Xercel Blog

Social Networking, As Seen on CN8

I was recently featured on Comcast's Money Matters TV. On the show, I promised to share some of the statisitcs for parents and general information - so enjoy. If you have any questions, please let me know.

General Statistics:

• There are more than 300 Social Networking Web sites
• MySpace.com has more than 170 Million users
• Facebook has about 19 Million
• A Pew Internet & American Life Poll  estimates that approximately 55% of all teens use online social networking web sites.
• MySpace published recent research that more than 70% of americans between ages 15-34 use social networking.
• The primary use of social networks is actually to stay connected to friends and family as opposed to meeting new people.
• We were recently contracted to build a social network for music - iZinger - the focus of this web site will be to enable musicians to come together online and record themselves performing popular songs and meet up with other artists for virtual jam sessions.

Safety Issues

• In 2006 The Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported more than 2,600 Incidents where adults used the internet to target children.
• NBC Dateline series called "To Catch a Predator" makes the ruthlessness of these predators clear.
• MySpace uses 1/3 of their workforce to monitor profiles - but everyone should be cautious
• You should omit full names, phone numbers, school names, common hangouts - anything that would make it easy for a predator to just show up at a place you've mentioned and pretend to know you from somewhere.
• Visit www.wiredsafety.org to learn more about online safety. This program is run by it's 9000 volunteers and its the largest online safety education program in the world.

The best advice I can give is to use common sense. If someone or something seems to good to be true - it/he/she probably is.

Posted at 01:00AM May 18, 2007 by Xercel Blog in General  |  Comments[4]