Thursday, November 4, 2010

MTV launches MTVPlay.in For Insight Into The ‘Universe of Young’

MTV has launched a new website, MTVPlay.in, which it is touting as an online destination for people looking to find out more about the ‘youth’ and gain insights into their behaviour. If you’re a brand, product, category manager or just someone who refuses to act his/her age you might be interested in this site. Now, where is MTV getting these insights from? Crowdsourcing is the answer to everything these days and the Viacom18 channel is tapping into its own online community – MTV iSpeak – for answers. The community has 100+ members (109 according to its Facebook Page), from over 10 cities, that were handpicked to be a part of it. Talk about being exclusive!

When I read this I was a little concerned as to how they planned to rely on a group of 100 odd individuals to represent the largest demography of our oh-so-populated country? Turns out, the immediate output of this community is researched by Third Eye and MTV Consumer Insights Desk. Their research will be substantiated by MTV’s own Indian and International Research.

The flash based website, designed like a desk cluttered with gadgets, scribbled notes and money, reminds me of my study table during my hostel days.It is divided into sections like – Youth Talk, College Matters, Laws of Chilling, Career Conflicts etc. A lot of ‘fundas’ interspersed with corny one liners that you would normally see on email/text forwards and more recently, status updates.I did manage to kill 30 minutes on it, reading every leaf, every scribbled note. End result – some laughs and a lot of eye rolling.

MTVPlay

Coming to the business side of things, I was curious to see what kind of insights they would offer that would genuinely be of help to any brand, product, marketer etc. Keep an eye out for the little orange floating pencil – MTV says. It presents you with a qualitative write-up about the section of the website you’re in. This is also where all that ‘insight’ we were promised lies.

The other thing that came to my mind was what advantages does it really offer over any  insight developed form Social Media Data Mining at large. Aren’t people(’youth’ included less likely to articulate their real thoughts if they know that they are being watched in a closed community? Won’t a wider pool give us a clearer overall picture?

Do you think this site can offer you valuable insight into the behaviour and attitude of today’s younger generation? Let us know!

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Categories: News, Web
Tags: closed community, data mining, exclusive, facebook, iSpeak, mtv, MTVPlay, MTVPlay.in, qualitiative market research, Third Eye, viacom18, youth

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