Content in the Emerging World of Digital Natives by: Matt Hong

Todd’s commentary: This was among my favorite presentations at the conference, because it re-introduced an idea that is certainly worth revisiting. The ideas brought about by “digital natives” vs. “digital immigrants” is fundamental to understanding your user base on the web, and how they learn. There are some very interesting concepts in relation to these ideas that are often underexplored by web publishers. I am lucky enough to be a “digital ex-pat” – meaning I didn’t grow up with the new school learning while in school (rendering much of my education useless) – but I have highly embraced the digital world learning since my formal education. Thankfully, gives me some insights and understanding of both worlds – and the newfound understanding of this digital divide will make it easier to bridge that gap and market to the different levels of “natives”. Matt did an excellent job of presenting a VERY relevant concept to the group with the ways that it applied to their situations.

Content in the Emerging World of Digital Natives

Matt Hong, VP Thomson Gale

Thomson Gale – traditional provider of reference material to library, and business

Distinguishing characteristics:
Human sales force
Enterprise customer
Customer does not equal end user
Traditional utilization of this business model has caused some companies to have less than ideal knowledge of the behavior of end users of their products and services.

Internet sales channel
Direct to end user; no enterprise intermediary
Customer = end user

End user segmentation: Digital Immigrants v. Digital Natives

Digital Immigrant: individuals who were not born into the digital worl, but have emigrated to it

Digital Native: – further definition – see Mark prensky – digital natives, digital immigrants

Generation Y, Millennial, MyPod Generation: Generation of individuals born from 1978/ 1998 – approximately 76million
Mark Prensky

The world of digital natives is no longer “emerging”

The recent digital revolution has helped to create new and distinct behavior among certain end user demographs

Differences in User behavior between the two user groups.

Traditional value chain for information offerings
The components of the traditional value chain still apply; however the makeup of each component is shifting

How is content changing?
Content creators
57% of online teens create content for the internet
· Myspace
· Youtube
· Flickr
62% of content viewed by online users under the age of 21 is generated by someone they know.

Shift in content from authoritative to user-generated.

Tools and digital natives
Personalization and expression
MyYahoo
RSS
Avatars

Storing
Purchase history and search history
Furl and google notebook

Tagging
Yahoo myweb, flickr, and delicious

Collaboration and sharing
Wikis
Instant messaging
Virtual study groups

Internet as Primary Resource
71% of students reported using the internet as the major source of their recent school project

Internet as Workflow solution
Google, wikipedia, and facebook are used heavily
73% of college students reported using internet more than the library About 85% of supported colleges have a profile on facebook

Summary and conclusions
Move to web creates need for better understanding of user behavior The World of digital natives is already here and is a new core market
Digital revolution has creted new and distinct end user behavior
Components of traditional value chain still apply; the makeup of each component is changing
Growing disconnect between traditional information solutions and user behavior of digital natives:
· Authoritative v. user generated content
· Web 2.0 tools
· Internet as the workflow

Offer options or market segmented offerings based on different end user demographics and behavior

Continue to focus on, develop and utilize core competencies and differentiators.