Over
the past decade, advertisers have spent untold millions trying to turn
Talia Kocar and her peers in the millennial generation into loyal
customers. But on a recent afternoon in Santa Monica, Calif., in a kind
of consumer torch-passing, Ms. Kocar, 25, watched a focus group of
teenagers drink free Snapple and suck Doritos powder off their thumbs
while answering questions about their smartphones.
Ms.
Kocar works on Wishbone, a social networking application full of breezy
polls about pop culture, prom dresses and other fixtures of teenage
life. Users — most of them girls — post side-by-side pictures that
compare rappers (Lil Wayne or Tyga?), celebrities (Kim Kardashian or
Beyoncé?) and the like.
Like
most social media apps, Wishbone users achieve status by amassing
friends who vote with a thumb tap. There is a bonus, however, which is
that twice a day, Ms. Kocar and her team send a “Daily Dozen” of the
best and most popular polls to every Wishbone user. This is somewhat
like being named “funniest” or “most clever” in a yearbook: Featured
polls are guaranteed a lot of votes, and votes, similar to likes on
Facebook, are the coin of Wishbone’s realm. Read More
Source:-http://www.nytimes.com/pages/education/index.html