The invisible culture

Having waxed lyrical about the pros and cons of Content 2.0, one of the most interesting parts of the Content2.0 conference was the interview of real (yes, 100% GENUINE) young people – two kids (17 / 18ish) called Rory and Dot. The following is a brief account of what was revealed during their interview which I thought made really interesting reading:

Rory likes Photobucket (over Flickr), Apple and Myspace. He doesn’t watch much TV but uses Shoutwire for news and info instead. He likes socialising with friends over doing this online, and likes his iPod – although he has had problems with it, which was made up by good customer service. He loves Skype because he can talk to his family in Australia and uses YouTube for up to an hour at a time. His main source of marketing info is through word of mouth, through friends or forums and has never clicked on an ad banner or Google adwords. He loves wikipedia, because he can participate and add to it, and downloads pirate content to his hearts content (he has 350GB on his hardrive), although would pay a supplement (of around £5) to his ISP to download. He first got into the internet to cheat homework at school – and believes he’s done better because of it!

Dot likes Flickr (over Photobucket), Apple and specialist Journal networks (over generalist MySpace). She doesn’t watch much TV and uses the BBC website and indy blogs instead, as well as downloading TV programmes to her computer (legal and illegal). She’s a gamer and links in with various gamer networks and has an iPod. She is v.wary about commercialisation on the net, to the point of suspicion, uses YouTube and word of mouth is her main marketing point of contact (e.g. checking out what’s top of Delicious). She is happy to download pirate content, and says would pay for it if it was made easier. She is v.wary about privacy on the net, and of her digital footprint – to the extent that she rarely publishes on blogs or forums