While reading the recent Morgan Stanley report on teenage media consumption (previous post) written by a 15 year old intern, it got me thinking. Would I, a man twice his age, have much in common in terms of media consumption?

My girlfriend might suggest that I have more than just media consumption in common with a teenage boy; I’ll try not to go there and stay on topic.

Below I’ve summed up some of the opinions presented in the report and compared them with my own habits. In doing so I was initially surprised at the level of similarities (see table below) while finding the differences more obvious.

Cost is a clear issue for a teenager, where quality is more important for adults. Work/Career is not a consideration for teenagers, but a regular reason for my consumption of media which extends to engagement with some social media.

The high levels of similarities could indicate that:

A) I’m still very much a teenager at heart

B) Our media consumption may be in line with a general trend (at least among 15-35 males)

C) it’s indicative of a wider trend in media consumption/engagement

My personnel view is that ‘C’ is the most likely answer. If differences in consumption brought about by ‘cost’ and ‘career’ are set aside, what is left is not a radical first hand account of a teenage media habits but a fairly typical profile for the media consumption of a technology savvy generation.

At Metrica, as well as conducting our own research into media consumption and lifestyle habits, we always have our ear to the ground and take an interest in news, data and research relating to our relationship with the media.

Frankly, it can sometimes be difficult to keep pace with the plethora of external research and opinion in the professional, academic and online communities.

Given this exposure we can be a cynical bunch, (well, I know I am) but we do bounce emails round the office, share knowledge and argue our relative stances whenever possible.

This week an FT article referenced a recent report produced by Morgan Stanley. The report does not contain the insight of senior analysts, nor a statistically valid data sample from a wide ranging academic study. It simply contains the opinion of a 15 year old intern on the media consumption of the average teenager, more or less in his own style.

It’s notoriously difficult to research the consumer habits, media or otherwise, of a younger teenage audience, so understandably the report is creating a bit of a buzz.

Whether you agree or disagree with his opinions, think the findings obvious, or dislike the fact that there’s no supporting research to validate the findings, it’s refreshing to get a forthright opinion on teenage media consumption from someone who is technically an expert on teens.

A tip of the hat to Morgan Stanley for publishing the report, a link to which can be found here.

Most of us are familiar (addicted to) many social network sites by now. I’ve worked my way through the years and fashions, from Friendsreunited, to Friendster, Myspace and finally, for now, Facebook and Twitter.

Sitting alongside the standard social network sites and the consumer generated media are a number of interesting applications. These allow us to do more with the information that social sites and media sites make available, to add to it, to organise it and to feed into it.

Many apps are fun, more are simply annoying, but once in a while we stumble across one or two that might actually useful.

In no particular order I give you my current favourite web based social media apps and mashups.

Google Latitude

The latest craze in the social network sphere is GPS. Google have launched a new update to the popular Google maps app that lets you view the position of your friends via your mobile phone or PC. Use it to see who’s just round the corner and available for a drink, or to find out if that late for work colleague really is stuck on the train.

Tabbloid

First there was printed news, then printed news went online, then tehre was consumer generated media online, and now you can have your online only consumer generated news sent to you electronically each day as a .pdf to read in print. New skool news, old skool format…are you keeping up?

Trendrr

Data fiend? Just can’t get enough stats and charts? Simply type in search terms you want to compare and Trendrr pulls information from news sites, social networks, search engines, aggregators, and other sources. It populates hundreds of preset charts, tables and graphs. Sit back, browse, find what you need and share. It’s the no sweat approach to online data analytics. Information is largely simple, but can be interesting.

Digg

Digg is old news, but it serves up new and interesting news. Can you Digg it? Yes you can and thousands do. Many news sites offer a Digg function where you register your interest in a story, alternatively you can do this through the Digg site. The more people do this the higher up the ranking the news goes.

TweetNews

This site combines articles appearing on Yahoo news with what’s being talked about on Twitter. A simple search function provides insight into the level of comments on Twitter, looking at the relationship between the two could push stories to the fore as soon as they break.

Cursebird

When is comes to social networking apps there’s the good, the bad and the ugly…and then there’s Cursebird. This application pulls feeds from all non private Twitter posts (that’s most of them) searches them for expletives and collates them in real-time. Useful? Not really. Funny…you bet your @ss. Office safe..unlikely.

Some other sites of note

Yammer

Like Twitter but for business. Yammer focuses on organisation, and only individuals with the same corporate email address can join a given network

Twittersheep 

Enter your Twitter username to see a word cloud based on the bios of your twitter flock.

Tweetlater

Set up your tweets now for automatic posting later.

Wordle

Quickly generate a tag cloud from any URL page

Social Mention

Who is being mentioned where in social media, quick multiple media type search.

We'd be intrested to hear about the latest sites and social media apps that you're using.

There are many sites and technologies out there which search and aggregate news content and most do it pretty well.

Various news search engines have come and gone over the years, or adapted and presented the news in a variety of different ways, the most well known examples being Google news and Yahoo news. They both use a similar technique to sort out what news is newsworthy - the process by which news is pushed to the top of the agenda is based around proprietary algorithms that take into account factors such as recency and topicality (number of similar stories).

Sites such as Digg and Newsvine take this concept further.  They don't rely on search and feeds, but instead use the power of human referrals.  As readers express interest in an online news article, through a simple click ('digging' the article), it rises up the agenda and therefore in importance on the site. The user can be passive, sitting back and reading items pushed towards the top of the listings, or they have the power to influence what others read by effectively 'voting'.

Both models have many benefits, which is why they are successful.  But, such models struggle to identify the breaking news as it breaks. Both systems are held back because of the time it takes to gain the weight of numbers to push a story to the fore - be that the bespoke algorithm of the search site or number of votes on Digg type sites.

But recently, more and more prominence has been paid to the fact that true social networks, such as Twitter can break and develop news stories.  The plane ditching in the Hudson River, the Mumbai hotel attacks, and the China earthquake are both well known examples.  Here's Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC's technology correspondent, explaining how Twitter broke the news to him

of the plane incident and the renewed concerns over the health of Steve Jobs of Apple.  In previous articles he has discussed Twitter's influence in both the the China earthquake and the Mumbai attacks. 

The problem as he explains in the Mumbai article is how do the audience know who to believe?  What's truthful, and what's not? Who is credible and who is not?  Who can we trust, and who should we ignore?

Sometimes you just have to let it all out... Here's an interesting rant about ROI by Gary Vaynerchuck. He talks directly to the marketing and advertising community, but I think what he has to say is relevant to PR.

In a stalling economy, where marketing and PR budgets may suffer, you need to get more bang for your buck. You need to maximize your Return On Investment.

Major newspapers and magazines are suffering declining readerships, though advertising in them can still cost a small fortune. Audiences are becoming more and more fragmented as the number of media outlets and formats grow: it's getting harder to reach them through traditional channels.

However, every cloud has a silver lining. The eyeballs haven't gone away, they've simply moved to other media channels. There's a major movement to online media and also of course to social media. The fragmentation of the audience actually provides those in advertising, marketing and PR with the ability to more precisely identify, target and reach the right audience.

Going online, undertaking sophisticated pr planning, carefully researching and targeting the correct audiences and focusing your spending and campaigns better will provide optimum 'bang for buck' and ultimately a great ROI.

It's time for a little interactivity.

As an agency we work for a number of clients large and small, some projects are complex and multifaceted, some simple and very focused. Most studies have the commonality that we track message pickup. The average message pickup varies dependent on a number of factors, not least by industry. Check out the Metrica numbers report for some specifics.

In the meantime...what do you feel the optimum number of messages to clearly communicate for an organization is? Too many and focus is lost, the key messages might not come to the fore, some messages may not get picked up at all. Or, maybe too little and the organisation may be viewed as a one trick pony, or the message simply becomes a tagline?

For the results of this poll please go here.