P2P

Ever since NewsCorp put out that self-aggrandizing study on how MySpace is the best place ever to buy advertising, I've been thinking about what it means. The study was designed to double monthly advertising revenue from $30m to $60 and so much of the methodology is about brand identification and how well MySpacers react to banner ads versus flash ads etc. However, buried in the company's Press Release and tucked away in the study itself are a few gems that I think further one of my theories about how Millennials need and use Social Networks.

Take this quote for example from the PR:

”MySpace has thrived as a global community driven by self expression, discovery and connection of now more than 100 million people around the world who use it each month,” said Chris DeWolfe, CEO of MySpace. “Users are empowered to create and share, build and maintain relationships and in the process have created an entirely new medium that is deeply integrated into their everyday lives. Smart marketers know how to... meow meow meow[buy ads].

But did you catch that? I gotta say, that's pretty true, Chris. Users are empowered to create and share, build and maintain relationships and in the process have created an entirely new medium that is deeply integrated into their everyday lives.

But why...

Reporter: Mr. Harrison, with all that's going on in the world today, why did you decide to focus on this (Bangladesh)?"

George Harrison: "Because a friend asked me to help."

From a press conference for the Concert for Bangladesh, posted in a diary at The Daily Kos

The first show that I successfully volunteered for with Music for America was a huge rock festival on Randall’s Island in NYC, in July 2004. I was excited to see how MfA worked, and how I would work with it. I went online and read up on all of MfA’s “issues”; I was familiar with most- the insane War on Drugs, the skyrocketing costs of education and healthcare, reproductive and civil rights, and the importance of youth participation- but I wanted to get MfA’s take on each, which basically meant looking at the issues in terms of youth and culture.

The next day I made my way to the venue and met with the other volunteers. I was the only male volunteer, and at the ripe old age of 25 probably the oldest. We gathered up our materials and made our way through security and inside the massive grass and dirt fields that housed the festival. I was pretty nervous as we setup our materials and arranged the stacks of voter registration cards. Even though I usually don’t have any problems talking with strangers I generally don’t like going up to random people and trying to get them to talk politics with me. I’ve always been politically focused, and I’ve always felt contempt or boredom from many of the people I’ve tried to talk politics with, so I wasn’t exactly excited when I was given a clipboard full of registration sheets, a box of issue cards, and was asked by the volunteer coordinator to go out, along with four of the young women, to the long line that had formed outside of the grounds to talk with kids and register as many as possible. The girls didn’t seem as nervous as they jumped at the opportunity to go, which emboldened me a little, given my macho older-brother ego- I wasn’t about to let a couple of younger girls show me up!

I came onto Music for America’s forums to tell their Communications Director, Mike Connery, about the research that I had done, and to try and see if they’d be willing to help me apply it.

My idea was to create a multi-media CD that would replicate the agenda-setting and priming effects that Iyengar had demonstrated. I thought that if we could convince, trick, or bribe young people to take a look at a CD that contained multimedia relevant to the campaign, that we could have a huge effect on youth turnout. MfA had a huge outreach operation, was extremely well funded, and I thought that it had the ability, if it desired, to get such CDs into the hands of tens of thousands of young people.

Mike wasn’t convinced. He challenged me to justify a project on the scale I was talking about, forced me to consider production time and cost, and pushed me to solidify my ideas on how something like this could work. He did not dismiss me, even though he had never met me and didn’t know me at all. He engaged me, he challenged me, and he encouraged me to continue on, which I did.

Mike had two main criticisms of my ideas.