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Bay Area teens comment on mobile and location-based services
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The WCA invited Melissa, Kelsey, Max, Katie and Michael
to talk about mobile apps and Location-Based Services
"Don't worry too much about this privacy thing," Melissa, 18, said to a local Wireless Communications Alliance (WCA) LBS SIG audience of mobile and location-based services experts in Palo-Alto last week. You do have privacy concerns when you are 16 the previous generation did not have, but this is not the main criteria when adopting and using a new application, according to those five Bay Area teens.
We did not need text and look at what we do today
Google maps, Google Earth, getting directions and local movies schedule are the top four applications the teens understood when they first heard of "location." Interestingly enough, the Find-your-friends application, aimed at locating friends in your area, was at first welcomed with skepticism: "I do not need it, I could send a "where r u" text to my friend," said Kelsey, 16.
However after a few comments on what the service could do, it won two enthusiastic votes. Both Michael and Melissa ended up saying they would use such a location-base service to connect with "Facebook friends" they do not know well but who happen to be in the same area, to hang out with them and get to know them better.
Like texting adoption process, strong early adopters (like self-proclaimed "Facebook stalker" Melissa) are likely to show their friends how to use new services and could pull the application to its tipping point faster than any marketing campaign. "I did not know what it was before coming here, but now I want it," Melissa said.
How unlimited saved parents' wallets
"Tell them how many text messages you send per month," said Kelsey's Dad. Kelsey confessed 4,000 text per month, while her Dad rolled his eyes to the sky - he paid the first bills, then quickly switched to an unlimited text plan. "I do not know what I'd do without unlimited," Max,16, said. "The first time I had a $200 bill for text only," said Gigi Wan, Max' mother and the co-chair of the MIT/VLab Stanford.
Email and voice are so last century
Most teens do not remember when and how they starting texting. "It was one minute of weirdness and then I got it," Michael, 17, said. "I started texting at a time they called it a SMS," Max said, triggering laughs in the telecom savvy audience.
Emails are just for schools, job applications. "You have to get an email address to register to Facebook," pointed out Katie, 16.
Voice? For communication with adults, "technology inapt people like my Mum", Melissa said, or emotional people like girls, Michael said.
To tweet or not to tweet? Just starting Twitter
The teens of the panel did not see the point of using Twitter, which confirms other observations Twitter is more a broadcast marketing and adult thing, people who are not on Facebook, for now. Instant messaging and status updates have always been part of teens' Facebook life, thanks to the Facebook Chat application, "14 hours a day" said Melissa. Melissa has more than 600 Facebook friends. When exposed to the idea of broadcasting her status updates to all her friends' mobiles and more all at the same time, she said she will try it. Watch out...
