News for the Week of November 4, 2007
Topping youth-tech news this week is the announcement of a social-networking alliance among Google, MySpace and several other social-networking sites that allows developers to write programs that work on all cooperating sites.
Google & friends' face-off with Facebook
Remember when Facebook announced last spring that it plans to be *the* social-networking "platform" (see this)? Well, Google has created a social-networking alliance designed to give Facebook's plan a little competition. Google's Orkut plus LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, Plaxo, and Ning - the host to individuals' own social-networking sites - are "introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs" for them, the New York Times reports. According to the Associated Press, the Google platform is called "OpenSocial." Since Facebook's announcement in May, the Times says, "more than 5,000 small programs have been built to run on the Facebook site, and some have been adopted by millions of the site's users. Most of those programs tap into connections among Facebook friends and spread themselves through those connections, as well as through a 'news feed' that alerts Facebook users about what their friends are doing." Those social-networking features enable "viral marketing," seen by marketers as a much more powerful because much more targeted means of getting an advertising message across. The TechCrunch blog discusses how Facebook's version, SocialAds, works: The site is "experimenting with targeting ads on its own site (through its Facebook Flyers program) based on demographic and psychographic data that it culls from members' profiles. With SocialAds, it will be able to extend that targeting across the Web." [Here's this story from the UK-based Financial Times, as well as the FT's big-picture piece on how the social Web has really taken off.]
Meanwhile, as viral, psychographic-based marketing takes off too, it'll be interesting to see how Facebook and the Google alliance explain to members and parents what privacy-protection options come with this next phase of social-Web advertising. [Speaking of which, nine consumer organizations have banded together to ask the Federal Trade Commission "to provide needed consumer protections in the behavioral advertising sector" by, among other things, creating a "Do Not Track" list like the "Do Not Call" list already in place, the Center for Democracy & Technology announced Oct. 31.]
MySpace joins Google group too
One day after the big OpenSocial announcement, Google added a little afterthought: MySpace, the 640-pound social-networking gorilla, Bebo, another huge social-Web player, and the very longstanding SixApart were joining too. As a PCWorld blog put it, "now that changes everything." This isn't so much about Facebook users at your house - users won't be going anywhere because of this news. What it's about is those popular little add-on software programs called widgets that users love to use (for stuff like sharing tunes, putting a "bookshelf" of favorite books in your profile, or throwing virtual sheep at your friends). All those widget makers were making apps for Facebook, and now Google, MySpace and friends have serious numbers of users (aka a huge alternative market) for widgetmakers to offer their wares to. I wonder if Facebook will eventually (emphasize "eventually") have to join OpenSocial. Here's the view from the Los Angeles Times and the Financial Times in the UK.
In other news...
- Manhunt 2: Heads up, parents. Manhunt 2 was released on Halloween to reports that it's taking videogame violence to a new level (e.g, see these from the Associated Press and a CBS News station). It's now rated "M" for "Mature" for 17+, since its maker, Rockstar Games, modified it a bit last summer. "Made for the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 2," the AP reports, the blood-drenched game has been sparking controversy since June, when the Entertainment Software Rating Board gave it a rating of "adult only" that would have excluded it from some big-box retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. In it, reports CBS in Springfield, Mass., "players act out killing and torturing someone with tools like a sledgehammer or shovel. And this is a toned down version." CBS Evening News in New York reported that Manhunt 2 is "even more intense when it's played on Nintendo's Wii, which gets players to act out the violence." Here's ABC News's "Ultimate Parents' Guide to Video Games", complete with an explanation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board's ratings and descriptors, as well as a glossary of video and online game terms.
- New book on cyberbullying. The good news is there are usually no physical scars from cyberbullying. The bad news is there are usually no physical scars to alert parents to what's going on. And that's not even the biggest problem with cyberbullying: "that children will not report it," reports CNET, citing a new academic book on the subject, Cyber Bullying: Bullying in the Digital Age, by Patricia Agatston, a licensed counselor and consultant on bullying, psychology Prof. Robin Kowalski at Clemson University, and Sue Limber, director of the Center on Youth Participation and Human Rights at Clemson. Rather than report cyberbullying, kids "try to deal with it themselves for fear of being cut off. Many times parents will overreact and punish the victim by forbidding them to continue using things like instant messaging, blogs, or a social network." Overreaction and overprotection are increasingly risky these days because of the damage they can do to parent-child communication in a time when the Web is so ubiquitous on so many devices in so many places, and communication with caring adults is the most reliable protection kids have.
- Young 'sex offenders.' "Lawyers and health educators say most teens - and even many parents - are unaware that even consensual teenage sex is often a crime," the Associated Press reports. There are three related problems: 1) though prosecutions are rare, they happen, 2) there is a lot of confusion about the laws in various states (e.g., "across the country, ages of consent range from 14 to 18"), 3) sex-offender registries are increasingly accessible, and teens placed on them can be "branded" for life. The only good news in all this is that "some states have moved in recent months to craft so-called Romeo and Juliet exceptions to prevent sexually active teenagers from being lumped together with child molesters." See also "Juvenile sex offenders & Net registries."
- Social graces on the social Web. It's always fun to get a snapshot of where we (people in general) are in developing etiquette or, as Macworld put it, "social graces" on the social Web. And that's all there is, really, in this little article, a little snapshot of where the thinking is. The best reminder in it, for teens (or anyone) concerned about being seen as mean or snobby when they're just protecting their own interests or privacy in Facebook, is that it's ok to delete someone from their friends list - Facebook doesn't make an announcement or anything. Also, there's a good answer to the question, "What do you do if you get an unwanted invitation?" "I say ignore invitations without shame. Some people send them to everyone they have the slightest connection to - in that case, they probably won't even notice your silent rejection."
