Gen X

Pretty interesting chart from Business Week marking out who's doing what online. Regular readers will know that I take issue with how they break down the generations, and it seems a little arbitrary to draw such distinctions between "creators" and "joiners." There's a middle ground in there which Fred Stutzman has identified as the "in-between spaces" - twitter, ma.gnolia, del.icio.us,Tumblr - activities that are not quite blogging, but are more participatory and creative than simply joining a social network and browsing your friends' profiles.

In relation to politics, the breakdowns in the "creators" category is interesting. BlogAds surveys show the political blogosphere to be much older. The majority of young "creators" in this graphic are engaging in non-political content creation - gossip blogs, music blogs, etc. Yet we also know that they are volunteering and participating in politics more and more through other venues - voting, on the ground engagement, social networks. I've already written about how I think progressive youth organizing could stand to benefit from greater integration with the local and national blogospheres. I wonder when and if we'll start to see more crossover there.