In this 2009 talk, Jonathan Reichental argues that the world is more unstable and interconnected than ever, driven by rapid information flow, shifting demographics, and the rise of social media. He outlines how baby boomers, Generation X, and especially Millennials have reshaped the labor market, noting that Millennials tend to stay with one or two employers rather than hop jobs. He presents striking Facebook statistics—two‑thirds of the audience have accounts, 200 million registered users, 100 million daily logins, and 850 million photos uploaded per month—to illustrate the ubiquity and stickiness of social platforms. Reichental stresses that marketers, recruiters, and job seekers must master mobile and online channels, as traditional media lose relevance. He highlights that 12 % of people view blogs as credible sources, and that many organizations mistakenly believe social media harms productivity, despite evidence to the contrary. He warns that online reputations are permanent and advises individuals to curate their digital brand. Finally, he emphasizes the massive entrepreneurial opportunities arising from these trends, urging listeners to engage with him via email or Twitter for further discussion.
Chapters
This is a time of global instability. But, you know, when I think about this, I don't know that there ever was a time when things were stable. Right. We're definitely more exposed today. Definitely more exposed to news channels, through websites. We know a lot more that's going on 100 years ago, 200 years ago, you kind of knew what was happening in your town. Things were a little bit more comfortable. But now we hear about things all over the world. When a flu breaks down in Mexico, it means we've got a worry here in Greece, got a worry in Australia. When CEOs are asked what's important for their organization now and over the past few years and in the future, innovation is always in the top five. Always. Sometimes it gets up to number two, because we can do. We can produce things in similar ways all over the world. The organizations that do well do it very innovatively. Real distinct differences in the population and demographics. Real distinct. We're finding that now. All the research up until a few years ago was about baby boomers. What was so significant about baby boomers? Well, they really were, well, well defined. It was a massive word boom. It was a massive population boom after World War II, and people were feeling pretty happy and optimistic about the future. And if you look at the demographic trends, for several years, kind of plateaued. I'm a Generation X, not a great announcement of population. But then suddenly Millennials happened, and that was this big peak. So I'll use numbers for the US which you can extrapolate for the rest of the world. The baby boomers represented about 78 million Americans. Not too bad when you think of the population being back in the 40s, 50s and 60s, still around 150, 200 million people. Big chunk of babies being born over a short period of. And then years go by, you have the plateau and then you have the millennials. 79 million people, all born in a short period of time. So the greatest amount of Americans born in the shortest amount of time. If you're a school kid today, I'm not talking about Millennials. People are about to join the workforce even a little bit younger. You're going to have between 11 and 14 distinct jobs by the age of 38. So that makes me think, well, aren't the new folks going to be hopping jobs like crazy? Well, part of it is because they want to, because it's interesting, creates a challenge, makes your life interesting. But the data around Millennials says, actually, we'd like to spend more time with the company. We don't want to Hop around. And that's what this slide says. More people would rather be with one or two companies in their lifetimes. Really good companies where they're loyal, rather than skipping. Let's see who has a Facebook account in here. That's about. Yeah, that's about two thirds of the total number. I mean, it's ubiquitous. That was the most impressive response I got. That was almost everybody. Facebook just, they made a big hullabaloo about the fact that they just passed 200 million users. Registered users. Facebook users are very, very loyal. They keep going back. It's very sticky. 100 million logins at least once every day. This is the greatest number of all. What do you think that number is? 850 million. Yes. This is the amount of pictures uploaded. Thank you. Per month. 850 million photographs. It's the biggest photo sharing site in the world. What are they sharing? And the question is, what did they do with the photographs before Facebook? Now they go to die on Facebook. That's a lot of photographs. So if you are in the marketing department, you need to know and you need to understand social media, how to get involved and connect with people using new technology. We talked about eyeballs, remember that? People moving from the television to the Internet. If you're marketing, you kind of need to understand that if people are using cell phones, mobile devices, more than they're using even their computers and even more than television, you've got to get your message on the cell phone. And it's different media. How are you going to reach people? Same thing. If you're going to recruit, you can't just put stuff in the newspaper. I know we haven't done that for years. You're going to have stuff on your website, but you're going to get those promotions, those recruitment efforts. You're going to have to push all sorts of devices and all sorts of new channels. You're going to have to be pretty savvy. If you're looking for a job, you're going to have to know and kind of know how to use those tools, how to use them smartly. Because the people who do them and use them smartly, that's the advantage that they're going to have over those at them. Where do people go for credible information? I think this is a really important question and it's important because it changes. It's changing where people are going. Maybe your best friend is your credible source or your parents or professor, but the number that really jumped out I want to highlight for you is the last Number of all bloggers, 12% of people consider blogging to be a credible source of information. That's more than 1 in 10. Oh, some risks there, right? How do you verify a blogger? But it does indicate one thing, which is the absolute value that people see now in not only being a consumer of a blogger, the importance, if you want to connect to be successful, of being a blogger. 60% of organizations believe the introduction of social media into the organization can damage productivity. And I want to differentiate here something that's belief versus reality, so we know what people perceive or believe is their reality. Numbers for actual productivity are very different. So there is a belief and there's some ways to go to change that perception. Someone in here is going to be publishing very things. Someone in here might be the Prime Minister or president of Greece. Somebody in here might be an important CEO or industrialist. Your online brand isn't going to go away. You know, years ago, before the Internet, all of 15, 20 years ago, something was in the newspaper, kind of got lost. If there's something on the Internet, it never goes away. So be real careful about the photographs you upload or the types of messages you give about yourself about your online brand. Because I guarantee if it's bad, it's going to come back. It won't go away. Can't delete stuff on the Internet. That's a myth. You can't delete. It replicates everywhere. So that's a very profound point. Think about what your brand is, if you haven't already created one. And if you have one, tweak it, clean it up. I talked today like everyone's doing this. We saw some numbers where it does show that there's great adoption, there's some participation. But here's a secret I'm just going to tell you in nobody else. So when I leave here, I'll never say this again. So this is your competitive advantage. There are tremendous bursts of opportunities in all these areas. There is again somebody in this room, more than one, many who will be the next millionaire or billionaire from a startup or an organization that will take advantage of some of this. I guarantee that. Take a look at the trends. Understand this stuff. There's great opportunity. There's opportunity for organizations that are, that are established. If you're a brand, say you're established and you're not kind of looking at this and experimenting with it, you're losing a great opportunity. If you'd like to know more, if any of this hit a spot with you, you can contact me either directly from my email address or very accessible. And if you'd like to know what I'm thinking from time to time, like Tracy thoughts or would like to actually be part of the conversation I'm having with a lot of different people around the world, you can join me on Twitter at no Pause. It's a very easy and transparent way to engage with me.
