Twitter finally launched their standalone music app yesterday morning, dubbed Twitter #music. As you probably heard, the folks at Twitter skipped the early adopter approach and took to Good Morning America for a very mainstream launch of their latest product. The app is now available on your desktop and, perhaps more importantly for the large majority of us that like our music to be as on-the-go as we are, on iOS.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock…err pebble…you’ve probably heard of the epic Kickstarter campaign that raised over $10 million in crowdsourced funds on the promise of an e-paper watch that connects via Bluetooth to iPhone and Android phones. Introducing Pebble.
I stumbled upon this incredible fundraising frenzy—the Kickstarter project hit $1MM in only 28 hours—on April 19th, 2012, about a week after the campaign launched. I opted in for the $115 pre-order of the Jet Black Pebble, which offered the discount of $35 off the full MSRP of $150 and the promise that it would supposedly be shipped several months later.
A lot has happened this year and teens have taken notice. World events, economic pressures, personal milestones, friends, education and brands all play big roles in influencing the lives of teens. Teens are evolving and maturing as fast as the technologies and platforms we build around them.
On November 6th, 2011, our city hosted one of the world’s greatest road races, the ING New York City Marathon. With over $600,000 in prize money, over 100,000 applicants and over two million spectators, this iconic event is one that tops the charts for many.
As marketers, we know that even small changes to any user experience can have a dramatic impact on how engaged consumers are in our social-digital ecosystems. Teens are the most sensitive, savvy and fickle to these changes–and lack the years of entrenchment in any one social network to keep them from jumping ship and trying something new. So what do teens think about the most recent changes on Facebook? We surveyed 2,000 (14-17 year old) teens to find out what they like, love and hate about the platform where they spend at least 90 minutes each day.
Here at Mr Youth, we pride ourselves on being something close to campus-connoisseurs. Between our proprietary college network, RepNation, our ears-on-the-ground college ambassadors and our insight platform, Crowdtap, we’ve got our finger on the pulse of the ever-elusive college student. What do we do with this type of access? We listen and we take notes– lots and lots of notes.
Mayor Bloomberg tweeted yesterday that the roadmap to make New York the number one digital city has been published. Called “Achieving New York City’s Digital Future” the report is over 60 pages of present situation, public feedback and data, and what’s in store for NYC.
We know from our own experiences that the more you give, the more you get. This is true in our personal lives and this is also true in advertising. In traditional advertising, ads that give the audience some type of reward for watching, like entertainment value or some type of personal benefit, tend to do very well and ads that offer nothing to the audience tend to be ignored (check out this hilariously boring Tax Masters commercial). This is equally true for nontraditional and social-network advertising.
