of marketing, along with a host of advantages that can only be realized in a “digitally-remastered” new marketing universe.

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