Mind if I join you?
Personally, I have no objection to "adult-content" oriented online communities, or even "adult-content" social networking. I'm far from convinced that porn is the problem it's often made out to be, and if adults want to explore their sexuality online, I see no reason to stop them. A New York Times article from July of 2007, however, suggests that the boundaries between "adult" and "teen" may sometimes be a bit unclear:
Parents and child safety experts concerned about the online activities of teenagers have been particularly nervous about a Web site called Stickam, which allows its 600,000 registered users, age 14 and older, to participate in unfiltered live video chats using their Web cameras.
But those Internet safety advocates might be even more anxious if they knew of Stickam’s close ties to a large online pornography business.
The article basically goes on to report that porn sites operated by the owners of Stickam are administered by the same people operating the video chat sites that attract teens, and that the administrators of the Stickam communities are negligent in their supposed jobs of filtering out undesirable content.
There's probably not much here that's earth shattering (numerous responses to the article suggest that this is a tempest in a teacup) but that may precisely be the point. Stickam's parent company is able to rent extremely expensive office space (in Los Angeles) because it's made millions from porn, and now it doesn't have to build an "adult" social network - instead it simply lets adults infiltrate a teen social network. Which I guess only further shows that "social networking for adults" isn't the sort of title that's going to cause adults to want to join.
Go to: What's in a name?, or
Go to: Well, finding a name might be difficult, or
Go to: The plain brown paper envelope column.