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Thursday, December 14, 2006

Mobile-y social teens & the future

I've just seen another piece of the (near) future. I was reading this press release about how "The N" (MTV's "nighttime network for teens"), mobile social site Mbuzzy.com, and online research firm OTX are together creating "the first-ever wireless teen research panel" called "Teens Everywhere." "This new methodology gives the network direct access to a panel of 10,000 young people for immediate feedback about their lifestyles as well as network programming, advertising, events and other information" – something their parents may want to know about. In exchange, the teens get access to a new social-networking microsite (micro to fit on a phone screen), where they can upload and download phone content via computer or phone (ringtones, photos, videos, songs, info, etc.) and socialize with one another (the press release doesn't say if they get new phones too, which would be quite a draw). They'll be recruited from the existing Mbuzzy.com community as well as The-N.com and Quizilla.com (a popular profile-decorating site). But the piece of the future I'm seeing, here, is Mbuzzy. It mashes up a whole lot of elements and parties interested in converging – teenagers, content, devices (phone and computer), and professional content providers (record labels, game producers, film and TV producers, etc.). Because Mbuzzy is both a social site and a distribution service of both professional and homemade media for both phone and computer, it makes everybody very happy. Teens can create and distribute their own content as well as socialize around it, plus they can download (and buy) "cool content" for their sites and phones from their favorite artists and labels. For the digitally literate, it's getting increasingly annoying *not* to be able to move whatever content you have around to and from whatever device and share it with whoever you want, whenever you want. Mbuzzy fixes that. People in music, TV, and film probably get that, but they wish they could just sell it, not have it shared quite so much! [For example, see "UK kids' tune-swapping on phones."]

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