3Cinteractive Blog

I had been spending the past several weeks without an iPhone, and yesterday I felt a bit “out-of-touch.” I thought to myself: no one else was affected by my phone being stolen, and I’ve replaced it with a temporary standard-issue phone, so why the big deal? Then… my 3 year-old phone lit-up with my morning text message from IWantSandy. After painfully navigating through the interface I found my text message and wrote down my to-do list. That’s when I realized my phone wasn’t meant for email or text messaging.

Generation Y has been touted as the “impossible to reach” generation, and much of this stems from theories that Gen Y has become numb to the inbox. I still check and read most of the e-mails that hit my inbox, but even when I had my iPhone, it was not a regular habit. Most of the Gen-Yers I know carry BlackBerrys, and they still aren’t big on e-mail, so I find this to be relatively true.

As I finished my IWantSandy list, I scanned through several other text messages and realized my T9-less phone was limiting my ability to stay-in-touch. I know that each e-mail that lands in my inbox is important, but there are enough of these “important” e-mails that it’s necessary to have a different medium for the absolutely-time-critical information.

New theories suggest that we’re all stuck in MySpace or Facebook. I think this is true but, thanks to the Facebook-job-screening phenomenon, we’re a bit more selective with our connections. If you don’t have a compelling Facebook application, you’re not getting through. Even as a regular Facebook user, I manage most of my Facebook information through their extremely robust SMS service.

While Facebook and Twitter are two places marketers believe we’re hiding, the truth is, we’re all stuck in our mobile phones. Facebook is great for keeping in touch with friends, but much of the communication is voyeuristic. There are really two forms of communication through Facebook: wall-posts/comments and direct messages. I would include Facebook Chat, but the service is choppy and most people prefer AIM. Wall-posts and direct messages are treated much like e-mail: a response time of several days is appropriate. This will only vary if the user has Facebook Mobile (SMS) activated. Twitter is very similar, but much more free-form: not every “@” reply is going to be answered.

So, I say Gen Y is stuck in their mobile phones because each of these services - including my earlier example about IWantSandy - encourage users to filter important information to their phones. In my opinion, Twitter sets the bar by letting users select which individual’s status messages will reach your phone.

It took a 3 year-old phone for me to realize “checking your vitals” is “so last year.” The new trend involves mass consumption filtered into different channels (Blogs, RSS, Facebook, e-mail, Twitter, SMS). Gen-Yers, myself included, have packed these mediums with hundreds of feeds and friends to maximize their information and selectively tuned their filters to receive only the most important items to their phone. So, now you all know where we’re hiding.

- Ainsworth