Download - Mobile Youth Around the World 2011 PDF

mobileYouth has updated its 2011 data. Get the free download over at Mobile Youth Around The World for 2011 stats (PDF/PPT). Alternatively download the document below hosted on Scribd. Contains 10 key statistics on youth mobile trends for 2011.

Mobile Youth Around The World - Download the 2011 Update

mobileYouth 2011 tour - schedule out

From London to Tokyo - check out mobileYouth's 28 city world tour sharing with you the latest insights into youth marketing and mobile culture.

Amplify’d from www.mobileyouthtour.com
NEW: Updated January 2011

Flickr (c) Bies

This year we’re visiting 28 Cities
Here’s what we’ll be doing in these cities:
* Shooting local interviews and movies for mobileYouth.tv
* Conducting primary research of local mobile owning youth
* Meeting clients and business partners
* Speaking at local mobile / youth related conferences

January
New Delhi (also speaking at the Youth Marketing Summit)

February
Barcelona (Mobile World Congress)

March
Kuala Lumpur (TBC)
Helsinki
Stockholm
Oslo

April
Amsterdam
New York
Toronto
Chicago
LA
Tokyo
Shanghai
Hong Kong
Ho Chi Minh City
Singapore
Kuala Lumpur
Manila
Jakarta

May
Johannesburg
Sao Paolo
Colombo
London
Dublin

June
Delhi
Nairobi
Istanbul
Mumbai

Read more at www.mobileyouthtour.com

The Age of Discovery

Youth Marketing for Mobile Brands in 3 Stages:
1) Age of Ownership (1990-1999)
2) Age of Differentiation (2000-2009)
3) Age of Discovery (2010-2019)

Amplify’d from www.facebook.com

From presentation 1: The Age of Discovery
http://www.YouthMobileAge.com/
Read more at www.facebook.com

The Youth Mobile Age (Download)

mobileYouth have just launched a new 5 part series focusing on the 50 trends that will shape youth culture in 2011. It's a free download. Presentation also available online here on Slideshare

Amplify’d from www.youthmobileage.com
Youth Mobile Age Part 1/5

* 5 Part Presentation containing over 200 slides
* 50 Ideas that will shape 2011
* Featuring analysis from leading industry experts
* Covering emerging and developed markets

Download the 5 Part Presentation Free
50 Ideas to Shape 2011. Find out what’s hot and what’s not in the Youth Mobile Age in this new 5 part series edited by Graham Brown from mobileYouth.

If you want to know how it’s going to be tomorrow, look at how it is today with young people. World over we see future usage patterns, business models and technologies being explored, adapted and refined by youth. Where would we be without SMS, BBM, Facebook and MP3s? Youth discovered them first. In this 5 part series I’ll share with you ideas and insights gained from the frontline with a little help from some industry friends.

We share with you ideas that will shape the next decade.

Download the 5 Part Presentation Free
Enter your details and we will send you the 5 part Youth Mobile Age presentation to your email box.

Send me the 5 part presentation

What do I get?
* We’ll send you 1 part every week for 5 weeks.
* Unsubscribe at any time
* Managed by mobileYouth
* No spam guarantee (no spam policy)

Read more at www.youthmobileage.com

The Disconnected Generation

Welcome to Hachiko Square, Tokyo.

4 million people cross here everyday. That's the equivalent of the population of LA crossing a 100m wide concourse outside the world's busiest train station in the world's busiest city.

It's named after a 2m high statue to a small Akita hound that stands watchful over the youth that gather outside Shibuya station. They come to wait, meet friends or just soke up the vibe.

After his master died in 1938, Hachiko faithfully returned to this spot. He came and sat every day for 19 years without fail, waiting... Today Tokyo's young hopefuls congregate under Hachiko's watchful eye. Many have come from rural communities to settle in the city of the bright lights and opportunity only to find themselves sleeping alone in bedsits or euphemistically titled "Leo Palace" apartments measuring no more than 200 square feet.

Social Thinking encourages us to see our customers as people who have social needs. Rather than markets and products consider what you can do for this generation, how you can help connect them with each other.

mobileYouth TV - new TV channel for insights on youth mobile culture

mobileYouth launches its own TV channel with weekly strategic insights covering their journey into the world of youth mobile culture.

mobileYouth TV - new TV channel for youth mobile insights





Read the background to the latest video


Youth Mobile Culture since 2001


With over 1.6 billion activated accounts, the youth mobile market is currently worth $360 billion annually - or 10 times the size of the global recorded music industry. The market will grow a further 50% over the next 4 years with emerging markets delivering a significant proportion of the growth. By 2012, one in five of the world's mobile owning youth will be living in India. Find out more about the data behind this study.

About the mobileYouth Project


Based in London with research partners in 25 countries, mobileYouth has been helping mobile companies, banks, agencies and government organizations get ahead by better understanding their young customers. Every year, we clock in excess of 200,000 airmiles in search of new and exciting stories, insights and case studies from the world of youth mobile culture. Find out more about the tour here and see when it's coming to your city.

Youth today and the unwitting revolutionaries of tomorrow

As much as we fret about the polarization of cultures ("The West vs Islam", "Jews vs Arabs", "Pakistan vs India" etc etc) and the rise of modern tribalism there is always hope...

"I love Italy!" screamed ecstatic Spaniard Danny Torres in English to a pumped crowd of 20,000 fans as the event was broadcast live on the internet to millions and syndicated to an estimated 100 million on network TV channels around the world. Torres had just clinched the final event of Red Bull X-Fighters in the impressive Stadio Flaminio in Rome but ceded the title to overall winner Nate Adams from the USA. Nate's incredible display of death-defying flips, somersaults and tricks you'd think impossible on a motorbike were just enough to outplay reigning champion Andre Villa of Norway. Italian fans turned out in force with many brandishing makeshift flags and banners pledging allegiance to their heroes of choice - Norwegian, Spanish, Australian, American, Russian... the list goes on.

It's here in Rome, in front of a crowd of young people averaging between 20 and 30 years old that you get a sense of the future. An American and Norwegian duke it out in front of an Italian audience hosted by an Austrian company watched by young people in 5 continents. Where you're from, it appears, is less important than where you're at.

Youth have always been the victim of their parent's geographical choices. The big city lights were always more appealing than suburbia and another city always more enticing that your own. We watched hip hop videos on MTV and wished we were hanging out with those blinged up cliques. We fantasized about running through muddy fields chased by police in search of an illegal Acid House rave hidden in an abandoned aircraft hangar. We broke down the Berlin Wall. We found kinship through Woodstock and Lennon's Bed Peace but every time the media shut the show down. Lennon challenged us to "imagine all the people" but the media's loudspeakers were keen to drown out the dissent. Even though ad agencies pandered to our malaise with striking images of young people reuniting at the Brandenburg gate, the last thing they wanted was youth actually controlling the narrative.

This time however it's different. The key difference being youth's ability to define kinship on the basis of passion rather than proximity.

Rather than compromize their interests based on what the kid next door liked doing they can indulge them on the internet. They can hang out with skaters in Shanghai or gamers in Dubai. They exchange ideas, challenge ignorance and learn that the differences between these peers are smaller than the differences between themselves and people of the same nationality, race or religion.

The previous generation grew up accepting that their hero could be a black golfer, an openly gay singer or a white rapper. Perhaps this generation will grow up accepting that their heroes will speak different tongues and worship different idols.

When this generation grows up empathizing with different nationalities, religions and creeds, notions of the empathy based along traditional lines - i.e being "English", "Chinese", "Jew" or "Hindu" will become less relevant. Being American is defined by a common belief system and heritage yet what happens when tomorrow's youth in San Jose are more like youth in Jakarta and Johannesburg?  Difficult to imagine for many because these stories of national origin, belief and identity are so interwoven into the fabric of our lives and personalities.

Yet, empathy has always evolved. In generations past we empathized with the people in our own villages and feared those who lived beyond the valley. As society grew and we learned to trade we also learned that these foreigners weren't monsters and very much like us. Empathy changed from village to and the idea of a shared heritage - a belief system called religion but that itself became challenged when we found differences that challenged our interests. The nation state evolved and remains the most powerful empathic force to adults today. Politics is driven by the stories we tell about our nations and creed. Young people are sent to fight and die to protect these stories.

This may well change too. Not overnight, but as with all revolutions, the idea grows when a simple seed is planted.

The idea grows when it's nourished by opportunities to ask "Why?" in a fertile soil called the internet. And like any plant that grows it will take time. If we look today we see only an acorn that has begun to sprout, not the mighty oak.

In the 16th century the Bible was a lavishly handwritten manuscript that took a team of monks years to complete. Only well patronized churches or the rich landed gentry could afford to own one. When the word of God was limited to the ownership and interpretation of the few, control rested in the hands of the priesthood. Yet, when Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press the seed was sown. Ordinary people could get hold of the scriptures. No longer was the priest the sole divine conduit for interpreting the moral rule of law. The democratization of the Bible not only gave everyman the opportunity to tell the story but also fundamentally challenged the power of the incumbent priesthood. At first, the shifting media landscape appeared innocuous but what followed radically changed not only our relationship with the church, the role of the church within politics and the state but also our idea of what it was to be human. The Reformation changed us from people living in a world of mystery and religious iconicism to one where events were governed by cause and effect, reason, science and where, ulimately, man became the center of his own universe.

Perhaps we are facing our own Reformation. The irony is that just as before, nobody actually used the term "Reformation" until historians began to document change 100 years after the fact. Perhaps we will reflect on the dynamic shift in the media landscape that moved us from monolithic media to the democratization of brands, that redefined our notions of kinship as one that significantly altered the course of history.

Speculation of what this means to us is, however, not for us. We are history. Revolutions begin not when the incoming change agents convince the incumbents that their ideas are wrong but when the incumbents die out.

Why do we need to stop saying 'social media'?



In years to come we will stop saying "social media". If media (traditional or the funky type) isn't "social" by nature, it simply isn't media.


To allow its use is to also allow advertisers, creatives and media owners the ability to create content that has no social purpose because that's what their funky "social media" cousins do. 20 years ago TV, radio and magazines were "social media" because they sparked conversations in offices, buzz in playgrounds and inferred status on the first to break the news of Jackson's death or the Beatles split.


When media is media (social or not), all will be judged through the same lens - what gives me the most social currency bang for my buck? That's what youth are doing today - to them it's all in the same bucket. We need to play catch up.