You thought the MTV generation had a short attention span? Forget Generation X, a behavioural study published by analysts Future Laboratory on how 3G mobile phones change the way people communicate and create new social trends dubs the new generation of mobile phone users Generation C, with C meaning content.
This new generation (and it's not just the younger demographic) is making use of the technologies available to them not just to interact with each other but to inform and entertain themselves whenever and wherever they are - on demand.
The buzz around 'on demand' has been going for some time now. The big television corporations are taking their first steps into providing their content on demand through digital tv and web platforms.
Last year's Royal Television Society lecture, delivered by Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, highlighted how seriously the Beeb are taking the move to an on demand culture. Focussing on changing user/viewer habits (BBC online and broadcast) he explained how the BBC are reacting to developments in technology to enable them to lead the market in new ways to acquire content 'on demand'.
'On demand changes [everything]. It means you can potentially consume BBC content at a time and on a device which suits you For our licence-payers it means greater convenience and greater value, not because we expect them to consume more content in absolute terms but because we would expect more of the content they do consume to be more directly relevant and attractive to them.'
This expectation of content on demand is beginning to creep into all media. The enormous growth in popularity of podcasts in the mainstream media and video streaming sites shows how web-savvy audiences are becoming comfortable seeking out and downloading content to watch, read and listen to on demand or to take away with them.
It's widely accepted that content is king. As users, we know what we want and we want it to be easy to find and there when we want it. So how will this shift towards an on demand attitude affect the way we design websites?
You could argue that the on demand culture is nothing particularly new. We use the web as a tool, an information resource. When we want to know something we use sites like Google to locate the information we need and navigate there quickly. We get in and get out. The web in this incarnation is not an entertainment driven media. We want to find specific information quickly and easily. We are not browsing on the off chance that something might catch our eye.