Why do you assume he needed to?

Ian, why do you say plenty of companies have so clearly used this tactic for many years?

Damn, spot on. You were right to repost this. This should be smeared all over the Internet right now.

Pure. Genius. I wish there were a giant "I like this!" button that I could mash.

Actually, BRB. I'm going to go make that.

Kyle, these kind of posts are why I follow you :)

Sometimes, Gen Y gets ragged on just because it's easier to rag on anybody at all nowadays. I'm sure if the Internet had existed 50 years ago, there would have been just as much inane fluff flying around the Web about how the Baby Boomers and then Gen X were having their minds rotted by radio, television, movies, etc. God forbid the telephone!

There are studies that show Millenials may not be as good at retention of large amounts of facts, but it's a long stretch between those studies (of which there need to be many, many more) and the assumption that Gen Y somehow can't function in communities whatsoever anymore.

As an aside, I was at a networking event today where a nice gentleman repeatedly expressed fear about joining social networks (and rightfully so, if even just a bit). He continued to stress the value of face-to-face contact, until finally someone my age stepped in and said (basically), "Look, I prefer face-to-face contact, too. My whole generation does. But sometimes you can't have that kind of contact, and email/IM/text/Twitter are a much more appropriate extension of communication." That nailed it, for me anway.

Thanks for writing this stuff, and keep up the good work!

Great idea for a giveaway, hopefully you get plenty more new traffic! And hopefully I get the game :)