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What the cool kids are doing online (and it's not Facebook anymore)
Published: 8/28/2012 11:00 AM
Last Modified: 8/27/2012 10:52 PM

I got a news tip from my 16-year-old niece recently.

"I'm not on Facebook anymore," she told me. "Nobody is."

Since I see many high school and college-age students, plus a lot of parents, reading their Facebook walls anytime they have a spare second, I was a little surprised.

I asked her why?

"Too. Much. Drama."

So what are you doing on your phones all the time?

"Twitter and Instagram," she said. "So much better."

After getting this tip, I have asked around to other cool kids to see if she and her friends are alone. The number of Facebook active users is still bigger than some small countries, so I wasn't sure if I believed it was the next Myspace just yet.

According to a lot of conversations with area teenagers, college students and parents, it seems they are not alone.

"She told me she and her friends aren't on it because 'that's where all the old people are,'" one parent told me.

A couple of celebrities have left the social network recently and a quick search found articles headlined everything from "10 ways leaving Facebook changed my life" to "Teens turn from Facebook to fresher social-media sites."

I teach a class at Oklahoma State University that focuses on the Internet. For the past five years, I have included a question that always leads to answers that surprise me.

The question is: "Would you pay for Facebook? Why or why not?"

In five years, although more than 70 percent say they use it on a regular basis, no more than 5 percent said they would be willing to pay for Facebook.

This semester, the results are in. Only two of the 18 students said they would pay for it.

Here's what they said:

"Probably, because I would be out of the loop on a lot of stuff without it."

"If it was a couple bucks, probably."

One of the students, who even said a relative worked for Facebook, said she didn't feel compelled to pay.

"No, I don't need Facebook to be successful (right now anyways, as a cheap college student.)"

Here are what some of the others who said no had to say:

"I don't believe that its service is unique enough to warrant paying."

"There are other free ways to communicate to others. Plus, I don't want to pay to stalk people."

"Another website would offer the service for free. Plus Facebook makes billions in ads and selling personal information."

"I think there are better social networking sites out there. However, I wouldn't pay for them either."

"I really only use Facebook to look at people's pictures, and I already know what all my friends look like."

Remember, most of these students said they use Facebook on a regular basis. So if the majority of the most regular users to the site won't pay, what does that tell you about its future?

With its recent dive since going public, investors are asking the same question.

News & Technology recently said about 300 newspapers in the United States are now charging a fee to read their digital content. Many of those are using a metered system like the Tulsa World has in place. Nonsubscribers get 10 free page views to read locally produced stories every 30 days on tulsaworld.com, while online classifieds are free.

One of the reasons why newspapers have done this is to continue to provide the kind of journalism their readers expect. Just like in every industry on the planet, the digital era is changing things.

The statement has been made and for decades it's been proved that people are willing to pay for things they value. Thanks to the success we have had going to the metered model, we believe it's true.

I'm not saying the results in my little surveys each semester are a harbinger to what's to come for a company that is posting a profit.

I'm just saying that Facebook and other media companies are going to face a different kind of customer in the future, based on how they act now.

Maybe Facebook is disco: Our grandkids will ask if we used to do it and laugh if we said we did.

Keeping up with the cool kids is always a hard thing to do. They are a restless bunch, but with so many choices in this digital era, it will be interesting where they will have us go next.

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228576 (6 months ago)

Whether it's Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, most people have nothing of interest to say. My cousin's last Facebook post was that she was at the dental office. A friend's cat died. Another cousin posted that she loved her sister. I usually don't go looking for ways to be bored. That's why I seldom look at Facebook anymore. The people who post on the World's stories are a whole lot funnier. At first, people used Facebook to reconnect with people they'd lost track of. Now that they have, they realize they have little to say to each other. As someone once said, of all the "friends" you have on Facebook, is there one person who could call if you had a flat?

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Press Forward

The focus of this blog is to write about what we are doing at the Tulsa World to continue to serve readers in a digital age and how the Internet is changing journalism.

Jason Collington is the web editor at the Tulsa World, where he works on the company's digital products with a team of four web designers, two web production techs, a web content coordinator, a web advertising coordinator and nine web developers. Before moving to web editor in 2006, he was the web content coordinator for tulsaworld.com.

He also teaches a class at his alma mater, Oklahoma State University, called Internet Communications, where students learn to use online tools to create offline results.

Follow Jason Collington on Twitter

Contact by email: jason.collington@tulsaworld.com

What I read

Poynter Institute: Dedicated to teaching and inspiring journalists and media leaders

Gangrey: Great narrative journalism

Nieman Journalism Lab: Pushing to the future of journalism

David Carr: NY Times media columnist

Jim Romenesko: Latest media news

SmartBrief: Business of News

Reynold Journalism Institute: Ideas, experiments, research and solutions in journalism

Advertising Age: Ad and marketing news

Digital Desk: Everything you ever wanted to know about NewsOK.com

Freedom of Information Oklahoma: News about public records and opening meetings

The Daily O'Collegian: OSU's student newspaper

MediaStorm: Incredible videos

Fast Company: Design and tech

Inc Magazine: Tech advice

David Pogue: NY Times tech columnist

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