We all know that social networking is now must-do online business activity. Remember the days when Facebook was for reuniting with high school friends and MySpace was the ultimate site for socializing? Well, that social focus is still the draw of sites like Facebook for our kids, as it should be.
But it’s a scary world out there in the social media bubble. I, for one, am happy to have several more years before my kids get online. But if you have pre-teen kids in your family, they will likely be asking for their own Facebook, if they haven’t already. The issue then becomes protecting their interests while giving them some freedom. This is where FaceChipz comes in.
FaceChipz is an invitation-only social network that allows kids to communicate only with others they’ve personally invited. There are no strangers. No one can arbitrarily contact them. No one can search for them. This is awesome.
On FaceChipz.com, kids interact with their peers, only their peers. Kids connect by either emailing an invitation to a known friend, or printing up a coded invitation and physically handing it to a friend.
Features of the site include:
- Customizable profile pages
- Message boards
- Photo uploading
- Status updates
- Games
From the site:
FaceChipz was created by parents who were concerned about how, when and where their kids were spending time on the Internet. Our ‘tweenagers’ outgrew the traditional websites for children but weren’t yet ready for the full-fledged, open social networking experience. We created FaceChipz to address those needs. Our kids were the ‘Chief Creative Officers’ and ‘Alpha’ testers of this site. They told us what they liked, what they didn’t like, what worked and what didn’t work. We listened, and then we programmed.
I think this is pretty cool … definitely something I’ll explore further once my kids are ready to go online. What about you? How will you introduce your kids to social networking?
Written by Alyssa Gregory
EMAIL Alyssa.
Owner of avertua, LLC, author of VA Secrets Revealed, founder of the Virtual Assistant Hub, blogger at the Small Business Idea Generator, and a whole bunch of other stuff!
Popularity: 2% [?]
