MySpace passe?

Hardly. But young interests do move on, and here's an early sign: "MySpace is just so last year" in the Wichita Eagle. The Eagle leads with the experience of high school sophomore Lula Larios, who has moved on to Bebo.com, a more closed social-networking site along the lines of Facebook.com. The key is that her peer group appears to be at Bebo too. Teens don't switch services individually, it appears – it's a group migration, which makes any social-networking site, including MySpace "stickier" than your typical Web site. The Eagle looks at other such sites, including Buzznet.com (though for people 18+, its Terms of Service say) and FriendsorEnemies.com (which looks more like an online party, or social, game than mere social-networking). Further evidence, too, of how amorphous social-networking is – it's sprouting all kinds of offshoots, and getting grafted into media-hosting and social-bookmarking or -tagging sites like YouTube.com and TagWorld.com (which the Eagle also mentions). The one concern about the more closed sites that's just beginning to surface is whether they provide a false sense of security – I'll address in more detail soon.