Verizon, Parental Controls, and the Social Network Ban
Verizon has been blocking all social networks from their users until they build in parental controls. That’s a good thing.
I’ve been using the location-driven social network BrightKite pretty heavily in the past few weeks (and it’s made me realize that I’m the only one who uses it since Fairfield County is not a web-hipster enclave), though for some reason, its SMS feature hasn’t been working at all.
This morning on the heels of Loopt’s demo at WWDC and Gawker’s proclamation that it will forever change public interactions, I started to rethink Verizon’s stance on social networks using its network. Does it fundamentally make sense to block social applications until adequate parental controls are built in, particularly since their competiors are encouraging them?
Ultimately Verizon made the right buisiness decision to block BrightKite (and Loopt) until they deployed parental safeguards. The number of web-hipsters who won’t choose Verizon as their wireless provider is far less than the number of parents who will choose Verizon for themselves and their children because they can block or constrain the use of these social networks. Furthermore, while there’s no public research on the subject, I’m fairly certain that wireless providers are going to be like political parties, children will tend stick with the carrier their household used. So all those kids whose parents chose Verizon because it blocked social networks will stay on, even when they move off the family’s bill.
