

The Generational Divide in Social - JayTe

JiveWorld11 had a number of interesting speakers and round table discussions.  One subject that came up in various forms was the generational divide with social.  It seemed there were two main contexts within which this issue arose.  One was that people at the conference in charge of their companies social marketing sometimes would say that their senior executives didn't understand it and therefore weren't as enthusiastic in supporting it as they'd like.  The second context was if social marketing was actually reaching decision makers as they generally tend to be older.<p>The default assumption that a lot of people at the conference, and the population in general have was that older adults weren't as tech savvy as the younger generation.  Being older myself,this seemed to be an unflattering stereotype. Then, in one of the roundtables, the head of social efforts of Cisco said that their CEO,so far as I know its John Chamber, initially wasn't very enthusiastic about the social efforts and tolerated them more then anything else.<p>Well it was hard for me to confront the stereotype and announce that actually I am tech savvy, I always thought I was, but I was confident that John Chambers is tech savvy.<p>Although I don't accept the stereotype I do accept that there is a generational divide in social. Why?<p>My new hypothesis, after thinking about this question for some time, is that the way my life is organized and that of other people my age is simply different then the lives of those that participate in the social cloud.  For me I would have to change my whole routine, basically live like a fish out of water to engage in the social cloud.  Contrary to the stereotype, people in my generation are actually tech savvy, they just have a different life style and work differently; actually better.
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ggchappell
> I do accept that there is a generational divide in social.

I don't. I think a lot of the issues can be chalked up simply to age. Today's
20-year-olds are not going to change generations. But in 20 years, they will
be 40, and I expect that they will act a lot like today's 40-year-olds when it
happens.

When you're 20, you don't have a lot invested in the world. You have few
assets, no children, etc.; you don't have a lot to lose. If some random person
barges into your life, then there is a good chance that person has something
to offer you. And if they don't, then there isn't much they can take away from
you. But when you're 40, you probably have kids, some assets, some property.
And you've learned that the random person who barges into your life, is
probably trying to rip you off. And they can seriously damage you if they do.
That makes you much more protective of the entrance to your social circle, and
much more wary about marketing of any kind.

Furthermore, for older people, life revolves around family much more. Keeping
a family going, raising kids, etc., take a _lot_ of time and work. That means
you probably don't have so much time -- or desire -- to interact with huge
numbers of people in a cloud-ish setting.

But when social stuff meets the needs of older generations, then they're happy
to use it. I thought we all knew that Facebook is quite popular among 40-year-
old moms.

(By the way, FWIW, I'm 45. Also, I'm not a mom, but I _am_ a dad.)

