News for the Week of July 29, 2007
Predators in social-networking sites was definitely the top story in kid-tech news this past week. It seems to be because state attorneys general are building momentum toward legislation and/or legal action, though many people wonder what this will accomplish. Because there is so much coverage, we tried to give all the hype a little context in a commentary that ran in the San Jose Mercury News. Now let's look at another important bit of context that gets less coverage...
Social networkers worldwide
The social Web is completely global, and there's a map to illustrate at the ValleyWag blog. Some fascinating, sometimes surprising, patterns show up on this map:
- Hi5.com is the most international, with a presence in 15 countries, especially Peru, Colombia, Central America, Tunisia, Romania, and Mongolia. A bit more on Hi5 from the Gigaom blog: It "started out as a social-network-plus matrimonial site targeting the Indian diaspora, but later morphed into a social network" that now has about 30 million members.
- "Facebook," the map says, "is stronger, internationally, than MySpace, with surprising strongholds in the Middle East."
- Bebo and Skyblog "follow colonial patterns," Bebo British and Skyblog French, with strongholds in France, Belgium, and Francophone Africa.
- Friendster's huge in Southeast Asia
- "Fotolog, a photo service defeated in the US by Friendster, has re-emerged as the dominant social network in Argentina and Chile."
- Google's Orkut is big in India, Pakistan, Brazil, and Paraguay.
- Studiverzeichnis is popular in Germany and Austria.
- LiveJournal's hot in Belarus and Russia.
Notable growth
Once you get past Tagged.com's and Facebook.com's amazing growth figures this past year (774% and 270%, respectively, with Bebo in third place at a respectable 172%), the worldwide membership of these sites is a little less jawdropping. But that international appeal probably explains a lot of these sites' growth. Here are the latest growth figures from Internet market researcher comScore's, as well as its version of membership breakdowns by regions of the world.
In other news...
- Music downloading unabated. "Illegal music downloading is at an all-time high and set to rise further," The Guardian reports, citing the 4th-annual digital-music survey by Entertainment Media Research. Forty-three percent of respondents said they're downloading illegal songs, up from 36% last year and 40% in 2005. Meanwhile, fear of being caught has lessened. "This year only 33% cited the risk of being prosecuted as a deterrent against unauthorised downloading, compared with 42% in 2006."
- Recommended kid communities. Izzy Neis has done parents a real service in publishing her list of about two dozen "Worthy Kid/Tween Communities" (emphasis on "community," she posted in our forum, ConnectSafely.org). "Community" is important because tweens and lots of kids like socializing online as much as teens do, but they're too young for places like Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace. So it's good to know what the age-appropriate spots are. Izzy also has a list of sites that are *not* for people under 14. Author, children's entertainment specialist, and blogger Izzy describes herself as "a cookie connoisseur, pop culture aficionado... and a zealot in the pro-kid movement."
- Videogame tournament on TV. Watch out, Masters and March Madness. This week CBS Sports broadcast the World Series of Video Games, held in Louisville, Ky., last month. Reporting the day before the series aired (Sunday), the New York Times says that "viewers flicking channels looking for a ballgame or golf tournament may instead encounter a couple of young guys rocking out on plastic guitars, or some (literally) disembodied digital boxers throwing uppercuts, or a fanciful animated wizard casting a spell." Definitely a sign of videogames' mainstream-ization, if that's a word!
- Online-safety hotline for Oz. The US has its CyberTipline.com, Canada its Cybertip.ca, and Britain its hotline at the Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre. "Within weeks" Australians too "will have access to a national online child protection hotline," as well a free filtering software, Australian IT reports. The Communications Ministry put the emphasis on the education part of the $99 million (US) program, saying parents will be able to call the hotline or visit the Web site "to get individual advice about online safety." The Oz hotline's launch is slated for early September.
- Rating teachers ok in Germany. Citing free-speech law, a German district court ruled that rating teachers on the Web is not illegal. The court overturned a temporary injunction that would have forced the operators of the site Spickmich [something like "your cheat sheet" in German] to prevent a female teacher from being graded by pupils online," Heise Online reports. Students had given her "an overall grade of 4.3" on a scale of 1 to 6." Spickmich.de is run by three university students, who had appealed the injunction. US-based examples of this kind of site include RateMyTeachers.com and RateMyProfessors.com.
