As a childless person, I am not always aware of the number of challenges having an Internet pipe into a house creates for families. If you have sons, there's that everpresent threat of porn exposure, and for either gender there are the potential issues of child predators, cyberbullying, and kids putting TMI onto MySpace et al.
But the challenge must be even bigger for mothers and fathers of daughters. The web has so much great content, but corners of it are also repositories of misogyny, sexism, and the like. Throw the predator risk on top of that and I gotta believe that there are plenty of parents who have nagging concerns.
Enter Jitterfingers, a social network designed for tween and teen girls. The Jitterfingers model is based around circles of girls - friend circles. It is NOT a place where any Tanya, Dick or Harry can trawl profiles -- communicating on Jitterfingers is by invitation only, meaning that the girls know each other before they link. A circle of girls is 8, because that's about how many real friends the typical girl has.
They present the site as a collection of clubs rather than a mass friending universe.
They also have a number of added features designed for young women -- fashion and celeb news and ratings, polls, photo sharing, and a robust platform of communications tools.
JF is in beta, and driving traffic virally. It's an interesting model and a great place for a particularly UGC-shy brand to dip its toe in social media. Check it out. Or rather, have your daughter do so!
Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.
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