Teen’s revelations shake up financial world
p2pnet news view Cool | P2P:- “Revelations” from a 15-year-old in Briton apparently have “middle-aged media executives and investors” all hot and bothered.
But to anyone who’s been online for more than 10 minutes, the revelations might seem to be mostly obvious.
The person causing all the fuss is Matthew Robson, taken on as an intern at Morgan Stanley, the “banking giant” said by the Daily Mail to have handed out, ” £2.4billion in bonuses to its City workers just months after being bailed out by the U.S. government”.
“Beleaguered Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley is planning to pay its 5,000 London staff an average of just over £53,000 each, despite the current financial crisis,” says the story, also noting, “It comes just a day after Goldman Sachs revealed it is paying a staggering £4.3billion in bonuses to its staff - despite posting its first quarterly loss in a decade.”
Now, “A research note written by a 15-year-old, who was not born when former UK chancellor Nigel Lawson dismissed London analysts as “teenage scribblers”, has become the talk of middle-aged media executives and investors,” says the Financial Times, going on »»»
Morgan Stanley’s European media analysts asked Matthew Robson, one of the bank’s interns from a London school, to describe his friends’ media habits. His report proved to be “one of the clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen. So we published it,” said Edward Hill-Wood, head of the team.
The response was enormous. “We’ve had dozens and dozens of fund managers, and several CEOs, e-mailing and calling all day,” said Mr Hill-Wood, 35, estimating that the note had generated five or six times more feedback than the team’s usual reports.
However, he made no claims for its statistical rigour.
As elderly media moguls gathered at the Allen & Co conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, to fawn over Twitter and fret over their business models, Mr Robson set out a sobering case that tomorrow’s consumers are using more and more media but are unwilling to pay for it.
Among Matthew’s thoughts in Media & Internet How Teenagers Consume Media »»»
Most teenagers enjoy and support viral marketing, as often it creates humorous and interesting content. Teenagers see adverts on websites (pop ups, banner ads) as extremely annoying and pointless, as they have never paid any attention to them and they are portrayed in such a negative light that no one follows them.
Absolutely. p2pnet has been saying that for years. But don’t tell Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, et al. If their advertisers ever learn interaction and co-operation rather than trickery and DPI are where it’ s at …
On music »»»
Teenagers listen to a lot of music, mostly whilst doing something else (like travelling or using a computer). This makes it hard to get an idea of the proportion of their time that is spent listening to music.
They are very reluctant to pay for it (most never having bought a CD) and a large majority (8/10) downloading it illegally from file sharing sites. Legal ways to get free music that teenagers use are to listen to the radio, watch music TV channels (not very popular, as these usually play music at certain times, which is not always when teenagers are watching) and use music streaming websites (as I mentioned previously).
Almost all teenagers like to have a ‘hard copy’ of the song (a file of the song that they can keep on their computer and use at will) so that they can transfer share it with friends.
What else is new?
On computers »»»
Computers: Every teenager has access to a basic computer with internet, but most teenagers computers are systems capable of only everyday tasks. Nearly all teenagers’ computers have Microsoft office installed, as it allows them to do school work at home. Most (9/10) computers owned by teenagers are PCs, because they are much cheaper than Macs and school computers run Windows, so if a Mac is used at home compatibility issues arise.
Games »»»
Games Consoles: Close to 1/3 of teenagers have a new (<2 ½ years old) games console, 50% having a Wii, 40% with an Xbox 360 and 10% with a PS3. The PS3 has such a low figure because of its high price (£300) and similar features and games to an Xbox 360, which costs less (£160). The Wii’s dominance is due to younger brothers and sisters, they have a Wii and parents are not willing to pay for another console.
And what, according to Matthew, is hot? »»»
What’s Hot?
- Anything with a touch screen is desirable.
- Mobile phones with large capacities for music.
- Portable devices that can connect to the internet (iPhones)
- Really big tellies
Good one, Matthew. 
Daily Mail – Morgan Stanley plans to pay £2.4bn in bonuses despite needing £6.4bn bail out from taxpayers, December 17, 2008
Financial Times – Note by ‘teenage scribbler’ causes sensation, July 12, 2009
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July 14th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
“What’s Hot?”
And what’s not?