I'm in Redmond, WA, today and tomorrow at a Microsoft symposium about social media with a group of very talented folks from academia, technology and marketing to share ideas and maybe catch a glimpse into where this is all going. I'm talking about "youth and technology" for 20 minutes after lunch (perfect time for people to take a nap...). You can get a feel for what's happening here by looking at last year's site.

Being here made me think about last week's news that MTV was finally launching its own social network (Flux) and this weekend's news that Yahoo! is launching its newest social network (is Yahoo! 360 going away?) called Mash. Since social networking for teens is primarily about interacting with real life friends, I'm wondering how these new networks will do. MTV has been successful with launching branded virtual worlds where viewers can hang out and connect around its shows like "The Hills" and "Pimp My Ride." And it seems like Flux is more about adding social features to Viacom's branded sites than its own separate social networking destination. If Yahoo! follows the same pattern, Mash will simply be social features added to Yahoo!'s verticals (Entertainment, Autos, etc.). Just as MySpace is becoming more and more a social networking site focused around entertainment/music/video content. So...this is less about social networking for the communication tools (i.e. Facebook) and more about adding features that enable people to connect around content.

I'm also really curious about how many teens are actively using Twitter. I signed up for it but haven't really used it yet (blogging fatigue). I know MTV just used Twitter to market the VMAs, and we all heard about Jon Edwards using it for his campaign, but has it gone beyond early adopters and the tech crowd yet to reach teens?

Posted by anastasia