Generational differences are attributed to everything from driver’s licenses, work styles, and communications. The first generation born to be truly digital natives are millennials. So it would be natural that they push the boundaries of massive online data considering that 59 percent of millennials get their news online, and 80 percent sleep with their phone next to the bed. This news came to us from Smart Data Collective in their article, “Gaining the Millennial Digital Storage Market With Metadata and Tagging.”
There are outliers to this data of course, and those that can work on both sides of the dateline. According to the charts, I am a Gen Xer and fall into the descriptions for work styles and communication styles, but I much more closely identify with the millenials when it comes to technology. I could discredit this due to my profession, but I actually think I have landed in my profession because of the interest and ease I have with technology.
One trait attributed to millienials is the use of graphics for visual communication. Even in a social aspect, the growing popularity of memes and GIFs are good examples. In the work setting, it is no longer enough to simply store data — you have to give people the ability to quickly and easily search through massive amounts of data and retrieve the information they need. This can be done easier with visuals.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
