Dissing Matthew Robson (or was that Morgan Stanley?)

Time blogger Dan Fletcher is so dismissive of Morgan Stanley teenage intern Matthew Robson that he sounds a little jealous. "What exactly did Robson reveal? Well, not a lot," Fletcher reports. His conclusion is that Matthew's bosses at Morgan Stanley "need to spend a bit more time with their kids. Do that, and we suspect the revelation that teenagers like cell phones and free music will seem, well, a little less revelatory." I agree that there's much more value in listening to our own children than to Morgan Stanley about how teens use tech, but that's because the way youth use tech is highly individual. Even Matthew Robson can't tell you how your child uses technology and social media, but I can see real value in his views to marketers. The one useful bit in Fletcher's post is his link to some data at social media market researchers Sysomos, who say that 31% of Twitter's users are 15-19. That contrasts with the prevailing view, based on comScore research and anecdotal evidence from young people themselves (e.g., see "Why Gen Y's not into Twitter" and the comment under this blog post of mine).

Hey, maybe Sysomos is onto something. But what is clear right now is that the assumption that teens will flock en masse to every new social technology (like Twitter) that comes along is just that: an assumption. We make too many assumptions about how youth use tech. Time's Fletcher also made light of Matthew's observation that teens were communicating more in game communities such as Xbox Live; what I drew from that, again, was not "wow, now they're all going to flock to Xbox Live" but rather that here's another little sign of teens' communication diversification. Xbox Live, too, is a "social networking" tool, as are cellphones, World of Warcraft, and virtual worlds. That diversification is the real trend, I'm thinking. [Here's my post about Matthew Robson last Monday. Thanks to my ConnectSafely.org co-director Larry Magid for pointing the Time post out.]

Xbox Live hackers, Koobface worm

This is something for Xbox Live gamers to think about, especially if they also have computers connected to the home network. If the Xbox Live users at your house are particularly feisty or contentious, they could get booted out of games by hackers who have figured out how to get the offending gamer's IP address. They then use that address to launch a kind of denial-of-service attack that blocks your gamer's access to the game, the BBC reports. It could also affect other Internet connections on the network. "Microsoft is 'investigating' the use of the tools and said those caught using them would be banned from Xbox Live. One preventive measure is try to get Xbox Live users at your house to "play nice." If they do and they still get booted, those are really malicious hackers. Definitely contact Xbox Live customer support! Another security issue this week is the reemergence of the Koobface worm in Facebook and MySpace. Brian Krebs of the Washington Post cites TrendMicro as explaining that what happens is, social networkers get an invitation from a friend or contact, inviting them "to click on a link and view a video at a counterfeit YouTube site." Then they're told they "need to install an Adobe Flash plug-in to view the video," but what they really download, if they fall for it, is a Trojan horse program that lets attackers take over their computer.

Xbox Live as virtual world?

Seems everybody can get an avatar now - Zuis, penguins, fairies, and urban vinyl for kids and human-like ones in Second Life (teen and adult), Google's Lively, Sony Home, and now the Xbox gaming community. Microsoft is giving demos but says it won't be releasing the new "Xbox Live Experience" till "before Christmas," CNET game blogger Daniel Terdiman reports. But hardcore gamers for whom "Xbox Live is nearly as much a home as where they actually live" needn't worry, he says. The service is not becoming "a place for purely casual players" as they feared. He says casual gamers will like the "deeply customizable avatars," but there's also "all kinds of new functionality that will actually reward the dedication of the hard-core Xbox player." See the review for examples.

Register to vote on Xbox Live?!

Thanks to a partnership between Rock the Vote and Microsoft, registration in Xbox Live started this week, the BBC reports. Having also worked with MySpace to grow the number of youth voting, Rock the Vote aims to register 2 million voters via the Xbox gaming community by this fall. The BBC adds that Xbox Live had 12 million subscribers in 26 countries by last May (the latest figure available). Incidentally, someone in our ConnectSafely forum asked about parental controls for Xbox Live; here's the link I gave him to Microsoft's page on "Family Settings" for the gaming community.

Xbox Live with avatars

It really seems as if all gaming community is going the way of online virtual worlds now. The new Xbox Live, just announced by Microsoft this week, will be more like virtual life than ever. The gaming community for the Xbox console will soon be more three-dimensional - a suitable "space" for the avatars, or animated characters, gamers will create for it," the Financial Times reports. "The avatars demonstrated by Microsoft appeared more sophisticated than the popular Wii Miis of Nintendo's console but less ambitious than the characters possible in the much delayed Home virtual world planned for Sony's PlayStation3." The FT added that Xbox Live's new look and feel will simply happen with a free software update that'll be available in the fall. For more Xbox news, see the San Jose Mercury News.

Xbox Live hacks

It's a security heads-up for users of Microsoft's gaming community Xbox Live (and a good story). Well-known, obviously highly skilled gamer "Colin Fogle gained widespread acclaim in gaming circles after posting a video showing how it was possible for a Halo 3 player to shoot and kill himself with his own sniper rifle," The Register reports. For that feat, the game's makers gave him (or his game character, rather) a special piece of virtual armor, after which his Xbox Live account was stolen three times. According to The Register, "he was suddenly logged out [and] when he tried to log back in, he got error messages saying his password didn't match his user name." The problem, here, is the hijackers can in this way obtain not only the special piece of virtual armor, but also credit card numbers, address, and info used to log into other Microsoft-type accounts (e.g., Hotmail, IM). What the hackers frequently do, The Register adds, is call the toll-free number and pretend to be the account's owner, providing the Xbox Live ID and ask for one bit of info (e.g., address), then call back later and ask for more (e.g., phone number) until they have enough info on the person "to convince a support person they are the rightful owners of the account." Be careful out there, gamers.