The other night, while sitting across the table from a handful of 30- (and 40-) something friends (one sporting an Atari T-shirt, one with iPod earbuds haphazardly slung over one shoulder, and another with a tattoo peeking out from under his sleeve), I couldn’t help being struck by the changing face of “grown-ups.”

By the time my folks were in their mid-30s, they had two kids, lived in the suburbs, wore suits, and went to dinner parties. They definitely weren’t boring and still held onto their flower-child values, but on the exterior they were undeniably “grown up.”

In contrast, while at this point in their lives most once-maligned “slacker” Gen Xers have all of the grown-up fixins’ (steady paychecks, mortgages, wedding bands, kids), a growing number of them rebel against stereotypical behavior that traditionally comes with such trappings.

In efforts to gain brand loyalty among this notoriously hard-to-pin-down, media-suspicious, and marketing-savvy generation, some marketers have started focusing less on Gen X’s universal charactaristics and more on characteristics of its higher-spending subgroups, such as the “Grups,” as defined by New York magazine:

This is an obituary for the generation gap. It is a story about 40-year-old men and women who look, talk, act, and dress like people who are 22 years old. It’s not about a fad but about a phenomenon that looks to be permanent. It’s about the hedge-fund guy in Park Slope with the chunky square glasses, brown rock T-shirt, slight paunch, expensive jeans, Puma sneakers, and shoulder-slung messenger bag, with two kids squirming over his lap like itchy chimps at the Tea Lounge on Sunday morning. It’s about the mom in the low-slung Sevens and ankle boots and vaguely Berlin-art-scene blouse with the $800 stroller and the TV-screen-size Olsen-twins sunglasses perched on her head walking through Bryant Park listening to Death Cab for Cutie on her Nano.

Have you noticed any other Gen X subgroups?
What do you think marketers should be doing to try to gain their loyalty?

It makes sense to see Robert Reinhardt, the lead author of the Flash Bible series, write an article called “Flash Video: Why the Other Players Don’t Get It.” In it, he sings the praises of Flash video, the streaming format taking over the Web (it’s used by YouTube, Google, and MTV, to name a few).

Now here’s the shocker: Yesterday he penned “Flash Video: Move Over?” in which he offers numerous reasons to NOT use Flash video. What prompted this piece? ABC just ditched Flash video on their heavily promoted full-episode streaming site in favor of Move Networks.

The reason? Quality is one argument, but I don’t buy it. The other, which I totally buy, is that Flash player has no digital rights management; ABC can’t control content.

The format wars continue to rage between Windows Media, Real Networks, Flash, Quicktime, and even proprietary systems like Move Networks. Rage they may, but it’s impossible to say across the board one beats the other. Reinhardt, who makes his living off Flash, now says Flash video isn’t king—but no format is.

(more…)

Google-owned YouTube suffered its latest attack from the media giants yesterday, when NBC, News Corp., AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo dropped the royal P-bomb…”partnership.”

 

Per today’s Washington Post:

The partnership announced yesterday by NBC, News Corp., AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft creates a first-of-its-kind alternative to some of YouTube’s most popular content: TV and movie clips and music videos that were often posted there without permission. Unlike YouTube, the new competitor—which says it will launch its Web site this summer—has proposed a wide offering of videos, borrowing the iTunes model of offering some files for free and others, in this case movies and TV shows.

The impetus behind the venture is to provide an authorized, copyright-protected and ad-supported alternative to YouTube, which has turned into an enormously popular online destination, with some of its hits coming from user-uploaded shows from television.

So, copyright issues have led to the development of a copycat “legal” site (with some cool enhancements) that charges for media or makes users sit through ads to view it. It’s like 2001 all over again (Napster anyone?).

Much like pre-2001 Napster, one of the things users love about YouTube is that it’s truly free—they don’t have to pay to see stuff or watch ads before clips (standard practice on AOL & Yahoo Video).

Napster users didn’t switch to pay-per-song sites because they thought it was cool; most switched because court decisions forced them to (although illegal file sharing did not come to an end). Since the legalities are unclear here, I wonder how competitive this new partnership’s format can really be—especially since the bulk of this media’s audience comprises marketing- and media-savvy (and big-business-suspicious) Gen Y and X users. Do you think YouTube has anything to worry about?

For web-hipsters, March 17, 2007, marked more than just the standard St. Paddy’s Day debauchery, it also marked the end of The Show—new media wunderkind Ze Frank’s year-long experiment in vlogging.

The Show’s 3–5 minute “Daily Show-esque” webcasts didn’t necessarily appeal to everyone, but they did give industry folks and average Joes a better understanding of how Web 2.0 tools could (and should) be used to create interactive user experiences to build relationships and create advocates.

Unlike traditional television audiences, Ze’s 10,000-plus-daily viewers didn’t just sit back and get passively entertained. Instead, they became active participants—engaged contributors who submitted video show intros, defined show topics, and used Ze’s wiki site to collaborate on scripts for The Show‘s “Fabuloso Friday” episodes. And Ze took part in the dialogue by using their clips, taking their suggestions, and responding to them on his blog and wiki, as well as The Show itself.

The Show’s successful model points to online audience-building lessons that big-time TV networks still need to wrap their heads around. So stay tuned, because while The Show may be over, Ze’s already diving into new projects, and whatever rabbit he pulls from his hat is sure to lead to the next new media trend.

So, an active duty US Marine, Sammy Villareal, just launched
Mymilitaryclassifieds.com—basically Craigslist for the military.

Per TechCruch:

Villarreal hired a programmer and launched MyMilitaryClassifieds.com (catchy name), a free classifieds site organized by military installation. It’s just launching and so there isn’t much content on the site yet (and there are a couple of typos), but if you’re, say, in the Navy and stationed in Iceland, this might be a good place to sell those unwanted DVDs.

This is one of those things that makes me go “SERIOUSLY??? No one has DONE that already?”

Brilliant.

Quite a grounding reality check at a time when so much whiz-bang content is hitting the Net.

Makes me think that if something as obvious as a “Craigslist for the military” has been overlooked for this long, then maybe it’s time for industry hipsters to take a nice deep breath and go back to basics—focus a bit less on being so cutting-edge and entertainment-techie, and focus more on providing online stuff people actually NEED.

So what are you (and the people you’re interested in) doing RIGHT NOW?
Find out on Twitter . . .

Welcome to the world of the micro-blog (a.k.a lifeblog).

You’ll be surprised to see who’s using them…
Like this guy and these guys . . .

“Halfway Sara.”

As a kid, that’s what my dad would call me any time I claimed to complete a job that wasn’t really done—like when I claimed to have “finished” mowing the lawn even though I’d neglected the big patch of green behind the garage. While a decent effort, it didn’t really achieve the desired end goal—hence the “Halfway” label.

Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of “halfway branding” efforts, in which companies seem to invest the time and money creating sharp designs and taglines, but neglect to fully create the brand voice needed to truly complete their brand’s identity—to personify their brands.

And I’m not the only one who’s noticing—per this recent Brand Story post:

There are lots of examples of companies that consistently use identity design to reinforce their brands, but far fewer brands seem to give as much thought to the voice of their communications. MINI does it exceptionally well, across all mediums. The Economist and Apple too. Harley Davidson does a pretty good job (there are exceptions). Saturn used to have unique voice—before it was assimilated.

But what’s the brand voice of Marriott? Cascade? Pepsi? Dell? Citi? Buick? Is there anything unique about the way Kroger, Budget, Hershey’s, or Delta speak to their customers? None of these are bad, but none of them speak in a special way to their customers.

Think about it…what takes a consumer from simply liking a product to actually identifying with and fully embracing a brand? Seems to me it’s pretty much the same qualities that make someone fall in love and identify with certain people: appearance and personality—a brand’s design and voice.

Companies like MINI, Apple, and Harley Davidson have such über-loyal followings because they don’t just look cool, they consistently sound cool—fully personifying their brands as the cool kids in class that target audience members want to hang out with.

So it’s vital that all components in a branding effort incorporate the personality and convey the feel needed to truly create the desired brand perception.

What else do you think results in “halfway branding” efforts?

Michael Hirschorn tells us that “the social media revolution will go out with a whimper.”

Why? Essentially because of commoditization. There are a few supporting arguments here, including the following:

• “Social media has been around since the dawn of the Web”
• “nothing is cool forever”
• “features associated with social networks are increasingly being tacked on to existing sites”

Hirschorn’s point then seems to be not that social media will “go out with a whimper,” but rather that such tools will become so omnipresent as to suck the life out of more centralized “walled garden” portals such as MySpace and Facebook. That’s an important point if you think you’re going to monetize a new and centralized Web 2.0 enterprise:

Few of the social networks have yet proved adept at truly linking people of like-minded interests, and many of the networks being started now, especially by entrepreneurs and corporations looking to grab their slice of 2.0 glory, tend to miss the reason the best sites work: They facilitate behavior that people already engage in.

But more generally the commoditization of Web 2.0 implies just the opposite of the bursting bubble thesis: Social media are here to stay. And while the leading social networking sites may change or get commoditized out of existence and the “cool kids” “go elsewhere,” as Hirschorn tells us, this “elsewhere” will likely include social networking and other features that facilitate “behavior that people already engage in.”

Once a deep-pocketed company like Google bought a copyright-challenged company like YouTube, it was only a matter of time before dollar signs appeared in the eyes of lawyers:

Viacom’s decision to sue YouTube did not surprise many analysts and media experts, who saw it as a new salvo in Viacom’s battle to be paid for its material. Several cited the music industry’s history with the Napster file-sharing service as a cautionary tale for copyright owners.

Never have there been so many objections to free advertising:

“Every day we have to scour the entirety of what is available on YouTube, so we have to look for our stuff,” Mr. Dauman said. “It is very difficult for us and places an enormous burden on us.”

Looking out for clips of The Daily Show and South Park is, ahem, an “enormous burden”; but the greater burden is not understanding, a la the music industry, that file and clip sharing can work to its advantage. Some in the industry seem to understand that such suits may end up killing a golden-egg-laying goose:

Executives at other television networks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not want to be quoted on the record about the litigation, said they remained torn between the promotional power of YouTube, which they appreciate and even seek out in some cases, and the knowledge that YouTube’s audience and revenue are built at least partially on their content.

Last week, Y Combinator, a company that invests in and guides select Web startups (in exchange for a little chunk of ownership—its biggest success is Reddit), presented a few of its upcoming launches.

What’s surprising is that the startups aren’t all just music/video/photo-sharing, blog-posting, social networking clones. In fact, most them focus on providing cool tools that can actually help people and companies get stuff done more effectively. And what’s even more surprising is that some of the Y Combinator companies, such as Octopart, an electronics-only search engine, provide specialized functions for niche industries.

My votes for “Most Likely to Succeed” go to:

Weebly—Per their tagline “Web Creation Made Easy,” Weebly offers online templates and drag-and-drop features that enable users to build their own websites—no fancy software required. (It’s even easier than creating a blog on WordPress.)

Zenter—This soon-to-be-launched (sign up for the beta) online presentation builder enables users to create and save PowerPoint-style presentations online, but also lets them directly pull Web content into the presentation so that users can seamlessly click to that content in the midst of the presentation.

Snipshot—Need to edit a photo but aren’t on a system with a solid photo editor? Go to Snipshot.

Writewith—This soon-to-be launched online document collaboration tool lets users make changes, save versions, and keep track of a document’s status—perfect for client reviews.

Take a look at the complete list and vote for the ones you think have a fighting chance….