Wednesday, December 10. 2008

Verizon Blocked BrightKite/Loopt Until they Offer Parental Controls

I didn't realize this until I read an article in the Hamilton Spectator by David Riordon.

Ultimately Verizon made the right buisiness decision to block BrightKite (and ultimately Loopt) until these services deployed parental safeguards. The number of web-hipsters who won't choose Verizon as their wireless provider is far fewer than the number of parents who will choose Verizon for themselves and their children because they can block or constrain the use of these social networks. Furthermore, while there's no public research on the subject, I'm fairly certain that wireless providers are going to be like political parties, children will tend to stick with the carrier their household used. So all those kids whose parents chose Verizon because it blocked social networks will stay on, even when they move off the family's bill.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Social Networking at 07:00 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) |

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It seems that your source might have incorrect information. We're not aware of any blocking going on. Verizon initially took a while to accept new social networking applications (not just location-based ones) into their SMS programs until they (Verizon) had implemented parental controls on their end.

Martin
brightkite.com

#1 Martin May (Link) on 2008-12-10 14:20 (Reply)

This makes sense to me that Verizon would require the parental control. The same thing happened with MySpace - as these new applications grow the potential for misuse grows with them.

I was with a group of 18-23 year old women yesterday that commented about the unwanted attention from older men on when they were on Loopt. I showed them the way they could guard privacy and use zhiing and loved it. zhiing allows you to send location via SMS text but you don't have to join a social network to do it. And they really liked the way zhiing works.

Connie

#2 Connie (Link) on 2008-12-10 14:25 (Reply)

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In reply to	[ Top level ]#1: Martin May on 2008-12-10 14:20 #2: Connie on 2008-12-10 14:25
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