5/5/05 - 1:11 PM - LiveJournal alone has 1.6 million teen blogs, and the mainstream press has begun to write about teen safety. MSN joins in with a great article, one every parent of teens should read : Kids, blogs and too much information: Children reveal more online than parents know. Besides offering good advice to parents about refereeing their teen's Internet usage, the article offers some interesting statistics:
- Kevin Krim, head of subscriptions services at Six Apart, goes on record stating that a quarter of all LiveJournal posts are visible to friends only. Since the median number of LiveJournal friends is 5, according to "researcher2", these friends-only posts are not being seen by many people. Accordingly, much of LiveJournal is for private communication outside the blogosphere yet using friends' feeds to keep each other updated.
- The article cites stats from David Huffaker's thesis, Gender Similarities and Differences in Online Identity and Language Use among Teenage Bloggers, which covers abandonment rates, avatar and emoticon usage, disclosure of personal information and more. The study involved a detailed content analysis of 70 weblogs.
In other news, I will be at BlogNashville this weekend and would be glad to talk about any of our studies with other attendees.