MTV launches YOUTH PORTAL

Aditya Swamy,Head,MTV India said,“With MTV Play,we work with a diverse group of young people on a real-time basis,which keeps us plugged into what’s happening with an 18-year-old. And we are happy to share this knowledge with partners,friends and anyone else who might be interested.”

This basically means that the findings and topics that the site uncovers will be used to create new properties by MTV. However,Swamy said that the website was not created keeping only MTV in mind. “We don’t want to know what the youth thinks about generic MTV shows like Roadies and Splitsvilla. On the other hand,when you use focus groups to find out what the youth think,after a point you lose track of what this demographic actually needs simply because they are so dynamic. Their likes change everyday and their opinions are very diverse. MTV Play will help us keep track of the youth by showing us their preferences such as what bands they listen to,whether they use Facebook or Twitter or whether they prefer Mac or a PC,” he said.

Swamy said that MTV Play took quite some time to develop in setting up the back end and the layout. To generate the initial buzz and create appropriate content,MTV selected individuals from their massive one million-plus fans on Facebook. The selection criterion was based on the users’ profile,their photo streams,blogs and number of friends. The selected youngsters share their views through closed community blogs,wall-posts and videos. “We want to ensure that people who write for us are active. Thus,we will refresh our selected sample to weed out anybody who is not active,” Swamy said. He also said that the chosen content creators work gratis. “Today’s generation just wants a voice. If they go around looking for goodies,then something’s not right.”

There is an extensive back-end network that will work on the information that comes into the website in the form of content and comments. For example,the insights are backed by extensive research by Third Eye Research Agency and MTV Insight Studio. Third Eye Research is a boutique qualitative research organisation. This is further substantiated through MTV’s body of Indian and international research. These are a mix of qualitative and quantitative researches spanning 1000-3000 audiences.

Earlier,MTV Insight Studio conducted studies to know more about youngsters with properties such as MTV Youth Icons,Circuits of Cool and Recreation Redefined.