Six things online savvy kids know that many businesses don't

1. Good domain names don't matter much. Good domain names? Easy to remember
web addresses? Yes, they don't hurt but they don't really matter much these
days. When they want to find something these days, Internet savvy kids put keyword(s)
into Google. Web addresses are becoming like telephone numbers. Mostly meaningless
and irrelevant identifiers that you store in address books but find via other
means. Internet savvy kids go straight to Google when they are looking something
up - many seem to think that Google is the web's "front door". They
go to Google even if the thing they are looking for is itself a
web address!

2. Complex logisitics can be simplified. Organizing a group of friends
to meet at a particular time and particular place can be a complex problem.
Business folks refer to it as "logistics". Internet savvy kids do
complex logistics all the time and they do it without great cost or complexity.
Need a way of knowing what is going on right now at a set of distributed locations?
Try twitter.
Need to use turn-of-the-century voice rather than text messages to coordinate
a bunch of people? Try MySay.
Need a quick and easy website to coordinate a project while everyone is on the
road, working out of web cafes and on cellphones? Try
Jaiku.

3. Multimedia doesn't need to be expensive. Need a slick video to promote
an idea or to wow your friends with 3-D animations on any subject under the
sun? Businesses tend to treat this as highly specialist stuff and call in the
experts with their expensive tools and techniques. Internet savvy kids turn
to machinima.
Just get into Second Life, World of Warcraft or similar, get into behind-the-camera
mode and hit record.

4. Carrying around USB keys is so Twentieth Century. Internet savvy
kids don't do it any more. Why would you carry around a device that can only
store stuff when it could be used for other things as well? More useful things
like playing music or playing video or taking pictures or talking to someone?
The type of storage media used in phones, mp3 players, digital cameras and (increasingly)
video cameras, makes a perfectly good backup device when connected to a PC with
the ubiquitous USB connection.

5. You can converse with the Web. You can ask it questions in plain
English. You can do it using instant messaging or using SMS messaging. Try saying
"hello" on AIM to the T-Mobile WIFI Hotspot service "Hotspot".
It will talk back to you.

6. Tracking appointments is easy. Internet savvy kids do not get into
a tizzy over tracking appointments and getting reminders at appropriate times.
They don't need personal assistants to prompt them at the right time. Instead,
they use services like remeberthemilk.com to gently remind themselves of important
TODOs while on the road.