By partnering with Virgin Mobile India, GetJar is actually making its second foray into the Indian market. In April of this year, the San Mateo-based company joined forces with Reliance Communications, India's largest CDMA and GSM service provider, to create India's largest mobile app store. GetJar further tightens its grip on the large Indian mobile market with today's announcement.

Younger users make up a large percentage of feature phone and mobile app users, so it makes sense that GetJar would partner with a youth-centric carrier like Virgin. "We look forward to garnering a significant mindshare amongst the youth with this alliance," says GetJar CEO and founder Ilja Laurs.

"Mobile applications and games garner a significant share of time spent on the phone by the youth today," says Virgin Mobile India CEO M. A. Madhusudan. "This alliance with GetJar is an initiative in line with our strategy to engage and enthrall the youth with the latest innovative cutting-edge content on the move."

Last month we mentioned how GetJar's CMO Patrick Mork predicted 50 billion app downloads across all mobile app stores by 2012 - a number twice that of market research predictions for 2015. Whichever estimation is more accurate, the mobile app market is certainly booming, and at 3 million downloads per day, GetJar is a major player flying under many people's radars.

"Search engines and social media sites now play a central role in building one's identity online," said Mary Madden, lead author of Pew's report. "Many users are learning and refining their approach as they go - changing privacy settings on profiles, customizing who can see certain updates and deleting unwanted information about them that appears online."

As the report concludes, adults aged 18-29 are far more worried about preserving the integrity of their reputations online, and are, in fact, less trusting of the networks that host their data. In the study, 28% of young adults said they can "never" trust these networks with their data - twice as many as those aged 50-64 who echoed this sentiment.

The disparity between privacy concerns of younger and older generations of social network users could have a bit to do with the complexity that some networks place on their privacy controls. Facebook announced efforts today to make privacy control much easier to understand, which could increase control changes from older and less active users.

Many of these figures in the Pew study have increased compared to an earlier study conducted in 2006. What is contributing to the growing concern for privacy among the younger generations? Recent dust-ups over privacy on Facebook could be one factor, but Pew says the increased amount of personal data being stored on social networks has triggered our natural human curiosity.

In 2006, just 20% of online adults had created a profile on a social network. Since then this number more than doubled, as 46% now have a presence on networks like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. With that added data comes a growing willingness to Google our friends and dig up information. In 2006, just 26% of online adults looked up information about friends, and 36% looked up information on people from their past. Today, these figures have risen to 38% and 46%.

Additionally, we are more self-aware online today. In 2006, just 46% of people looked themselves up on search engines. According to the Pew study, this number has climbed to 57% in the last four years. Our urge to Google ourselves and our friends has increased our concern with maintaining our online privacy and reputation. Combine that with some highly publicized privacy concerns from popular social networks and it's no surprise people are more concerned with their privacy online.

Photo by Flickr user TheTruthAbout.

According to a 5,595-person, 13-country survey from tech consultancy Accenture, since this generation has grown up with daily doses of technology in one form or another, "They don't see bright lines between work
and personal, virtual and physical, sanctioned and prohibited. It's not, 'Would you approve this, boss?' but, 'Whatever gets the job done.'"

IT managers often see these behaviors as weaknesses - loopholes that allow for security breaches and loss of productivity due to distractions and heavy multitasking. But they might also be allowing millenials to work smarter, not harder.

For example, more young people are using real-time communication methods such as IM, thus reducing the amount of time checking email and waiting for an asynchronous response. In fact, 10 percent of respondents said supervisors used SMS and chat to communicate with them, and 20 percent more said they wished their bosses would use these media more.

Web apps are also gaining favor in the young workplace. Around 75 percent of respondents said they used online collaboration tools and applications for work purposes; many of these millenials also thought that workplaces should be improving their use of emerging technologies. "Globally," states the report, "about one-half of millennials have accessed online collaborative tools, online applications and open-source technologies from free public websites when those technologies are not available at work or when the versions offered at work don't meet millennials' expectations."

Young people's expectations are also high when it comes to selecting their next employer. Not only did 37 percent of respondents say they want to see state-of-the-art technology being used in their prospective workplace; just as recruiters and hiring managers often snoop around search and social sites to investigate a potential hire's character, the millenial job-hunter will check up on prospective companies, peers and bosses, as well.

To hear some respondents explaining their attitudes and behaviors in their own words, check out this video from Accenture:

Although these attitudes and work styles can clash with older managers' expectations, they can also provide great benefits to a workplace and team. "Millennials are more intimate with technology than any previous generation," the report states. "Even high school interns can now add value. Companies that figure out how to tap younger workers' tech savvy and listen to their ideas in a productive way will likely enjoy an increasingly strong innovation-based competitive advantage.

"Listen and learn. Millenials are a resource to be tapped, not a problem to be solved.:

What do you think of these results? Do they line up with your experiences using tech in the workplace and the attitudes and behaviors of your colleagues? Let us know in the comments.

They haven't learned that the sky is not, in fact, the limit - and for god's sake, don't tell them. And, as we likely felt at their age, they feel that adults are the slowest, dumbest, IE-using, fax-sending nerds imaginable. Check out this video of these great kids and the adults who admire and are inspired by them - including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who stopped by the conference to mingle with the youth and sign a few MacBooks.

Be sure to check out our Facebook album of pics from the Teens In Tech Conference, held yesterday at the Google offices in San Francisco. You'll get to see Robert Scoble in action and Steve "The Woz" Wozinak in a giant space helmet. And if you haven't done so yet, please connect with us on Facebook while you're there!

While making this video, we were privileged to chat with Teens In Tech founder Daniel Brusilovsky, Tobias of Nimbuzz, John Ramey of isocket, Adam Helweh, the talented youngsters of SimFlecks and Alex Nichols.

The statistics released today pertain to the 100 million U.S.-based Facebook users, which comprise nearly one-third of the site's entire user base. They seem to support a continuing trend for Facebook - the slow growth of young and marketable users joining the site compared with their elders. We took a look at the numbers six months ago and most of the indicators seem to be only growing stronger.

Now, a big number to look at before anything else is Facebook's nearly 145% growth in the past year, going from 40 million to over 100 million users since January last year. But where is this growth coming from?

When we last wrote about the graying Facebook population in July, users in the 55-plus demographic had skyrocketed from 1 million to nearly 6 million. This same population has now grown to nearly 10 million, a growth of 922% over the past year. This makes this age group now account for one of every 35 Facebook users. Is the boom in Baby Boomers a problem for Facebook or does it just open up new markets?

It seems that the numbers for users identifying as high school or college students have returned to positive growth, and the overall demographics of the site have remained steady. Despite the explosion of senior netizens on the site, the 55-plus group still make up only 9% of the site's entire user population, just 1% more than the last time we looked.

While the over-55 group has strong numbers, the other demographic groups are still primarily responsible for the site's exponential growth, each increasing by nearly 10 million users over the past six months.

Instead of seeing this as a problem for Facebook, maybe it's just a sign that the site is no longer popular just among teenyboppers and cool college kids. And maybe, just maybe - if we can all figure out the privacy settings - we can all coexist without our parents and grandparents ruining the party.

Over the course of the year, there have been countless reports - some more substantial than others - but all with the same message: Generation Y is just not interested in Twitter. The reports generally cited members of this demographic as saying Twitter was "pointless" and "narcissistic."

Apparently, that's beginning to change. Well, maybe not their perception of Twitter, but certainly their use of it. Today, Twitter is now the second-youngest of the top four social networking sites. Its median age is 31. MySpace's is 26, LinkedIn is 39, and, as noted above, Facebook is 33.

When looking at specific younger demographic segments, and not just Gen Y, you can see strong Twitter uptake over the past year. For example, 37% of those 18-24 now use Twitter when only 19% did back in December 2008. And in the slightly older 25-34 bracket, a portion of which could still be considered Gen Y, 31% are now using the service compared to only 20% in December of last year. Combined, these two groups account for more than half of Twitter's network.

Why is Gen Y Now Flocking to Twitter?

So what gives? Why has Gen Y seemingly changed their minds about the social microblogging network that only months ago they avoided? A recent AP article offered up some ideas including the influx of celebrity tweeters, pressure from teachers or bosses, and it even hinted that Gen Y'ers entering the workplace have found value in the network for business-related purposes. That same sentiment was shared by Meredith Sires of Gen Y trend-watching site, YPulse. She theorizes that the rapid growth in the 18-24 demographic has to do more with the recent college graduates segment of that group finding ways to build entirely new online contact lists and create new identities more closely tied to information-sharing.

However, there have not been any in-depth studies that detail all the various reasons that Gen Y has chosen to adopt the microblogging network. To date, everything cited consists of just theories and speculations based on anecdotal evidence. But while all the ideas have merit, the theory that rings truest to our ears is the one put forth by Craig Watkins, a University of Texas professor and author of the book "The Young and the Digital." He says that what we're seeing is "...a kind of closing of that generational gap as it relates to technology." In other words, young and old alike are joining the same networks and socializing in the same spaces.

At this point, we would have to agree. After all, Gen Y (or Gen Z for that matter), hasn't all of a sudden flocked to some new social networking site where the majority of the online user base mostly consists of their peers. Although some niche sites like FML, Failblog, TextsFromLastNight, and Sporcle have apparently attracted this young crowd, their numbers are dwarfed by those of Facebook, Twitter, and the like. It seems as if Gen Y is simply content to join the older adults on the top social networks of today and not strike out on their own...and vice versa. The older social networking users, in turn, never really set up shop on networks designed just for them like the (now "hibernating") Boomj, a social network for baby boomers, or the online old folks home eons.com. They, too, have gravitated towards Facebook and Twitter.

Will this ever change? Will there ever be another network dominated by the digital youth? Of course no one can know for sure, but odds are that unless it's a closed-off network where entry is barred to those over a certain age, any new social network will have trouble keeping the grown-ups out these days. And even if some such network ever sprang into existence, it may struggle to attract the Gen Y members it desires - especially since they're so content to socialize on the sites they already use. And now that they've added Twitter to that list, the challenge to draw them away to yet another social networking site may prove even more difficult than before.

Note: statistics in this article are from Pew Internet's Recent Report on Twitter for Fall 2009

The MySpace study asked social networking users between the ages of 14 and 21 (aka "Generation Y") questions about their interactions both on social networks and in their real life, too. Some 36% of the respondents said they found it easier to talk about themselves online than in the real world, leading them to share more about themselves using technology. This group also felt that their online friends knew more about them, and so, in a sense, were closer than offline friends because they all knew what was going on in each other's lives.

Outside of the social networking sites, the survey respondents overwhelmingly felt ill-at-ease in social groups. A whopping 72% said they felt "left out" and didn't think they fit into any particular group. More than four-fifths (82%) said they moved between four or more different groups of friends in an effort to find acceptance.

It's not entirely surprising that the younger generation feels this way. The teen years (and young adulthood to some extent) are a time when kids start exploring and experimenting with many different aspects of their personalities as they attempt to solidify who they are and who they will become as adults. What's interesting, though, is how social networking is having an impact on this traditional coming-of-age process. Instead of simply feeling disjointed, confused, and lonely, today's younger generation has an outlet for connecting with their peers which previous generations did not: the internet.

Says Rebekah Horne, MySpace Europe managing director, the study provides insight into how this generation is "using online as a way to explore and settle into their burgeoning identities."

But at what cost?

Will the younger generations remain awkward and shy in the real world as they age, only finding comfort in their interactions that occur online? Or does having an outlet for their feelings simply lessen the blow delivered by the otherwise often harsh process that is growing up?

In many ways, easy access to technology can be seen as both a blessing and a curse for this young group of digital natives. These days, you'll often encounter teens having text message conversations or posting status updates while ignoring the very friends they're present with in the real world. Behavior like this could certainly send a message to the others that they are second priority to whomever else has engaged their friend's attention. That could easily lead to feelings of being "left out" as reported in this study.

And yet, at the same time, it's this very technology that's allowing the teens and young adults to feel like they have friends who know them and care about them.The issue is balancing that online life with the one out in the real world.

The question as to whether this sort of behavior is healthy is one best left to psychologists to analyze and report, but there's no doubt that at the very least, it is having an impact.

Image credit: flickr user Paulo Fehlauer

Grandma and Grandpa showed up to have a conversation, but Billy and Sally were gone. Facebook cannot be excited about this.

According to this data, from Facebook's own ad platform, there are actually fewer high school and college users on Facebook today than there were six months ago.

As you can see in the chart above, young people by age are up a small amount, but young people by school level are down. Users with undeclared education levels are way up, implying that many high school and college students may simply no longer be listing their schools at all on the site. That's a dramatic change too for a site that began as a network for college students. We wouldn't be surprised if Facebook stopped showing advertisers the number of high school and college students soon and relied only on the age distribution.

Who is the company that is presenting these historical numbers? A quick check around the web shows that iStrategyLabs is one of the top sponsors of the Apps for Democracy contest with the D.C. government and company CEO, Peter Corbett, as a judge for the Apps for America project with the Sunlight Foundation - those are some pretty good credentials when it comes to saving a set of numbers accurately for six months. The company's spreadsheet of Facebook data it's captured since October, 2007 is here.

Facebook's communication team told us in response to this comparison that those numbers are "rough, not actual" - but they are going to check on the historical numbers internally and get back to us. Given that the number of male users plus the number of female users adds up to a lower number than the number of users shown when no gender is selected in the advertising platform - we suspect that the numbers Facebook is showing its advertisers are very rough. Users cannot create an account without specifying one gender or another.

We can't help but wonder whether the kinds of privacy measures that Facebook is sticking its toe in the water with right now could have helped six months ago: letting messages be made visible only to limited groups of people instead of all messages going to all your Facebook connections no matter the context. Instead, Facebook seems determined to push everyone into making their content on the site more public, not less. That may not matter if the kids aren't around to be upset. Then the advertisers will be left pitching their products to senior citizen late adopters - and 35 to 54 year old users, now the biggest group on the site.

It's not a pretty picture, but we await further response from Facebook.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_own_estimates_show_youth_flight_from_sit.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_own_estimates_show_youth_flight_from_sit.php Social Networks Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:02:57 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick