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 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
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APRIL 5, 2005
In the Internet's High-Speed Lane Widespread adoption of broadband access is driving new ways to meet, talk, shop, study, and work. And the under-25 set is a prime force It has been a while since 18-year-old Abe Hassan read a book of fiction or went to bed before 10 p.m. After his parents signed up for broadband Internet access, Hassan began making daily rounds of the social-networking Web site LiveJournal.com, where he can talk to any of its 6.6 million other members. "It has been a complete transformation of my lifestyle," he says. "Now, I am up until 1 or 2 a.m. or later, because there's always someone around [on the site]." Hassan's social life revolves around LiveJournal.com. He celebrates important events like National Pi Day with fellow online math enthusiasts, and his virtual friends give him suggestions on what music to buy. "These are people I spend most of my days with," says Hassan, now a freshman at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Indeed, Hassan's LiveJournal.com buddies make up half of his 40 or so friends and live as far away as Australia. That's hardly unusual nowadays. As broadband adoption skyrocketed in the past year, teens such as Hassan became more immersed in all things Internet than ever before. Today, half of American households with teenagers have broadband access, up from 35% a year ago, according to market researcher Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU). "WIDE-SCALE SHIFT." And because these fast, always-on connections allow people to check e-mail and surf the Web around-the-clock without hogging phone lines, Americans with broadband access tend to spend 50% more time online than their dial-up counterparts, estimates Geoff Ramsey, CEO of consulting company eMarketer. This has helped spark an explosion of social-networking sites as people check in with friends and make new connections online through a variety of interests. Younger users, particular teenagers, are leading the way in this new broadband lifestyle. Experts say they're often the first adopters and trendsetters. In fact, today's Internet-savvy youth could be as influential to popular culture as baby boomers were in the 1960s. Already, 28% of teens keep blogs, the Web logs that are fast becoming a prominent alternative source of news and commentary, while only 16% of adults do the same, according to market researchers Jupiter Research. Some pundits call the under-25 crowd the super-communicators. They love instant messaging (IM) and spend more money on their cell phones than on cigarettes, candy, or music. They like to be in touch with their friends while at school, the mall, or home. Thanks to high-speed connections, they can do just that: They can learn, shop, play games, exchange photos and video clips, and talk with friends online. As a result, they're "doing more and more of their interpersonal communications virtually," says Rob Callender, trends director at TRU. "This is a wide-scale shift." I'M IN! The impact of that shift on the high-tech industry, telecom and cable compaines, Hollywood, and the entire publishing industry will be profound. While it's hard to put an exact dollar figure on this transformation, it's safe to say the creators and designers of every high-tech or electronics product being built today are thinking about how their goods can benefit from broadband Net access. At the same time moviemakers, musicians, and, yes, journalists, wonder whether it means they'll find new ways to reach customers or get swindled by more copyright scofflaws. Ubiquitous broadband access represents a change in consumer behavior that the business world is just starting to grasp. Already, traffic to Web sites that cater to the broadband-enabled generation is multiplying (see BW Online, 3/16/05, "LinkedIn Expands Its Connections"). While the social network MySpace.com didn't even figure in the top 50 of the most trafficked Web sites for teens last fall, it's now one of their top 10 most visited sites, according to TRU. It's also the 23rd most visited English-language site in the world, according to traffic researcher Alexa, a property of Amazon.com (AMZN ). MySpace.com allows for music and photo downloads, which broadband access makes much speedier and easier. These social-networking sites, it seems, have become a salve for the difficult teen years. "If you don't get along with the people in your school, the teen years can be very trying," says Callender. "These sites build a sense of community for people who don't feel like they belong." Teens can join a group of young shop-a-holics, Lord of the Rings fans, or Japanese comic-book addicts. As a last resort, there's Outcasted.com, where users with names like "Tarnished Silver" and "Pretty on the Inside" rail at the unfairness of it all.
BW MALL
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