Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Do young bloggers care about privacy?

The good news is, the big blogging services are getting better about providing their bloggers privacy protections. The bad news is, kids aren't using the big services at MSN, Yahoo, and Google. They seems to prefer the littler guys, e.g., MySpace.com, Xanga.com, LiveJournal.com, etc. I've yet to see a study on this, but the only blogging spaces I hear about from concerned parents are the latter. Still, even if they can't persuade their kids to move to AOL's RED blogs, MSN Spaces, etc., parents can get some good insights into how blogs work from the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg this week. He and his assistant Katie Boehret created blogs at Google's Blogger.com, MSN Spaces, and the yet-to-be-launched Yahoo 360 and do a readable job of describing the experience. They report that Yahoo and MSN's services offer varying degrees of privacy, Blogger does not. [BTW, have you, too, noticed that blogging is like IM-ing for kids? No matter how great the bells and whistles (or privacy protections) are at any other service, they just use the service their friends use. End of story. It'll be interesting to find out how AOL's RED Blogs does. In terms of protecting privacy and maybe even "coolness," it sounds like one of the best services going (see my coverage ), but will kids switch for those reasons? I need to call AOL soon about that. Do email me (or post just below) if you know someone young who cares enough about privacy to switch services - I would love to interview him or her, with your permission.]

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