Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

Last Friday's conversation at Fortune's iMeme conference in San Francisco covered a lot of territory; a lot of it mostly the rehashed things being talked about over the last couple of years.

One of those I want to zero in on was a comment made by Chris DeWolfe, the CEO of News Corp’s (NWS-A) MySpace.

Citing DeWolfe, Media Biz said, "... young Internet users now identify more with sites like his, Facebook and Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. Loyalty to, or even awareness of, what particular media company makes a certain movie or TV show seems to be non-existent.

“Nobody associates a brand with its larger conglomerate. Most young people don’t even know what network their favorite TV show is on. But they know to come to sites like MySpace, Facebook or YouTube to find it or information about it.”

I agree with everything said in the above statement, but there's a huge problem that comes with it: this is no different than things were 50 years ago.

This idea that something has changed with young people is absolutely silly and misrepresentative of reality.

Think for a minute why TV shows, channels and studios always measure the key demographic of 18-49, but especially the younger side of it. The reason is because younger people don't connect with anything until they start growing a little older. They are open to almost anything, which is why advertisers target them. So when the time comes for them to commit to something, their brand will be in their mind. With that commitment may come years of buying products and services from their decision.

Of course they're going for impulse buys as well, but that's a little different.

Older people tend to change must less in things they've been using, so they're overall not as desirable to reach out to. Of course that doesn't include the things like travel, health and finances, which is something of strong interest to them.

When I heard recently that young people were leaving MySpace in droves to end up at Facebook, it didn't surprise me. If Facebook thinks this is a testimony to their greatness, they're making a big mistake. MySpace was that to young people a very short time ago.

The reason they're moving is because of the migratory nature of young people in general. It's simply their way of doing things at this age. Loyalty isn't a part of their life at this point. When I was that age, it's exactly how my friends and I acted as well. There may have been a hot club to hang out at, but over a relatively short period of time, you end up hanging out somewhere else. There wasn't a loyalty to it.

We have to be careful with this because the idea that young people are acting different than they have in the past is an illusion. It's not happening! This is how they've always acted.

So when people throw out things like they come to social networking sites because they don't care about where a TV show or video content is created, it's true, but not because they're social networking sites, but because young people are also congregators. Again, it's simply their nature.

This is one of the reason it's so hard to reach out to the teen and young adult market on a consistent basis. Look at Gap and MTV. Where are they now in comparison to the "cool" they used to be? Young people end up growing up, and with that comes a change in activities and taste. Then comes commitment and brand awareness.

If a large portion of our business targets young people, we need to be careful in thinking they're different today than they were in the past. To believe we've done something special to make them stick is to not understand the very nature of where they're at in this stage of their lives.

The point is when DeWolfe says young people go to their sites because they aren't brand aware he's correct, the problem is, they're not brand aware with the social networking sites either - that's the deception.

The truth is, once the young people leave these sites, the remaining users will actually be a much more solid group of people to market to and keep on the site, than the endlessly fickle youngsters who can change their taste in a very short period of time.