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The Net Generation of Uploaders

Don Tapscott (author of Wikinomics and Growing Up Digital) has spent millions of pounds studying the Net Generation, digital natives under the age of 25, and as Don observes: “they’re different”.  They are less motivated by money and more motivated by interest and having fun. They are very prosocial and social media is second nature to them.

The incidence levels of Uploaders for this demographic was very high which indicates that in the not too distance future, the amount of Uploaders will be dramatically higher than 8%. If Uploaders are relying more and more on information from other people and the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to inform their decisions about brands, products and services, then we could be seeing a fundamental change in consumption habits within years.

The rise of the Net Generation means that understanding how to talk with Uploaders maybe interesting today, but essential for tomorrow.

Who's informing who? Let's have a conversation...

Back in '99, The Cluetrain Manifesto said that markets were nothing more than conversations and message-based marketing was the ''Anti-conversation". In light of this it insisted that companies should converse directly with 'we'- the people, if they wanted to communicate.

Since then the popularity of social media and networking sites like MySpace and Facebook has indeed mushroomed exponentially. Rapidly, we are seeing these media overshadow the 'old' media, as consumers turn to each other for the content-creation and conversation that these applications allow. In fact, this year saw the first ever user-generated marketing awards!

So what does this mean for us?

It used to be our job to inform people about new brands, products and services, but now people are increasingly turning to user-generated content and reviews to inform their purchasing decisions and opinions. Interestingly though, our research showed that it is only 8% of the UK online population that are uploading the content that the others consume, exchange and talk about.

We agree with the precept that markets are conversations, but what are people basing their conversations on? We decided to dig a little deeper and find out more about these informers of the people... what drives them to do what they do and what potential influence do they have both online and offline?

We have summarised an initial interpretation of our findings (see pdf) and are keen to kick off a conversation around these ideas...