Monday, March 21, 2011

Gen Y - In Pursuit of Cool

I love reading research about Gen Ys, they are just fascinating creatures!

Telstra released an interesting study last month which highlighted the measures they go to to appear cool. Made me laugh but it's oh so true!
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  • Facebook Places app boosts social cred: 44 per cent of Gen Ys use the Facebook Places “check-in” feature for appearance – to look cool (22 per cent), to fit in with all the cool people who are doing it (12 per cent) or to make others jealous (10 per cent).
  • Check-in is used selectively: Half of Gen Ys only use Facebook Places to check-in at popular or trendy locations – so more mundane locations like work or the supermarket don’t make the cut!
  • Downloading the latest iPhone apps: 27 per cent of Gen Ys admit they have apps on their phone they don’t use just to look fashionable or because other people will find them funny.
  • Tweeting can make you cool: More than a quarter of 18-30 year olds have copied or ‘re-tweeted’ a Twitter update from others without crediting the original poster, and more than half said it was purely to make themselves look good.
  • Gen Y heart phone faking: One in 10 Gen Ys admit to regularly faking where they check-in on Facebook Places, in the pursuit of improving their social status.
  • Facebook is top of the popularity stakes on mobiles: 97 per cent of Telstra customers who use Tribe on their mobile phones access Facebook – well ahead of Twitter and MySpace. Tribe was launched last year and combines Facebook, Twitter and MySpace in a single location free of data charges for Telstra mobile customers.
  • Men are bigger phone fakers: One in five Gen Y males admit they have checked in on Facebook Places at a location when they weren’t actually there, as opposed to 12 per cent of Gen Y females.
  • NSW and VIC lead the states in phone faking: NSW residents are most likely to have checked-in using Facebook Places at a location they are not at (17 per cent), followed closely by Victoria (16 per cent). Victorians also scored highest when it comes to ‘selective check-in’, with 56 per cent claiming they use Facebook Places to check-in at a trendy/popular venue as opposed to somewhere un-cool. Gen Y poster child and social networking addict, Josh Earl, says he can relate to Telstra’s research findings of using new social networking tools to be a ‘phone faker’.
Ah got to love it!

Mehrak Saheb
Prophesy Digital