It's not publicizing the move as such, but Bolt.com (which was hosting teen social-networking long before anybody heard the term) has a unique solution to the downside of the teen online social scene. It's segmenting itself. It has relaunched 10-year-old Bolt.com for 18+ users and unveiled Bolt2.com for 13-to-17-year-olds. "To provide value to its original audience, Bolt Media today also launched Bolt2.com, enabling kids, tweens, and younger teens to create content, meet people, and play games in a safe, no pressure, and age-appropriate environment," the company's press release says, adding that Bolt2 "is organized around games, pop culture and self-discovery" (here's early coverage at Adotas.com). It'll be interesting to see if MySpace and other such sites make similar moves.
Meanwhile, apparently to capitalize on both social-networking and media-hosting trends, Bolt.com is folding the two terms into "creative networking." Its relaunch includes "unlimited storage" of videos, photos, tunes, and blogs in its users' profiles. The site claims to have grown 300% in 2005 to 10.8 million visitors a month. Because of children's age-old desire to be older than they are, it'll be interesting to see if teens stick with Bolt2.com, but it doesn't appear there are any new limits on their networking and uploading. Besides allowing users to make their content "private" instead of "public," the only readily apparent safety features are requirements in the Member Code of Conduct and Terms of Service that members not falsify information they provide at registration and not "transmit, solicit or post extremely sexually explicit messages, text or photographs."
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