Ypulse Teen Tech Round Up

Lots to write about today. Remember the Jena 6? Thousands of protesters descended on the small town this week to protest the draconian sentencing of these boys by an all-white Jury. Here's what's worth noting about how these protests were organized (very similar to the massive immigration rallies last year):

The protests were organized through a nationwide campaign largely conducted on the Internet, through cell-phone text messages, and on urban radio stations. (from an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer - unfortunately, the link isn't working)

BTW being a huge Bowie fan, I have to mention that he gave $10K to the Jena 6 Defense Fund.

Next up is the non-surprising results from JWT's survey that we're all internet junkies (not just those crazy teens) though we're obviously using the internet for different reasons and in different ways.

Teens and baby boomers are side by side in cyberspace - nearly half of those surveyed over 55 years old say that they live at least some of their life online. The same percentage of those under 35 agree. However, what's dividing the generations is where, not how often.

"Mobility represents the next big shift," says Marian Salzman, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at JWT. "Older Americans are happy to sit in the same place to go online, while younger people expect to be able to connect anywhere at any time."

Check out this blog post at Knoxnews.com for a full rundown of the findings.

Nielsen found that teens who are on more than one social network…spend more time on these sites than teens who are just on one site (seems kind of obvious). They also found that many teens are maintaining both MySpace and Facebook profiles, especially if they have friends on both. The report says they don't favor either brand, but I think that's not true. When you ask young people which one they prefer, they will definitely tell you, even if they are on both.

Check out this must-read blog post on "The Naked Generation." It kind of expands on the New York Magazine article Say Everything but talks about the young entrepreneurs taking advantage of this shift. From the post:

We are the Naked Generation, as I like to call it, the ones who snicker at the fact that Britney Spears' outfit at her much-maligned Video Music Awards performance was embarrassingly revealing but nod in quiet accordance at her ability to keep the world fascinated. We change the channel when reruns of The Simple Life show up on the E! network but grudgingly admire Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie's ability to self-brand their way to lives of luxury and international renown.

But the majority of us didn't have "socialite" already on our resumes, so we turned to the Web. The Internet is more than just our stage; it's our dressing room, our cocktail lounge and, most notably, our PR department.

Piers over at PSFK put together some really cool slides about how young people (and early adopters) are destroying old media models and rebuilding new, cooler ones (especially in the music space). Now if only the music industry would get on board…

And finally, Wired has a good post about Yahoo! Mash, which is less "stand alone" social network and more the "social glue" meant to connect all of Yahoo!'s different properties. It defaults to letting your friends edit your profile, which seems like a disaster for teens tempted to cyberbully. Speaking of cyberbullying, all that "happy slapping" in the UK has inspired the British government to urge schools to take action on the issue.

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