Age Restrictions At Popular Advertising Venue
Published: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 Online-Casinos.com
NEW AGE RESTRICTIONS AT POPULAR ADVERTISING VENUE
MySpace.com plans new restrictions to protect younger users
MySpace.com, the increasingly popular online site widely used for social networking has been attracting the attention of advertisers due to its significant readership, and new restrictions currently being planned are therefore of interest to many online marketers.
Driven largely by word of mouth, MySpace has grown astronomically since its launch in January 2004 and is now second in the United States among all Web sites by total page views, behind only Yahoo Inc., according to comScore Media Metrix. The site currently has some 87 million users, about a quarter registered as minors, according to the company. It was bought last year by News Corp for $580 million and offers a mix of features such as message boards, games, Web journals - all designed to keep its youth-oriented visitors clicking on its advertising-supported pages.
The new restrictions will address how adults may contact younger users in response to growing concerns about the safety of teenagers who frequent the site, reports Associated Press this week. The site already prohibits children 13 and under from setting up accounts and displays only partial profiles for those registered as 14 or 15 years old unless the person viewing the profile is already on the teen's list of friends.
Under the changes, expected to be announced soon, MySpace users who are 18 or over will no longer be able to request to be on a 14- or 15-year-old's friends' list unless they already know either the youth's e-mail address or full name.
Any user will still be able to get a partial profile of younger users by searching for other attributes, such as display name. The difference is that currently, adults can then request to be added to a youth's list to view the full profile; that option will disappear for adults registered as 18 and over.
However, users under 18 can still make such contact, and MySpace has no mechanism for verifying that users submit their true age when registering. That means adults can sign up as teens and request to join a 14-year-old's list of friends, which would enable the full profiles.
The partial profiles display gender, age and city. Full profiles describe hobbies, schools and any other personal details a user may provide.
All users also will get an option to prevent contact from people outside their age group. Currently, they may only choose to require that a person know their e-mail or last name first; that will remain an option to those 16 and over, even as it becomes mandatory for those younger.
MySpace also will beef up its ad-targeting technology, so that it can avoid displaying gambling and other adult-themed sites on minors' profile pages and target special public-service announcements to them.
The changes follow a number of safety-related measures that includes the hiring of a former federal prosecutor and Microsoft Corp. executive as its online safety chief.
