Sitting on the deck the other evening with my 24 year-old daughter and her boyfriend, a San Francisco entrepreneur working on a real estate/apartment finder app — while I grilled dinner I also grilled them on social media trends within their social and professional circles. Both are digitally driven individuals who have known a world that always had an Internet. He’s on a divided platform of MacAir and Android phone, she’s a follower of the Apple Holy Trinity of MacAir, iPhone5 and iPad2.
- Both are Gmail users. She left Yahoo. And despite the Apple hardware, does not use Apple cloud services or email.
- Both use Snapchat
- Dropbox
- Are not fans of iTunes
- Both dispute the popular myth of twenty-somethings fleeing Facebook as it gets infested by their parents. “Can’t survive without it, though everyone disses it and says they are going to cancel their accounts,” said he.
- Twitter is not a big thing for them personally, but he’s respectful of its marketing power
- He is a content marketing practitioner and showed me an infographic developed with his PR firm to support his app launch
- Both admit to being overwhelmed by the proliferation of social apps, networks, etc.
- I didn’t ask about Google + usage.
- Laptop and tablet use was pretty low during their ten day vacation. Phones were consulted constantly with few phone calls observed.
Interesting points I took away from this survey sample of two are:
- Both are very concerned about personal information security, hence the quick adoption of Snapchat which makes an image expire and notifies the sender if a recipient takes a screen shot.
- Facebook is tired, but central to their sharing and personal network maintenance. I thought they would long gone from there.
- Both said they are tired of keeping up with all the options and new technology available to them