TechWinter

Guest Post By Ildeniz Yagcioglu (E-mail / E-mail / Twitter)

Yes, I guess it is possible! Bebo is expanding its product range to once again the younger generation is being targeted this time for a dedicated educational purpose.

Everyone keeps hearing and reading in the news, how parents are concerned about their kids and their interaction on social networking sites. The number of Bebo competitors continues to grow and the number users seems to be exploding with exponential growth, and this makes it harder for parents to monitor and control their childrens’ behaviour.

Bebo has been working with the government’s taskforce for child protection on the Internet for about 18 months. In the meantime, Bebo obviously saw a gap in the market and went for it by launching a new site SafeSocialNetworking encouraging discussions between teachers and young people about responsible use of web.

This is an excellent time for Bebo to raise awareness, and educate their audience both parents and children.

A recent research by Ofcom argues that of the 49% of UK children who are registered with a social networking site, many are using services intended for teens or adults and are usually not supervised by their parents. The research also found that users typically have a skewed perception of the safety of their data, regarding social networking sites as less risky than banking sites.

Source: The Guardian

Bebo possibly created this site to:

• Improve their image
  • Responsive to issues raised by parents
  • Social responsibility
  • Take leadership amongst their peers
• Educate their audience
• Expand their audience by including educators

Bebo’s real business reasons should not over-shadow the fact that the service is very valuable, necessary and informative.

About SafeSocialNetworking

When you first land on the homepage, you immediately get a clear sense of the value of information to found on the site. There is an Introductory video that explains the basics of what a social network is and the basics of safety online. Some of the other videos are respecting online community, bullying, uploading photos and privacy.

The site does not have a lot of content or videos at the moment as the library is (we assume) growing. Interestingly there are worksheets and teacher notes which can assist teachers at incorporating important safety information into lesson plans.

Let’s keep our social networking platforms safe and clean…