The problem with "Millenials" as a demographic label is it's too easy to market to them. These kids'll take any trinket virtual worlds experience that falls out of a cornflake packet and lap it up. Well that's what the marketers will have us believe - and well educators... every next generation is millenial to them :P

Truth is I've two millenial siblings and have often hung out with them and their friends being the "cool adult" of the Gen X (rather than boomer generation of our parents), and I've found them to be just as exploratory as we were in the punk period.

The problem is we're too damn old, and we have no idea what they're up to. Old farts in the marketing industry imagine that their attraction to tightly structured spaces means they like them that way - not true. They gravitate towards tightly focused products (and virtual worlds) because these are well developed, work, and are solid enough to engage in the meta-game. They're actually savy consumers.

Second life, and the more ambitious virtual world projects, simply aren't finished. Tighter focused worlds and games are. These kids can sniff beta a mile off, and if they've explored anything online off the beaten track they've probably beta tested something more exciting than a general purpose virtual world. Where's the payoff? They're probably happier moving fast and free with a couple of social network profiles so they can flashmob whatever's interesting this week with their significant friends network. Their own peers are a far more potent marketing force than anything _we_ can throw at them.

One thing they'll always like though is causal worlds and games - they're good for a spot of chat and tinker here and there. So effectively they're doing in cutting edge flash based worlds what your aunt is doing with email and solitaire - goofing off. But we keep hearing that is the primary focus of "what they like".... nah it's faffing... they're a lot more interesting than that.

Frankly I don't think we give the millenials nearly as much respect as they deserve. There's a lot of hand flapping about what they like (crap we obligingly give em) and who they are (too dull to know it's crap), but in my own experience hanging out with them, they're way undersold on those fronts. It's just marketers and educators looking for simple answers to complex questions.

My experience of the millenials; surrounded by them at a party downloading dead kennedys on kazza, cleverly deconstructing the way that the cynical record industry tries to sell them disposable music, teaching each other to; make their own music, knit their own gloves, braid their own hair. Discussing the relation of certain game dynamics to their canonical forms with reference to old snes stuff they play in emulators. Lamenting how their parents, teachers, the job market try to package them according to their own obsessions agendas.

And we imagine they're idiots.

So SL is yet to offer them a super compelling experience, partly cause it's full of oldbies, partly cause their peers aren't there (though there's more than we imagine).... but mostly because half of the millenials aren't allowed in the gate..... officially :P