danah on the changes in teen perception of social networks

danah's at it again, with a fab post on the state of social networks and the teens who use them. The gold is turning to tarnish, it seems; teens are frustrated with the networks, the controllers, the spammers, the marketers and the predators:

More significantly, MySpace has turned into a massive zit full of marketing pus. Most teens don't mind advertising but when things look more like spam than advertising, you're in deep shit. Every PR organization and marketing arm is leeching onto MySpace like a blood thirsty vampire. Problem is that vampires kill their prey. Teens who wanna hang with friends are mostly protecting themselves by privatizing their profile (more cuz of the marketing predators than the sexual ones) but this quickly loses the luster, particularly when it's fundamentally hard to do what you want to communicate with your friends. (Simple things like friend management and better messaging tools would go a long way.)

I'm very worried about how, unregulated, spamming and over-advertising will kill even the coolest social hangouts. I keep wondering what the regulation solution will have to be. (Is it law or code cuz it ain't gonna be market or social norms?)

Of course, a social network provided by a large public service media company would solve most of these problems. Not sure there are any yet, though.

Comments

[Robert 'Groby' Blum]

So the fact that News Corp/Rupert Murdoch own MySpace doesnt count? Or are we talking "public" in the sense of owned by the public, a.k.a. the Beeb?

Not sure how you think that would change things, though.

[kim]

Yeah, me neither. If it's open to the public, it's open to marketeers and spammers pretending to be public.

[Alice]

Sorry, britspeak. I'll fix it. I mean public service, of course.