The survey also found that 76% of parents with kids on Facebook have "friended" their teenagers, while 29% of these teens would un-friend their parents if they were given the option. Heartwarming isn’t it? These kids are twice as likely to un-friend their mothers as opposed to their fathers.

Along with the survey, AOL has released a new product called Safe Social, which provides parents with a "360 degree view of their child’s social networking life". This includes a report card of overall social networking activity and identification of potential red flags.

Safe Social requires consent from the child to allow parents access to their kids’ friends list and what they’re posting on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Parents can even get alerts about potential predator relationships and indications of "at-risk behaviors" like references to alcohol, bullying or suicide.

"Predators, whether bullies or sexual offenders, often masquerade as friends," says John Ryan, AOL’s head of Online Safety and Security. "The key is to unmask them. Safe Social takes an across-the-board look at your kid’s friends and checks them against more than 50 databases and other factors, such as distance, to help you find out if they are, who they say they are."

Safe Social also addresses reputation management issues for teens, giving parents the ability to review postings, uploaded photos in which their kids are tagged, etc.
 

Features include:

- Permissions: Parents can set permissions for individual teens to designate how the account can be used. They can also require that their approval is required when a teen receives money in the account.

- Mobile Features: Parents can use their mobile phones to check account balances and transfer money to their teens’ account. Additionally, teens can check their account balance and easily request money from their parents via simple text message.

- Alerts: Parents can receive alerts notifying them when their teens’ payments exceed a certain amount or when a specified low balance is reached.

- Built-in security: As with all PayPal accounts, the Student Account allows teens to shop online without exposing any financial information.

"As a parent I understand the challenge and stress of raising kids that are financially responsible," says Don Fotsch, PayPal vice president of customer experience and design and parent of six, ranging in age from 8 to 19. "With the Student Account, I know I can give my kids a level of financial independence while remaining on top of my kids’ spending."

Parents have full visibility on the account, and can establish up to four PayPal sub-accounts and transfer funds as needed on a one-time or recurring basis. PayPal giving account holders some back-to-school savings opportunities as well.

AdAge wrote up a survey by Alloy Media + Marketing that found that 96% of teenagers with Internet access use social networking sites at least weekly. Actually, it’s more than just teenagers: even children (okay, “tweens”) as young as nine use social networks with that frequency. Better yet, “nearly half engaged with a brand in the space in the past month.” Their time social networking is now almost on-par with their time spent with the television—and when doing both, the Internet has four times as much of their attention as the television..

So, how should you advertise on teens’ social sites? Samantha Skey, Executive VP of Strategic Marketing at Alloy, stated that the best way to appeal to teens on social sites is to meet them on their terms: don’t interrupt their activities, but, “Enhance or facilitate my social-networking experience. Offer me utilities to enhance my production process or tools to help me better able to express or engage myself.”

What works well?

• Freebies: utilities, cool downloads, exclusive content and other items of value.
• “Mix their music or animate their backgrounds or offer a countdown to a special day,” Ms. Skey said. [You know, widgets.]
• An insurance company could, for example, sponsor educational content or a company could launch a cause-related campaign or a campaign that involves points and rewards for things kids are interested in. “Straight forward old-school reward systems are attractive and enable choice,” she said. [She also said that even brands without “natural youth interest” could reach them this way.]

Also of note: “Certain categories had endemic interest among kids, not surprisingly entertainment and technology. But Alloy was surprised to see a large number of respondents — mostly girls — were also interested in hearing more about categories such as personal-care products.” The survey also found that many teens communicate with their parents on social networks as well.

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These young folks happened to be passionate about music, so I asked them how they found out about new acts. In my younger days, my generation did this by listening to the radio, so I began with the simple question: what’s your favorite station?

None of them listened to the radio. “So how do you find out about new music?,” I asked them. Do you watch MTV? “Nope,” one answered. “It’s all word of mouth,” offered another. “If I hear something that I like, I’ll tell a friend,” said a third. “Wow,” I thought to myself. The idea that radio and television were completely irrelevant to these young people was a bit of a mindblower, but it certainly accords with what interactive media pundits have been saying for some time: the world is fragmenting into a myriad of tiny micro-channels which have, in just a few short years, turned the existing media world on its head.

After the pizza had been eaten, I followed these kids into the computer room, and hung back, at a respectful distance, while they recreated at the PC. “You’ve got to see this video,” one said, going to her Myspace page, where she had embedded a video from Youtube. “It’s hilarious.” She hit the “play” icon, starting the video, which ran for about three minutes. In the video, one teenager sat at a computer, downloading illegal music from the Internet. Another, posing as an investigator from the RIAA, entered the room, pointing a power drill at the other teen. I watched this video for a minute or two. Frankly, there wasn’t much to it: the scenario was obvious and cliched, the acting was wooden, and the production values were very poor. And yet the teenagers all enjoyed it, and I wasn’t about to throw rain on their parade.

Then I dropped my bomb: “did you guys know that Google bought Youtube last week?” “No,” they all said. “Does it matter to you?” I asked. “Not unless they start mucking around with it,” one answered.

This teenager’s response points to the central problem that faces media companies and marketers as they attempt to monetize the millions of eyeballs that are attracted to mass niche sites such as MySpace and Youtube. Any moves they make to better monetize these assets must be so subtle as to border on the invisible, or else their millions of users will defect. The kids I talked to last weekend aren’t computer programmers, but they’re more than equipped to quickly pull up stakes and transfer their friends and files over to another service. Their only loyalty to a brand is function-based, and brands which no longer function for them, including MTV, have no place in their mediaverse. In other words, they’re fickle, in exactly the same way that youth has always been fickle: yesterday’s overnight sensation is just one step away from being tomorrow’s has-been joke, and this principle applies to multibillion dollar brands as reliably as it does to Posh Spice or Britney Spears.

When Google bought Youtube, and News Corp. bought Myspace, these corporations placed an enormous bet on Youtube and Myspace being able to somehow resist the inevitable tendency of dominant youth-oriented brands from being pulled into the abyss of generational irrelevancy within a comparatively short time frame. It took 20 years for MTV to become irrelevant, and it took youth-oriented sites such as GeoCities, TheGlobe, and Six Degrees perhaps 5 years to suffer the same fate.

Whether Youtube will follow the same trajectory is impossible to know, but unless Google and News Corp walk a very fine line in their battle to monetize these sites, they’ll “muck up” the particular magic that has brought these sites their incredible critical mass. And there’s nothing “uncooler” than what was cool six months ago.

Neither Google or News Corp. is stupid, and each will probably be very hesitant to make significant changes without a lot of research. The downside of this cautious approach is that there are more than a handful of kids in garages developing video/social networking sites, and they’re not constrained in this way, which means that when they launch a competing service, it’s guaranteed to have a much higher “coolness factor” that will cause them to suddenly become the “in” place to hang out and self-publish. Unless Google has somehow developed an algorithm to abolish fickleness, it’s only a question of when, not whether, this will happen.

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When Vista hits, it’ll begin a battle of parents vs. kids, as the parents try to use the pretty good parental controls to limit and restrict their kids. While some of them, like the porn filters, can’t be argued with (well, horny teenagers might disagree with me), Vista can also be set to turn off the system, or even specific software, at specific times. This would mainly be used to kick teens off the computer, or off instant messenger.

Well, good luck with that. It might work on a six year-old, but even pre-teens know they have multiple options, which they’ve been using for years as schools and public libraries have tried in vain to block them. If parents disable AOL Instant Messenger, there are plenty of other options: online-based AIM-Express, GAIM, eventually Google Talk, or just using another service, like Yahoo. If parents shut off the system, they’ve got ideas as well.

Another scenario that should concern Microsoft is the proliferation of Linux. For example, one teen when told about the Parental Controls immediately explained she would pop in a Linux distribution and be done with Microsoft. Another wondered if she could overcome the administrator password (through Linux), reset the system, and be allowed the freedom she deserves. Another teenager talked about using their own external hard drive and booting off it – without their parents’ knowledge. One teenager barked, “If my parents do not trust me then they should sit next to me and not try to control me from a distance.”

Well, the external hard drive idea is stupid; you can’t boot Windows through USB. Try buying a second hard drive, hide it from your parent’s copy of Windows, install a second copy of Windows on the second hard drive (you don’t have to pay twice to install twice the same copy on the same hardware), and just run off that one. That should work fine. The Linux idea is a pretty good one as well.

While I’m sure many parents think Vista’s controls will make their lives easier, they aren’t a replacement for parenting. A far more effective method of getting your kid off IM is telling them to, assuming they actually listen to you (and if they don’t, whose fault do you think that is?). Don’t rely on Vista, and know your kids enough to understand that if you use “solutions” they already know how to beat, you’re just being an idiot parent.

An addendum: This could be a great way to get your kid to learn more about computers. Use the controls as a challenge with an obvious reward at the end. Eh, that’s probably just cruel.

Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.

Won’t pay for music (use BitTorrent), don’t trust single news sources, use the Internet to research purchases, etc.

But then I got to the last point, which hits pretty close to home:

None of them use Yahoo for much of anything (not for IM, not for search, not for shopping, not for mail) except as a sort of second-chance search when Google didn’t give them what they wanted. They hate the Yahoo home page because it’s busy and weighed down with ads, no surprise there.

If so, this should be a wake-up call for someone…

I’m sure we’ve got tons of our own research on this at work. But I haven’t seen any of it (yet?).

See Also: Teen Panel at Web2 and Web 2.0: Conversation with Five Teenagers

Jeremy Zawodny is the author of the popular Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. Jeremy is part of the Yahoo search team and frequently posts in the Yahoo! Search blog as well.

Visit Jeremy’s blog: Jeremy Zawodny’s blog.

With my daughter, I could hardly get a word in edgewise. She’s a great storyteller, but she wanted to tell me everything about everyone. Neither of them were really giving me what I wanted.

If these had been s.ales calls and I’d been a business prospect instead of a devoted parent, I’d have ended the conversation or walked away. I’d have thought, “Great people, but they don’t understand my point of view or my problems.”

Does your marketing turn prospects off with too little or too much information?

Do you approach your marketing from your customers’ point of view?

Is your marketing generating the leads you need to grow your business?

If a prospect asked you what you do, you’d never respond by just saying “Stuff”. But what do you say? Do you tell them that you’re in advertising, or that you are a lawyer, accountant, designer, entrepreneur, franchise consultant, realtor, trainer, or software developer? Statements like this don’t start a conversation fully explain what you do or how a prospect could benefit from your products or services. These one or two word answers are the equivalent of your teenager telling you they’ve been doing “Stuff”.

Don’t make your prospects play “20 Questions” with you to understand your business. Give them a clear, succinct marketing message that describes how you can help them and why they need you.

Once you’ve got their attention with your marketing message, follow it up with the information they need, a clarification of the problems you solve, the solutions you provide and a reason to contact you. Make it easy for your prospects to get what they want from your marketing materials, whether you use ads, brochures, a web site or other media.

– Define your prospects’ most common concerns and the problems they want resolved.

- Present the solutions your provide in the context of these problems.

- Explain why they need you, from their point of view.

- Anticipate and answer their questions.

I was on the phone with Marilyn, who wanted to know what her firm could do to spread the word and get more clients. Last year they made over a million dollars, but so far this year they haven’t gotten the number of inquires they need to continue to grow the company. What’s getting in the way?

While I was talking with Marilyn, I typed her firm’s URL into my web browser to take a look at the way they are promoting themselves. I had two reactions when her site came up in my browser. One, it was very attractive and professionally done. Two, after looking at it for a few minutes, I had no idea what the company actually did, who they helped or how.

There was a lot of information on the site, but it wasn’t telling me what I needed to know. It took me another ten minutes and a number of questions to find out what her small business software development and computer-networking firm did.

Your prospects don’t have the motivation of a parent talking to a teenager. If its hard for your prospects to figure out whether or not you can help them from your marketing materials, they’re gone. Don’t expect them to decipher unclear copy or hunt through your web site to find the information they need.

Generate more leads and s.ales by using a marketing message, supporting marketing copy and a coordinated marketing system that helps your prospects understand why they need you and how you can solve their problems.

- 2005 In Mind Communications, LLC. All rights reserved. -

2005 C In Mind Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.

The author, Charlie Cook, helps service professionals,
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more clients and be more successful. Sign up to receive the
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A common factor that has recently been found through AOL research is the internet and wireless communication. The research has found an expected increase in the amount of time spent by teens browsing the web, checking their e-mail, and chatting. This opens up a door for marketers to attach themselves to these mediums to find their target. The fact is, this target may not be as hard to find as was once thought.

AOL found that over 80% of teens ages 12 to 17 use e-mail to talk with friends and other uses. E-mail is followed by instant messaging and games, then homework, music, gossip news, chat, current news and sports information. Each of these categories fall 5-10% per comma use except that IM and games share the same use percentage. The smallest usage among teenagers is the sports/current events categories and they still pull in twenty-five percent use individually. Every one of these categories is influenced by whether or not a teen has access to broadband. As you can imagine, the access to broadband gives a better atmosphere and speed capabilities for the eager to play games and download music.

E-mail 81% Instant Messaging 70% Games 70% Homework 48% Music 54% Gossip 40% Chat 35% News 25% Sports Info. 25%

An unexpected find was the surge in Internet usage by teens for educational purposes. Almost sixty percent of U.S. teenagers use this new media for doing research for papers and finding and buying books. I suspect they also use it to trade papers and homework answers but don’t we all? An excellent source of usage for any age has been search engines. While it is hard to find what percentage of them are teens, we do know that this target frequents them often to find sites to browse.

I remember in school when my professor would talk exclusively about this target for hours because of their diverseness. We must focus on one facet of these potential buyers and find an avenue to reach them. Using the Internet and all of its uses only seems natural to find this target because they have grown up with this technology and will influence it in the future. Right now, teenagers are still learning and using this technology and are touched by it each day. How will your message get to them?

E-mail targeting seems like a logical choice if 80% of teens use some sort of e-mail. Popular free e-mail sources are, of course, Hotmail and Yahoo. I am certain that a list out there can be purchased to find the addresses of some of this target and test a couple of e-mail samples to see which gets the best reaction to your product.

Teenagers are the generation that will be the next big spenders of our country. Companies are scrambling to make some of them brand loyals by the time this happens. We all know that a brand loyal will be back to purchase your product until they become old and gray. Some products have done a terrific job at going after teens to buy their product. Mountain Dew is a great one. Everyone knows that the today’s early twenty-year-olds are lifetime buyers of the Dew and will be very hard to persuade to drink Coke’s Surge or Mello-Yello. This is because Pepsi has been targeting this crowd for years and been very successful. You don’t see too many ads online directed toward this target, this tells me that this “new” media is more than ready. Can you afford the risk of having to go after these teens later when they are mid-twenties and set in their ways? Attract them now through the Internet, because they use every facet of it. Take a look at these stats one more time and find out where your specific target may be browsing.

Full of wit and humor, Brandon White is an entrepreneur and former editor and writer for iEntry, Inc.