For some of the clearest, most significant insights yet into how young people use digital media, consider watching footage from "From MySpace to Hip Hop: New Media In the Everyday Lives of Youth," a forum recently held at Stanford University. Hundreds of hours of observation and interviews with young people around the US by more than 20 researchers are represented in the presentations. They're on … [Read more...] about How teens use social network sites: Clear insights
Latin America’s social Web
Hi5.com is No. 1 in Latin America's social-networking scene, according to fresh figures from comScore, and social Web use as a whole is growing fast there. The number of unique visitors for the region has grown "from 53.6 million unique visitors last June, to 61.6 million this past April" (the latest figure available), VentureBeat.com cites comScore research as showing. Hi5 had 12.8 million … [Read more...] about Latin America’s social Web
Age verification not the ‘killer app’
ConnectSafely.org, a site and forum, Larry Magid and I co-direct, was invited to join the Internet Safety Task Force that is part of MySpace's settlement last January with 49 state attorneys general. The Task Force's first meeting last month - attended by Internet companies including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, AOL, Google, and Yahoo, age- and identity-verification companies, and online-safety … [Read more...] about Age verification not the ‘killer app’
‘Curmudgeon’s’ guide to widgets
Not everyone loves widgets, those little applications supposedly adding fun and a sort of animation to social-networking profiles. Parents, here's the perspective of someone who finds some of them a little annoying (words such as "insidious" and "invasive" are used), including Facebook's No. 1 app, the FunWall. Another, bigger, reason to be wary of widgets is in the privacy-protection area. Note … [Read more...] about ‘Curmudgeon’s’ guide to widgets
More safety features at Facebook
As part of its agreement with 49 state attorneys general in the US, 70 million-member Facebook is implementing "40 safeguards to protect young people from sexual predators and cyberbullies," the San Jose Mercury News reports. Facebook's agreement follows that of MySpace with the attorneys general, announced in January, and many of the new features are similar, for example, restricting users' … [Read more...] about More safety features at Facebook