The importance of 13 year old white girls to your Blog Network
If you took a second to look at my bio you will see that I come from the music business.
When I got my first job at Warner Brothers (WEA) my boss told me something I have never forgotten. Write it down.
The difference between being famous and being a superstar is 13 year old white girls.
Nas is famous. Jay-Z is a superstar. The Strokes are famous. Lenny Kravitz is a superstar. Madonna=Superstar. Shakira=Famous
You see 13 year old white girls love their artists. They buy records (er, I mean CDs and downloads) and buy magazines with their stars pictures on them and watch tv shows with their artists on them and make the world unsafe for grownups.
Now here’s a secret. You can’t target 13 year old white girls. If you do you will eventually lose because they are fickle. (See Backstreet Boys/NSync/98degrees, etc.) You have to first have your core audience to fall back on and all the fans you managed to get because of the media push caused by the 13 year old white girl phenom.
Now what does this mean to blog network owners?
If you own a blog network you have to spend most of your time getting your core audience. But if you really want to monitize you have to reach the 13 year old white girl of the internet.
Now who are the 13 year old white girls of the internet? (Could they be actual 13 year old white girls? Hmmm, maybe…look at instant messaging. Look at cell phones. Who made those things ubiquitous?)
Or are they someone else. Why is Flickr growing by leaps and bounds while other websites flounder. Why is MySpace worth millions while Friendster flounders?
January 18, 2006 at 4:13 pm
Great post man, its a breath of fresh air reading your blog.
January 18, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Well this was a great post, good thing you commented on my site chartreuse, otherwise i wouldn’t have found it. Can Flickr be attributed to 13 year old girls? Do they share THAT many photos?
Friendster has no value in the fact that it is slow, not targetted at anyone in specific, and hasn’t kept up.
January 18, 2006 at 4:37 pm
But would there have been a MySpace without Friendster. Actually, word on the street is after Viacom took a pass the folks at Friendster are now in desperate mode to sell.
http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2006_01_11.shtml (scroll about halfway down the page)
Back to the 13 year old girls. If they are not driving Flickr then who is? Will they discover it? Does that mean that Flickr has the chance of becoming more valuable? Or is it a passing fade ala Friendster?
Network owners need to find the 13 year girl of the internet if hope to grow.
January 18, 2006 at 4:48 pm
was friendster really the FIRST social networking site? and maybe you’re right, there would be no myspace w/out friendster, but who cares. Do you want that Tom guy from myspace to give friendster some money for inspiring his millions?
I think flickr as it is right now has NOT reached its potential, i think they still have to find the 13 year old girl who uses photobucket or shutterfly or ofoto and convert her/them to flickr. but as you said before, they can’t target them. the SMART thing to do: pay boyband of the week to post a series of tour photos on flickr. bam plain and simple. i should get ten grand for that
January 18, 2006 at 5:50 pm
maybe you should…
January 18, 2006 at 9:25 pm
Even for me living with the net for 9-10, years my kids who are 10 and 11 freak me, for example to them the only way to get music is to download it, they look at me like i am from another plantet if i mention the fun i had looking for new punk bands in red rhino records in the late 70’s !. Yes i download ,music but i am web savvy, , many of my friends will only buy a cd from a store. This next generation will work with the web in a different way to us, i am just trying like hell to figure some of it out and hopefully get my bit.
January 18, 2006 at 6:24 pm
Actually Dave you are at an advantage. I have no one near 13 yo living with me so I have no idea what they are thinking or what’s important to them.
February 7, 2006 at 10:03 am
[...] Because the kids will and as I was taught a long time ago, 13 year old white girls run the world. [...]
February 24, 2006 at 1:01 pm
[...] I got bugged by friends to join MySpace. So I joined. One word. Over-rated. I pop in about once a week to see what’s happening. Since I’m not a 13 year old white girl I don’t really care about it. MySpace is a lot of noise about a lot of noise. It’s not hard to see it falling apart. Note to uncool people who make stuff: If everybody talks about it, it’s not worth talking about. [...]
April 5, 2006 at 8:41 pm
hi all, i need friend for chatof yahoomessenger ,i can not speaking english
i am in asia now
May 29, 2006 at 8:55 pm
im 13 i need a girl
September 2, 2007 at 1:37 am
how you are doing in do you girls have a man in if you what to have sex that good
October 23, 2007 at 10:07 pm
[...] If you care at all about hip hop and marketing, I encourage you to read the post (and the blog) here. « Peace in the Wu [...]
October 27, 2007 at 3:08 am
[...] the difference between going gold and multi-platinum doesn’t depend on hip hop fans, but 13 year old girls. They’re aware that in order to go platinum there are going to be some songs that they have to [...]
December 28, 2007 at 6:40 am
hi :evil
March 5, 2008 at 5:40 pm
As a 14 year old white girl, I can agree whole-heartedly with this. I’m a little more indie, I suppose–but really, the fans even market their bands to other 13 year old white girls.
*sigh*
April 27, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Ha ha ha… I am a 13 year old white girl. No joke. I am your target audience. ha ha ha….
June 4, 2008 at 3:46 pm
iam14yearsoldwhite girl
September 30, 2008 at 4:40 am
You’re site sucks. You are a moron.