Path, the mixed-media app for more intimate phone-based social networking, really illustrates how very borderless but cultural social media is. Growing by about 1 million users a month and now one of the Top 20 apps for Android phones, according to the Wall Street Journal, this app that limits your social network to 150 friends started growing fast in Asia first, its CEO David Morin told the … [Read more...] about App ambition: Fun media-sharing for small social circles, planet-wide
apps
Snapchat: Privacy as perishable as the photos
Users of the popular, fairly new Snapchat app tend to like it because a photo vanishes within 10 seconds or less of being viewed by its recipient. That adds something fun, spontaneous and just "real" to photo-sharing that's pretty unprecedented in social media. New parents' guide Here's why: Typically in social networking, "users tend to feel pressure to curate the perfect representation of … [Read more...] about Snapchat: Privacy as perishable as the photos
Facebook’s ‘Home’: New layer in the mobile layercake
Although as of this writing, a search of Google News turned up nearly 2,000 news stories about it, the new uber app for Android phones that Facebook unveiled today isn't really big news for families. I know I just wrote about the teen mobile trend, but I sincerely doubt teens will want their use of the mobile platform dominated by any single service. Their mobile socializing is nothing if not … [Read more...] about Facebook’s ‘Home’: New layer in the mobile layercake
Apple’s settlement with parents
Interesting: On the one hand, I hear a Nickelodeon executive saying kids are hard-pressed to spend $10 in the Apple App Store, and on the other I read that Apple reached a settlement with an untold number of "parents who sued the company for making it too easy for kids to rack up charges by buying add-ons to games and other apps." That's according to the Washington Post. Parents won't be able to … [Read more...] about Apple’s settlement with parents
Notes from a ‘Digital Kids’ conference
In case parents are interested in what the toy and digital industries are thinking about and designing for kids... Digital play that's both mobile and tactile was the centerpiece of what all the adults were talking about at the Digital Kids conference in New York last week, but their insights were like "frozen concentrate" compared to those from a panel of kids aged 8-13. Moderated by … [Read more...] about Notes from a ‘Digital Kids’ conference