Campus Entrepreneurship

This post over at Feld Thoughts gives great insights into the use of social networks and music consumption. Moreover, the focus group took place at U of Michigan (I am an alumn).  Here are five insights from the blog post,

1. I asked how many of them used other social networks, or similar things, Flickr, Twitter, etc..  Shockingly 2 people indicated they used Twitter, 10 used MySpace about 20 used Flickr.  I was blown away.  My guess would be that they were using several networks.  MySpace was deemed “has been” material. Even for pictures, they are all using Facebook.
2. I asked how much of their “email” traffic was on Facebook and the vast majority said somewhere around 20% and growing. Many of they wanted my opinion on the Microsoft investment with most everyone thinking it was stupid. None of them could think of an applicable business model for Facebook and they all claimed they’d seen little to no advertising.  This was interesting in that there was a strong visceral reaction to the MSFT investment.
3. I asked how many of them “bought music legally.”  No more that 15-20% indicated that they bought music legally.
4. I asked how many of them “stole music” – 100%.  And all but a couple indicated that a majority of their music was stolen.
5. Biggest concern of stealing music was not getting caught, it was that they “felt badly” for stealing it.