I think everyone's big concern is how to make the next teen 'thing' the next goldmine, which I think it where ideas flounder. Once upon a time, it was chat rooms and message boards, then Xanga and LiveJournal, then MySpace and currently Facebook. At their inception, all of these things were not for-profit, but for expression.
"New generations need their own way of expressing feelings and creativity."
This is the most important sentence of the article. The reason all the above examples were so popular is because when they we in their heyday, parents and authority figures in general were nowhere near them. A teen could post their brooding emo poetry on LiveJournal without a concern that everyone they know would see it, only your friends.
While picture sites are popular, I feel like they miss the 'expressing yourself' portion of what made these sites a hit (or maybe I'm just an old fogy now that preferred text to videos and pictures).
Personally, I think there will be a more 'localized' social network that teens will flock to because everything is just 'out there'. While something like Diaspora could be the answer, I'm sure us adults won't really know until the 'next big thing' is no longer 'cool'.
Completely agree with this one. Everybody wants to change the world, and they can't stop talking about it. All of these platforms started naively, they wanted to be popular, but no one knew how big they are going to become..
"New generations need their own way of expressing feelings and creativity."
This is the most important sentence of the article. The reason all the above examples were so popular is because when they we in their heyday, parents and authority figures in general were nowhere near them. A teen could post their brooding emo poetry on LiveJournal without a concern that everyone they know would see it, only your friends.
While picture sites are popular, I feel like they miss the 'expressing yourself' portion of what made these sites a hit (or maybe I'm just an old fogy now that preferred text to videos and pictures).
Personally, I think there will be a more 'localized' social network that teens will flock to because everything is just 'out there'. While something like Diaspora could be the answer, I'm sure us adults won't really know until the 'next big thing' is no longer 'cool'.