MySpace In The News

Two news stories this morning sort of go together, and will be of interest to you if you've got kids.

First, Slashdot sends us to Hitwise, which tracks web traffic and tells us that MySpace.com was the Number One most visited domain on the web:

Today Hitwise issued a press release reporting that for the first time, www.myspace.com has surpassed Yahoo! Mail as the most visited domain on the Internet for US Internet users. To put MySpace's growth in perspective, if we look back to July 2004 myspace.com represented only .1% of all Internet visits. This time last year myspace.com represented 1.9% of all Internet visits. With the week ending July 8, 2006 market share figure of 4.5% of all the US Internet visits, myspace.com has achieved a 4300% increase in visits over two years and 132% increase in visits since the same time last year.

Now, I'll make a confession. This week I finally got a MySpace. I can't say it's that exciting, but I see my kids spending hours on theirs. Yesterday when I came home from work, a neighborhood kid was in the family room, and they were all giggling and teasing and creating a new MySpace for him. They took him outside and took a bunch of pictures of him, and they were setting it all up, just having the best time.

Anyway, so I got mine. As soon as I signed up, I had a "friend." Tom. I wish I could figure out how to get rid of him, maybe I'll find the "delete friend" button. Anyway, my MySpace still says "You have 1 friends" and there's a picture of Tom.

It seems that the older kids might be going to FaceBook, but what do I know? Right now, MySpace is on top.

It's kind of amazing, Hitwise has a graph comparing MySpace's traffic with Google's. MySpace caught up with Google back in May, and has far surpassed it. It just tells you, there are lots of people using the Internet in a lot different ways than I every would.

The other story, from Mercury News:

WASHINGTON - MySpace.com and other immensely popular social networking sites on the Internet were portrayed Tuesday as emerging playgrounds for sexual predators as lawmakers considered a measure to restrict their access in publicly funded schools and libraries.

"This is the hottest issue of the day," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott told reporters after testifying before a House subcommittee examining possible new federal restrictions to protect young Internet users from pedophiles.

A bill by Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., would require schools and libraries that get federal funds to limit or ban access to social networking sites that could expose minors to sexual advances from adults.

The bill, called the Deleting Online Predators Act, has drawn opposition among schools, librarians and free-speech advocates, who warn that it would have limited effect and could unintentionally block access to scores of other Web sites. Officials of the sites also say they are taking aggressive steps to protect their users. Bill would limit access to social networking sites

Now here's a question for you: do you really think this law is going to affect online sexual predation any? Blocking these sites at schools and public libraries?

Let me answer my own question: no.

First of all, this article mentions that MySpace had 92 million -- ninety two million!!! -- users, as of last Tuesday. Almost all of them are young, mostly teenagers, and most of what they do is post stuff and look at what each other posted. You sign up to be "friends" with somebody, and then you have access to more of their site. Most people put up pictures -- my daughter advised me that you are supposed to take a picture of yourself where you are holding the camera at arm's length, so it looks amateurish and casual. They say they'll delete any nudity or anything, and I have never seen anything like that, though I'm sure somebody's getting away with it somewhere. Once you're friends with somebody, you can send them quizzes and questionnaires, and send email and read each other's blogs, and stuff.

Now that you got 92,000,000 teenagers in one place, some pervert is going to get ideas. And that has happened. This Mercury News article tells us, "A 14-year-old girl in Austin, Texas, sued MySpace last month for $30 million, alleging that she was sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old MySpace user." Well, that's a problem, when these "friendships" go offline and things get ugly.

I'm always glad to see when the cops go online pretending to be jailbait, and make a date with some creep, and arrest him. I think that's probably a good way to do it, though from what I've seen on TV it doesn't seem like they can actually keep up with the perverts. It would be good if there was a vigilante method, where kids could eliminate these characters themselves, but I'm afraid if there are going to be criminal charges filed -- and there should be -- it will have to be done by police.

It's a cliche, but I'll say it just like everybody else: you have to talk to your kids about this. My kids have gone through all the phases, posting pictures and rating them, they had Xangas and ... whatever, all of it. They've told me stories of creepy guys saying crazy stuff. Once several years ago a guy sent my kid a picture of himself naked, using AOL instant messaging. I got the guy's screen-name and went online harassing him, every day I'd check and if he was online I'd give him a hard time until he logged off. What else can you do? After awhile the kids seem to mostly figure out what's going on, but a smart sicko can probably pass himself off as something innocent. You've got to talk to your kids about it, and you've got to look over their shoulders occasionally to see what they're up to. (As you can imagine, I'm not one who thinks you need to filter their access or monitor every little thing they do, I'd rather teach them to be responsible and safe in the world as it is. But that'll be your call as a parent.)

One interesting thing about MySpace is that you can search for people by zipcode. The effect is that kids tend to establish friendships with other kids who live nearby. That means that they often know these people. There are plenty of strangers like my friend Tom, who by the way has 92,622,044 friends himself, who try to get as many friends as possible, indiscriminately, but generally it seems you settle in with some people and lots of times you know them in the real world, as well as in cyberspace. There are also groups clustered around schools, for instance, and topics of interest.

It's like hanging out at the Regal, except they're home.

In recent weeks we have seen critical topics such as gay marriage and flag-burning taking up Congress' time, and now we have them introducing this "Deleting Online Predators Act." Let me point out that it won't delete any online predators, it just means that the predators won't be able to prey on kids using the computer at school or at the library. That might take, like, one thousandth of one percent of the opportunities away.

It does have a good effect on government liability, and there is a certain CYA level that this satisfies, both in terms of legal liability and for politicians who are trying to associate themselves with Good. In other words, it's good for them, does nothing for us.