Category: Friday Five

Friday Five: Net neutrality edition

In case you missed it — or maybe you were too preoccupied with all of the silly llama drama to notice — the FCC approved net neutrality rules on Thursday. The rules classify Internet providers as public utilities, which means they will be subject to federal regulations as telephone companies are. “The Internet is simply too important to allow broadband providers to be the ones making the rules,” said FCC chair Tom Wheeler.

What does it all mean? Here are five stories related to the ruling:

Netflix is happy. The streaming video service classified the FCC ruling as a big win for consumers — and just in time for “House of Cards” season three. (Related: I hope this means a greater selection of movies.)

Big tech isn’t. Not so long ago, Google execs “would have been popping champagne corks” in celebration of the FCC ruling. Not so today. “The short answer is that Google grew up,” writes Fortune’s Tory Newmyer. “Its transformation into a corporate colossus reordered its Washington agenda as it rapidly assembled a lobbying apparatus to promote it.”

The Dutch, who’ve had net neutrality for two years, seem OK with it. The New York Times looks at the impact similar regulations have had on the Netherlands, a country of 17 million people about the size of Maryland.

Obama: “Thanks, reddit!” The president expressed his appreciation for the reddit community’s support of net neutrality with a handwritten note. “Wish I could upvote every one of you for keeping the internet open and free.”

The John Oliver effect. Perhaps the most interesting angle to this story is the speculation that HBO’s John Oliver played a substantial role in at least raising the visibility of net neutrality beyond the view of a few policy wonks and telecom execs. Last June, he pleaded with viewers to contact the FCC about net neutrality. Thousands did.

Friday Five: Millennials (still) rising edition

It’s 2015, but here in Marketing World we’re still obsessing over Millennials like it’s 1999.

If you think these are Millennials, then you haven't been paying attention
If you think these are Millennials, then you haven’t been paying attention

Who knew that the most over-analyzed generation in history was still a thing?

Think tanks and marketers and brands and journalists and brand journalists, that’s who.

To wit:

  1. First up is FastCompany, which never misses an opportunity to flog a trend into the ground. In How Brands Can Attract Millennials Looking for Meaningful Work, published on the magazine’s Co.EXIST site, suggests that “mission-driven” (?) brands consider “non-monetary forms of compensation that they can offer, like a sense of purpose, opportunities for growth, and a quality work culture” as incentives for attracting Millennial workers. Meanwhile, a recent article on Money.com suggests that Millennials increasingly link money to fulfillment. Like many of the rest of us, Millennials probably just want to do meaningful work and be well-compensated for it.
  2. Move over, Baby Boomers. The Millennial Generation will finally outnumber Boomers in the U.S. in 2015, according to the Census Bureau and as reported by the Pew Research Center. This year, 75.3 million Americans will be Millennials, while 74.9 million will be Baby Boomers. Immigration has helped to boost the number of Millennials.
  3. On the news beat, the world of newspapers is still trying to figure out how to get Millennials to pay attention to local news. Neiman Lab reports on how one newspaper, the Charlotte Observer, is trying something new with an online site called Charlotte Five. One strategy of this new push is to publish what the Observer‘s director of digital strategy, Ted Williams, calls “Seinfeld Journalism,” aka “stuff people talk about but isn’t really news,” just as the TV series Seinfeld was described as “a show about nothing.” Hmmm. A news model based on a 1990s sitcom? That could be a winner. (Related: Will Millennials cough up money for media? This report projects that millennials will spend, on average, more than $300 in 2015 for pay TV, $125 on music and $100 on gaming, but only $19 on newspapers.)
  4. Millennials are redefining what adulthood means, says Kim Parker, director of social media research trends for Pew Research Center, in this snack-sized New York Times op-ed. They face economic challenges but are “stubbornly optimistic” about the future.
  5. Social media, from a Millennial’s perspective. An “actual teen” (a 19-year-old college student, on the young end of the Millennial generation) wrote this piece about what teenagers think about social media. It’s insightful if not somewhat predictable: Facebook is “dead to us” but something everyone still needs, like a P.O. Box; Instagram is popular and free (so far) from spammy BuzzFeed quizzes; Twitter seems pointless; and LinkedIn was something “we have to get,” so “we got it.”
  6. Bonus read: Move over, Millennials. We’re so over you.