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DECEMBER 2, 2005
COVER STORY
The MySpace Generation
They live online. They buy online. They play online. Their power is
growing
The Toadies broke up. It was four years ago, when Amanda Adams was 16.
She
drove into Dallas from suburban Plano, Tex., on a school night to hear the
final two-hour set of the local rock band, which had gone national with a
hit 1995 album. “Tears were streaming down my face,” she recalls, a slight
Texas lilt to her voice. During the long summer that followed, Adams
turned to the Web in search of solace, plugging the lead singer’s name
into Google repeatedly until finally his new band popped up. She found it
on Buzz-Oven.com, a social networking Web site for Dallas teens.
Adams jumped onto the Buzz-Oven network, posting an online
self-portrait
(dark hair tied back, tongue out, goofy eyes for the cam) and listing her
favorite music so she could connect with other Toadies fans. Soon she was
heading off to biweekly meetings at Buzz-Oven’s airy loft in downtown
Dallas and helping other “Buzzers” judge their favorite groups in marathon
battle-of-the-bands sessions. (Buzz-0ven.com promotes the winners.) At her
school, Frisco High – and at malls and concerts – she passed out free
Buzz-Oven sampler CDs plastered with a large logo from Coca-Cola Inc., ()
which backs the site in the hope of reaching more teens on their home
turf. Adams also brought dozens of friends to the concerts Buzz-Oven
sponsored every few months. “It was cool, something I could brag about,”
says Adams, now 20 and still an active Buzzer.
Now that Adams is a junior at the University of North Texas at Denton,
she’s online more than ever. It’s 7 p.m. on a recent Saturday, and she has
just sweated her way through an online quiz for her advertising management
class. (The quiz was “totally out of control,” write classmates on a
school message board minutes later.) She checks a friend’s blog entry on
MySpace.com to find out where a party will be that night. Then she starts
an Instant Messenger (IM) conversation about the evening’s plans with a
few pals.
KIDS, BANDS, COCA-COLA
At the same time, her boyfriend IMs her a retail store link to see a
new
PC he just bought, and she starts chatting with him. She’s also postering
for the next Buzz-Oven concert by tacking the flier on various friends’
MySpace profiles, and she’s updating her own blog on Xanga.com, another
social network she uses mostly to post photos. The TV is set to TBS, which
plays a steady stream of reruns like Friends and Seinfeld – Adams has a
TV in her bedroom as well as in the living room – but she keeps the
volume turned down so she can listen to iTunes over her computer speakers.
Simultaneously, she’s chatting with dorm mate Carrie Clark, 20, who’s
doing pretty much the same thing from a laptop on her bed.
You have just entered the world of what you might call Generation @.
Being
online, being a Buzzer, is a way of life for Adams and 3,000-odd
Dallas-area youth, just as it is for millions of young Americans across
the country. And increasingly, social networks are their medium. As the
first cohort to grow up fully wired and technologically fluent, today’s
teens and twentysomethings are flocking to Web sites like Buzz-Oven as a
way to establish their social identities. Here you can get a fast pass to
the hip music scene, which carries a hefty amount of social currency
offline. It’s where you go when you need a friend to nurse you through a
breakup, a mentor to tutor you on your calculus homework, an address for
the party everyone is going to. For a giant brand like Coke, these
networks also offer a direct pipeline to the thirsty but fickle youth
market.
Preeminent among these virtual hangouts is MySpace.com, whose
membership
has nearly quadrupled since January alone, to 40 million members.
Youngsters log on so obsessively that MySpace ranked No. 15 on the entire
U.S. Internet in terms of page hits in October, according to
Nielsen//NetRatings. Millions also hang out at other up-and-coming
networks such as Facebook.com, which connects college students, and
Xanga.com, an agglomeration of shared blogs. A second tier of some 300
smaller sites, such as Buzz-Oven, Classface.com, and Photobucket.com,
operate under – and often inside or next to – the larger ones.
Although networks are still in their infancy, experts think they’re
already creating new forms of social behavior that blur the distinctions
between online and real-world interactions. In fact, today’s young
generation largely ignores the difference. Most adults see the Web as a
supplement to their daily lives. They tap into information, buy books or
send flowers, exchange apartments, or link up with others who share
passions for dogs, say, or surfboard design. But for the most part, their social
lives remain rooted in the traditional phone call and face-to-face
interaction.
The MySpace generation, by contrast, lives comfortably in both worlds
at
once. Increasingly, America’s middle- and upper-class youth use social
networks as virtual community centers, a place to go and sit for a while
(sometimes hours). While older folks come and go for a task, Adams and her
social circle are just as likely to socialize online as off. This is
partly a function of how much more comfortable young people are on the
Web: Fully 87% of 12- to 17-year-olds use the Internet, vs. two-thirds of
adults, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Teens also use many forms of media simultaneously. Fifteen- to
eighteen-year-olds average nearly 6 1/2 hours a day watching TV, playing
video games, and surfing the Net, according to a recent Kaiser Family
Foundation survey. A quarter of that time, they’re multitasking. The
biggest increase: computer use for activities such as social networking,
which has soared nearly threefold since 2000, to 1 hour and 22 minutes a
day on average.
Aside from annoying side effects like hyperdistractibility, there are
some
real perils with underage teens and their open-book online lives. In a few
recent cases, online predators have led kids into dangerous, real-life
situations, and parents’ eyes are being opened to their kids’ new world.
ONE-HIT WONDERS
Meanwhile, the phenomenon of these exploding networks has companies
clamoring to be a part of the new social landscape. News Corp. () Chief
Executive Rupert Murdoch has spent $1.3 billion on Web acquisitions so far
to better reach this coveted demographic – $580 million alone for the
July purchase of MySpace parent Intermix Media. And Silicon Valley venture
capitalists such as Accel Partners and Redpoint Ventures are pouring
millions into Facebook and other social networks. What’s not yet clear is
whether this is a dot-com era replay, with established companies and
investors sinking huge sums into fast-growth startups with no viable
business models. Facebook, barely a year old and run by a 21-year-old
student on leave from Harvard, has a staff of 50 and venture capital –
but no profits.
Still, consumer companies such as Coke, Apple Computer (), and Procter
&
Gamble () are making a relatively low-cost bet by experimenting with
networks to launch products and to embed their brands in the minds of
hard-to-reach teens. So far, no solid format has emerged, partly because
youth networks are difficult for companies to tap into. They’re also easy
to fall out of favor with: While Coke, Sony () Pictures Digital, and Apple
have succeeded with MySpace, Buzz-Oven, and other sites, P&G’s attempt to
create an independent network around a body spray, for one, has faltered
so far.
Many youth networks are evanescent, in any case. Like one-hit wonder
the
Baha Men (Who Let the Dogs Out) and last year’s peasant skirts, they can
evaporate as quickly as they appear. But young consumers may follow brands
offline – if companies can figure out how to talk to youths in their
online vernacular. Major companies should be exploring this new medium,
since networks transmit marketing messages "person-to-person, which is
more credible," says David Rich Bell, a marketing professor at the
University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
So far, though, marketers have had little luck creating these networks
from scratch. Instead, the connections have to bubble up from those who
use them. To understand how such networks get started, share a blue-cheese
burger at the Meridian Room, a dive bar in downtown Dallas, with Buzz-Oven
founder Aden Holt. At 6 feet 9 inches, with one blue eye, one brown one,
and a shock of shaggy red hair, Holt is a sort of public figure in the
local music scene. He started a record label his senior year at college
and soon turned his avocation into a career as a music promoter, putting
out 27 CDs in the decade that followed.
In 2000, as Internet access spread, Holt cooked up Buzz-Oven as a new
way
to market concerts. His business plan was simple. First, he would produce
sample CDs of local bands. Dedicated Buzzers like Adams would do the
volunteer marketing, giving out the CDs for free, chatting up the concerts
online, and slapping up posters and stickers in school bathrooms, local
music stores, and on telephone poles. Then Holt would get the bands to put
on a live concert, charging them $10 for every fan he turned out. But to
make the idea work, Holt needed capital to produce the free CDs. One of
his bands had recently done a show sponsored by Coke, and after asking
around, he found the marketer’s company’s Dallas sales office. He called
for an appointment. And then he called again. And again.
Coke’s people didn’t get back to him for weeks, and then he was
offered
only a brief appointment. With plenty of time to practice his sales pitch,
Holt spit out his idea in one breath: Marketing through social networks
was still an experiment, but it was worth a small investment to try
reaching teens through virtual word of mouth. Coke rep Julie Bowyer
thought the idea had promise. Besides, Holt’s request was tiny compared
with the millions Coke regularly sinks into campaigns. So she wrote him a
check on the spot.
DEEP CONNECTIONS
By the time Ben Lawson became head of Coke’s Dallas sales office in
2001,
Buzz-Oven had mushroomed into a nexus that allowed hundreds of Dallas-area
teens to talk to one another and socialize, online and off. A middle-aged
father of two teens himself, Lawson spent a good deal of time poring over
data about how best to reach youth like Adams. He knew what buzzer Mike
Ziemer, 20, so clearly articulates: "Kids don’t buy stuff because they see
a magazine ad. They buy stuff because other kids tell them to."
What Lawson really likes about Buzz-Oven is how deeply it weaves into
teens’ lives. Sure, the network reaches only a small niche. But Buzzers
have created an authentic community, and Coke has been welcomed as part of
the group. At a recent dinner, founder Holt asked a few Buzzers their
opinions about the company. "I don’t know if they care about the music or
they just want their name on it, but knowing they’re involved helps," says
Michael Henry, 19. "I know they care; they think what we’re doing is
cool," says Michele Barr, 21. Adds Adams: "They let us do our thing. They
don’t censor what we do."
Words to live by for a marketer, figures Lawson, particularly since
Coke
pays Buzz-Oven less than $70,000 a year. In late October, Holt signed a
new contract with Coke to help him launch Buzz-Oven Austin in February.
The amount is confidential, but he says it’s enough for 10,000 CDs, three
to four months of street promotions, and 50,000 fliers, plus some radio
and print ads and a Web site promotion. Meanwhile, Buzz-Oven is building
relations with other brands such as the Dallas Observer newspaper and
McDonald’s () Chipotle restaurants, which kicks in free food for Buzzer
volunteers who promote the shows. Profits from ticket sales are small but
growing, says Holt.
Not so long ago, behemoth MySpace was this tiny. Tom Anderson, a Santa
Monica (Calif.) musician with a film degree, partnered with former Xdrive
Inc. marketer Chris DeWolfe to create a Web site where musicians could
post their music and fans could chat about it. Anderson knew music and
film; De Wolfe knew the Internet business. Anderson cajoled Hollywood
friends – musicians, models, actors – to join his online community, and
soon the news spread. A year later, everyone from Hollywood teen queen
Hilary Duff to Plano (Tex.) teen queen Adams has an account.
It’s becoming a phenomenon unto itself. With 20 million of its members
logging on in October, MySpace now draws so much traffic that it accounted
for 10% of all advertisements viewed online in the month. This is all the
more amazing because MySpace doesn’t allow those ubiquitous pop-up ads
that block your view, much less spyware, which monitors what you watch and
infuses it with pop-ups. In fact, the advertising can be so subtle that
kids don’t distinguish it from content. “It’s what our users want,” says
Anderson.
As MySpace has exploded, Anderson has struggled to maintain the
intimate
atmosphere that lends social networks their authenticity. When new users
join, Tom becomes their first friend and invites them to send him a
message. When they do, they hear right back, from him or from the
one-quarter of MySpace’s 165 staffers who handle customer service. Ask
Adams what she thinks of MySpace’s recent acquisition by News Corp., and
she replies that she doesn’t blame “Tom” for selling, she would have done
the same thing. She’s talking about Anderson, but it’s hard to tell at
first because she refers to him so casually, as if he were someone she has
known for years.
That’s why Murdoch has vowed not to wrest creative control from
Anderson
and DeWolfe. Instead News Corp.'s resources will help them nourish new
MySpace dreams. Earlier this month they launched a record label. In the
next few months, the duo says, they will launch a movie production unit
and a satellite radio station. By March they hope to venture into wireless
technology, perhaps even starting a wireless company to compete with
Virgin Mobile or Sprint Nextel’s Boost. Says DeWolfe: "We want to be a
lifestyle brand."
It’s proof that a network – and its advertising – can take off if it
gives kids something they badly want. Last spring, Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg noticed that the college students who make up most of his 9.5
million members were starting groups with names like Apple Students, where
they swapped information about how to use their Macs. So he asked Apple if
it wanted to form an official group. Now – for a fee neither company will
disclose – Apple sponsors the group, giving away iPod Shuffles in weekly
contests, making product announcements, and providing links to its student
discount program.
The idea worked so well that Facebook began helping anyone who wanted
to
start a group. Today there are more than a dozen, including several
sponsored by advertisers such as Victoria’s Secret and Electronic Arts.
Zuckerberg soon realized that undergrads are more likely to respond to a
peer group of Apple users than to the traditional banner ads, which he
hopes to eventually phase out. Another of his innovations: ads targeted at
students of a specific college. They’re a way for a local restaurant or
travel agency to advertise. Called Facebook Announcements, it’s all
automated, so anyone can go onto Facebook, pay $14 a day, and fill out an
ad.
SPARKLE AND FIZZLE
Still, social networks’ relations with companies remain uneasy. Last
year,
for example, Buzz-Oven was nearly thrown off track when a band called
Flickerstick wanted to post a song called Teenage Dope Fiend on the
network. Holt told Buzzers: "Well, you can’t use that song. I’d be
encouraging teenagers to try drugs." They saw his point, and several
Buzzers persuaded the band to offer up a different song. But such
potential conflicts are one way, Holt concedes, that Buzz-Oven’s corporate
sponsorships could come to a halt.
Like Holt, other network founders have dealt with such conflicts by
turning to their users for advice. Xanga co-founder John Hiler has
resisted intrusive forms of advertising like spyware or pop-ups, selling
only the conventional banner ads. When advertisers recently demanded more
space for larger ads, Hiler turned the question over to Xanga bloggers,
posting links to three examples of new ads. More than 3,000 users
commented pro and con, and Hiler went with the model users liked best. By
involving them, Hiler kept the personal connection that many say they feel
with network founders – even though Xanga’s membership has expanded to 21
million.
So far, corporate advertisers have had little luck creating such
relationships on their own. In May, P&G set up what it hoped would become
a social network around Sparkle Body Spray, aimed at tweens. The site
features chatty messages from fake characters named for scents like Rose
and Vanilla (“Friends call me Van”). Virtually no one joined, and no
entries have comments from real users. "There wasn’t a lot of interesting
content to engage people," says Anastasia Goodstein, who documents the
intersection between companies and the MySpace Generation at Ypulse.com.
P&G concedes that the site is an experiment, and the company has found
more success with a body-spray network embedded in MySpace.com.
The most basic threat to networks may be the whims of their users, who
after all are mostly still kids. Take Friendster, the first networking Web
site to gain national attention. It erupted in 2003, going from a few
thousand users to nearly 20 million. But the company couldn’t keep up,
causing frustration among users when the site grew sluggish and prone to
crash. It also started with no music, no message boards or classifieds, no
blogging. Many jumped ship when MySpace came along, offering the ability
to post song tracks and more elaborate profiles. Friendster has been
hustling to get back into the game, adding in new options. But only
942,000 people clicked on the site in October, vs. 20.6 million who
clicked on MySpace in the same time.
That’s the elusive nature of trends and fads, and it poses a challenge
for
networks large and small. MySpace became a threat to tiny Buzz-Oven last
year when Buzzers found they could do more cool things there, from blogs
to more music and better profile options. Buzzer message board traffic
slowed to a crawl. To stop the hemorrhaging, Holt joined MySpace himself
and set up a profile for Buzz-Oven. His network now operates both
independently and as a subsite on MySpace, but it still works. Most of
Holt’s Dallas crowd came back, and Buzz-Oven is up to 3,604 MySpace
members now, slightly more than when it was a stand-alone network.
Even if the new approach works, Holt faces a succession issue that’s
likely to hit other networks at some point. At 35, he’s well past the age
of his users. Even the friends who helped him launch Buzz-Oven.com are in
their late 20s – ancient to members of his target demographic. So either
he raises the age of the group – or replaces himself with someone
younger. He’s trying the latter, betting on Mike Ziemer, the 20-year-old
recent member, even giving him a small amount of cash.
Ziemer, it turns out, is an influencer. That means record labels and
clothing brands pay him to talk up their products, for which he pulls down
several hundred dollars a month. Ziemer has spiky brown hair and a round,
expressive face. In his MySpace profile he lists his interests in this
order: Girls. Music. Friends. Movies. He has 4,973 “friends” on MySpace.
At all times, he carries a T-Mobile Sidekick, which he uses to text
message, e-mail, and send photos to his friends. Sometimes he also talks
on it, but not often. “I hate the phone,” he says.
Think of Ziemer as Aden Holt 2.0. Like Amanda Adams, he’s also a
student
at UT-Denton. When he moved to the area from Southern California last
year, he started Third String PR, a miniature version of Buzz-Oven that
brings bands to the 'burbs. He uses MySpace.com to promote bands and chats
online with potential concertgoers. Ziemer can pack a church basement with
tweens for a concert, even though they aren’t old enough to drive. On the
one hand, Ziemer idolizes Holt, who has a larger version of Ziemer’s
company and a ton of connections in the music industry. On the other hand,
Ziemer thinks Holt is old. “Have you ever tried to talk with him over IM?”
he says. “He’s just not plugged in enough.”
Exactly why Holt wants Ziemer on Buzz-Oven. He knows the younger
entrepreneur can tap a new wave of kids – and keep the site’s corporate
sponsor on board. But he worries that Ziemer doesn’t have the people
skills. What’s more, should Ziemer lose patience with Buzz-Oven, he could
blacklist Holt by telling his 9,217 virtual friends that Buzz-Oven is no
longer cool. In the online world, one powerfully networked person can have
a devastatingly large impact on a small society like Buzz-Oven.
For now, the gamble is paying off. Attendance is up at Buzz-Oven
events,
and if the Austin launch goes smoothly, Holt will be one step closer to
his dream of going national. But given the fluid world of networks, he’s
taking nothing for granted.
By Jessi Hempel, with Paula Lehman in New York