News for the Week of March 12, 2006
There is so much news in the teen-social-networking space that I could do a weekly roundup, but this week's digest will probably suffice for a few weeks!
Facebook factoids
The Stanford [University] Daily had three developments I haven't seen covered elsewhere: 1) Facebook.com now has more than 8 million registered users ("roughly equal to the combined populations of Los Angeles and Chicago"); 2) Facebook's now at every US college and university and has a presence at schools in 13 other countries; and 3) while a high school version of Facebook has existed since late last year, site administrators "made the decision to allow members of the high school version ... to be friends with their college counterparts" (site spokesperson Chris Hughes "explained that the decision was made because of the similarities between college and high school students").
Staggering growth, but sustainable?
USATODAY reports that 65% of all US undergrads at four-year colleges and universities are on Facebook; 900,000 high school students are (a lot of them probably have accounts at MySpace or Xanga too!). The New York Times just reported that MySpace is adding as many as 1 million new registered users a week. ABC News, however, asks the question of just how cool MySpace really is among teens (or how long it can sustain the coolness factor - see also "Teen's-eye-view of tech in 2006").
Reputations & repercussions
In another piece in its teen-blogging package, USATODAY warns that "What you say online could haunt you", as did the San Jose Mercury News a few weeks ago, both articles providing teens' and parents' own stories. Another USATODAY piece reports that university administrators are beginning to regulate athletes' social-networking activities. Some examples: "Administrators at Florida State and Kentucky recently issued ultimatums to their athletes to be careful what they post"; Loyola University Chicago forbids its athletes to belong; two LSU swimmers were "kicked off the team after athletics officials discovered they belonged to a Facebook affinity group that put up disparaging comments about swim coaches"; and "Colorado athletes cannot use Facebook on computers in the academic lab."
Grassroots views
And parents' views were well represented in this week's reporting: see USATODAY on parents vs. "Internet natives" and ABC News's "A parent learns about MySpace" and the three moms and their three daughters featured in an article and video interview with Good Morning America's Charlie Gibson. A high school junior publishes her perspective in the Sun Herald in Florida.
In Other News...
- Mac, PC security updates. Patches were issued on both the Mac and Windows sides of the OS spectrum. Apple issued its second security patch in less than two weeks, Internet News reports ( here's more from Washington Post security writer Brian Krebs). Meanwhile, Microsoft has issued its monthly security update for March, CNET reports. It plugs a bunch of security holes, most in the Office software suite (including MS's update for Office 2004 for Macs).
- Teens prefer the Net. People 13 to 24 spend more time online than watching TV or talking on the phone, a new Yahoo-sponsored study, "Born to Be Wired," found. In its coverage, MSNBC reports that this age group spends "an average of 16.7 hours a week online" vs. 13.6 hours watching TV. Radio gets 12 hours, phone conversations 7.7, and books and magazines 6 (of course, a lot of that probably happens simultaneously!). Interesting: "Being in 'control' of how they surfed the Web and the ability to personalize their media content online is most appealing to them," but they "don't feel overwhelmed by the abundance of media choices available to them," MSNBC reports.
- New help in the anti-child-porn fight. On Capitol Hill this week, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children unveiled the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography. Made up of 18 of "the world's most prominent financial institutions and Internet industry leaders," according to the NCMEC's press release, the coalition includes multinational companies that enable transactions online, such as Citigroup, Bank of America, Visa, American Express, PayPal, as well as Internet companies such as AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft. It's a logical and ethical development, since - as the National Center's presser says - "child pornography has become a multi-billion dollar commercial enterprise and is among the fastest growing businesses on the Internet." In related news, US and Canadian law-enforcement officials Wednesday announced they'd cracked an international online child-porn operation, arresting 27 people in four countries, CNET reports.
- PlayStation 3's delay. By now you've probably heard (from your kids) that you won't be able to purchase them the PS3 as soon as they thought. Sony delayed its shipping date (see tongue-in-cheek coverage of this, for gaming industry shareholders, very serious story at this San Jose Mercury News blog, which links us to "So that's one PlayStation 3 - will that be cash, credit or your firstborn?" and "PS3 to launch with indentured servitude purchase plan"). The good news (for your kids) is that this handy little multipurpose, Net-connected, much-hyped console will still be available in time for the 2006 holiday shopping season, Reuters reports.
- Mobile porn's fast growth. Parents might want to know that - although Cingular, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile "have voluntarily chosen not to directly offer any adult content for download" to phones, the San Jose Mercury News reports - there's certainly a work-around on Web-enabled phones. "Many mobile phones now have Web browsers, which can make videos, photos or text available for download with a credit card. Sales of dirty videos, naughty chats and pornographic images over mobile phones reached about $500,000 globally in 2004." The Merc cites Juniper Research data showing that figure to be $2.1 billion by 2009. The Web on phones is the explanation for that exponential growth.
