I wonder how the MySpace announcement that they will add a “parental notification” feature will affect the popularity of the site.
Parents who install the monitoring software on their home computers would be able to find out what name, age and location their children are using to represent themselves on MySpace. The software doesn’t enable parents to read their child’s e-mail or see the child’s profile page and children would be alerted that their information was being shared. The program would continue to send updates about changes in the child’s name, age and location, even when the child logs on from other computers.
Of course, one big problem with this software is that parents would have to know about their kids account. A large number of kids probably don’t use their real names.
And what happens if they decide to pick up and move to another social networking site? Some of the more popular alternatives are not anxious to sign on to what appears to be a spying tool.
One of the reasons why MySpace became so popular was the “outlaw” factor. Right or wrong, many kids viewed the site as a private clubhouse where they could digitally hide from parents and teachers.
The site has become far more mainstream in the year and half since it was bought by old media giant News Corp. Has all of that attention sucked out some of the coolness factor?
Even the large symphonic choir in which my wife sings (with an average audience member age far, far north of teenage) now has a MySpace page. Is that something the average high school freshman would call cool?
Then there’s the matter of MySpace’s perception in the adult world. Some traditional groups like the choir are putting up a presence there to enhance their image with younger consumers.
However, as far as I can tell, for many educators and the press, it’s still the poster child for all the evil, nasty stuff on the web.
It doesn’t sound like this new effort is going to do much to change that.
I understood it that the software would realize any connection to MySpace from that computer, which would mean that you don’t have to know what your child’s account information is, and you’d be able to know if your kids’ friends are accessing their accounts on your system as well. So you COULD just be slick about it and your kids wouldn’t necessarily go to another site. So kids could still think MySpace is cool and fun and that their parents just got smarter. Maybe.
Did you read about the IM monitoring web app? http://www.imsafer.com/
Personally, I think the coolness factor which was what drew kids there will disappear almost completely.
It’ll be left to be either a more adult or a pre-teen space.
Some of the companies ought to take note that teens latch on to something because it’s underground, and the more it’s discovered, the more likely they are to move along somewhere else, UNLESS the site is so unique that no other site does what it does.
I’m reading a book called Innovator’s Dilemma.
The author talks about how this happens to big companies–they can’t be as agile and react to things as quickly so they slow themselves down from innovating. I see this happening with sites like MySpace. They are cool because they are new and agile, and once they get “corporatized” then they slow down and student’s won’t consider them as “cool.”