I have been tagged by Valeria Maltoni and Drew McLellan on the topic of media snackers. The video above (thanks to Jeremiah Owyang) describes media snackers as "young people", but in my view, media snackers are a style of behaviour, not an age group. I, myself, am a media snacker when it suits me … and I know of many in the business community who would also fit this description. But this meme is about whether I cater for media snackers … and specifically, where I can improve to cater to their minute attention spans.
As Valeria points out, for media snackers one of the most important determinants of their media consumption is RELEVANCE. How does one have relevance? I have a feeling that it is all about being interesting, but this could be wrong. It really depends on whether a PARTICULAR media snacker is a Winker or a Nodder. So how can/do I make myself relevant to media snackers?
I don’t … and I agree with Cathleen Rittereiser — "we show respect for all social media consumers by assuming they possess the intelligence and faculties to decide for themselves how, when and where they want to consume media".
And this is the important point — Media Snackers will CHOOSE you. They will choose you because:
- You have broken bread together in a previous 12 seconds
- They like the cut of your jib (or the way that you style a headline)
- Someone they respect tagged you first
- Your last post showed up on Digg
- There was an RSS feed error and they ended up on your blog
- You were Scobleized
So now after his tasty meme-rant, it is my turn to tag five others. So, I tag the five NEW additions to my blogroll:
- Neil Perkin … because he has a tasty, bite sized blog full of punch
- Anne Simons … because every snack needs some sizzle
- Chris Bernard … because we should all snack by design
- Meg Tsiamis … because sometimes an Aussie snack is full of flavour
- Kris Hoet … because he thinks the term "conversation" isn’t over used (and I agree)
Great minds think alike 😉 I’m looking forward to the post at ‘Cross the Breeze as well.
That’s right, it’s not about age, it’s movement.
I couldn’t agree with you more. Thanks for the shout-out.
I suppose I’m considered in the younger demo as I just turned 22, and I absolutely agree that media snacking is not based on age. Everyone thinks kids these days are so incredibly tuned into tech and so savvy, it’s just not true. We are more open to it and we can integrate it faster, but we aren’t the ones pushing the envelope. Out of 250+ friends on facebook only 7 people in my peer group understood RSS…
Here’s a post I wrote debunking the over hyped savviness of kids these days.
http://senithomas.wordpress.com/2007/10/24/youtube-myth-debunked-kids-are-actually-lazy/
Gavin,
Appreciate your comment. To further drive home my point I did a presentation about a year ago at the New York Institute of Technology to a group of high school teachers on the topic of Evolving Students From Being Media Users to Media Thinkers. Just cause I can use AIM and Facebook doesn’t mean I’m tech savvy. This gap I talked about between what people think kids know and what they actually know will continue to get wider since educational institutions simply can’t keep up. For every 19 year old with a startup there are 10,000 kids that believe the internet “is a series of tubes”. Technology is not taught conceptually, but application by application. It is like teaching the concepts of a programming lang. that can be applied to another language vs. learning just the language itself and having to perpetually relearn from scratch. The problem will get bigger as the tech innovation cycle continues to decrease.
Moral of the story: We need to teach frameworks. If you are only a user you will never be able to innovate.
Seni … agree … and I really should not get onto the education topic (it will never end). If we continue to run-down our educational institutions in the name of lower public sector costs, then we also actively disenfranchise future generations and sacrifice next generation innovation.
The ShiftHappens videos explain this in a compelling and eloquent way. It is a shame that our political leaders still think Web 2.0 is a broadcast medium. They might learn something (at least they are in the right demographic).
Thanks for the kind words Gavin. And I agree with you and Jeremiah – this is not about age.
Hi Gavin. Thanks for the tag (and the kind words). Have finally gotten round to posting a response today. Rediscovered your blog a while back after somewhat of a hiatus and am loving your writing right now – you’re on fire!
Neil … great to have you back!