Privacy and safety have always been key issues in social networking, especially when it comes to children. While Facebook’s terms and conditions say that kids under 13 aren’t allowed on the site, no one is going to stop a 12 year old from claiming that she was born a year earlier. To make things easier for parents and provide a place for 8-13 year olds to connect, Everloop is a site that “creates a privacy loop around kids’ connections.” Below is my interview with Hilary DeCesare, co-founder and CEO of this social network for tweens.

1. What benefits does Everloop provide to tweens that may be too young for Facebook and too old for Club Penguin?

Online, tweens want fun while parents want safety, and Everloop delivers both. With more than 600 million Facebook users across the world, social networking site has changed the way people communicate and share information. Everloop has created a unique age-appropriate social media experience by interconnecting customized micro-social networkscalled “loops”. Loops featured on Everloop include community loops of common interest (art, science, culture, reading, sports, fashion, etc.). Social “looping” was specifically designed to allow tweens to share, communicate, and collaborate discretely with their friends while online.

The site also features creative applications, music, games, videos, photos, animation, user generated content and other integrated online experiences. No other social platform on the market today offers as many real-time communications, content-sharing, and collaboration features designed specifically for tweens.

2. What are some of the things that these kids are most interested in doing in social networks?

We’ve found that kids love sharing content with each other, chatting, playing games, creating groups and using technologies that are similar to those being used by their older siblings and parents.

3. Today’s tweens are growing up surrounded by technology and social media. It’s all very normal to them. What kinds of things do you think they will expect from the websites of the future?

I think kids expect and deserve a lot of the same tools adults use and that’s why we offer many similar features provided by major social networks. Unlike many other tween platforms, we don’t deny them these exciting technologies they’ve become familiar with, we enhance them to become safer and more enriching for younger audiences.

4. What are your thoughts on the gamification of education?

There is definitely a place for play in education and we’re eager to see how social networking can contribute to that intersection of gaming and learning. Since computers entered the classroom, gamification has taken many forms, from spelling, math and typing challenges to geography and more. What we’re now calling “gamification” brings it to another level through social interaction and mobility and it’s a natural way to get kids thinking strategically as they aim to “win” their educational challenge or get the right answer.

5. You offer self-serve tool options for companies, organizations and brands. Are you already working with any schools and brands?

Yes, we have relationships and programs with a leading supplier of digital content for schools and with top brands such as Mad Science and Simon and Schuster.

6. What happens when Everloop tweens get older. Does Everloop grow with them or is Everloop just an in-between social network?

We are working on a tool that enables Everloop tweens that grow with the platform to export and transfer their content and memories to 13+ social networks.

7. How do you keep the wrong people from coming into Everloop?

Everloop has the most comprehensive, safe, and fully COPPA-compliant social network designed and built specifically for tweens age 8-13 in the marketplace today. While competitive social networks such as Imbee, GiantHello, and whatswhat.me offer a subset of these tools, none offers full suite and level of sophistication that Everloop employs.

We approach security from 3 perspectives: Secure Sign Up, Parental Monitoring, and Moderation.

1. Secure Sign Up: We have developed a process where any kid can sign up without parental approval but cannot interact or post to any member. Parents are immediately involved upon sign up.

2. Parental Monitoring: Using our Privacy Panel, parents have the ability to see incoming/outgoing email, friend requests/acceptances, group activity and Evercredit purchases.

3. Moderation: Everloop applies a 3-prong-approach to moderation, including 1) Everloop uses the Crisp NetModerator U13 moderation and profiling system for social environments. Crisp Thinking is the world’s leading expert on child safety online and designer of NetModerator and provides world class automated moderation technology for posts, groups, IM Chat, email and SMS. 2) an internally developed UGC/Messaging human moderation tool. 3) empowers kids to identify communication that does not feel right or even un-friending members.

8. What can parents do to protect their kids online while also encouraging them to connect with friends?

Outside of Everloop, parents should educate themselves on the risks involved in adding their children on Facebook. It’s illegal for a reason. Parents should also be aware of COPPA-compliance and seek platforms that adhere to those safeguards to maintain secure Web experiences for their kids. Parents don’t have to deny their kids Internet use, they just need to monitor and participate in their activities to ensure that they’re learning how to be good netizens.

On Everloop, parents control and set their Privacy Panel to monitor their child’s activities and are alerted of actions through email, SMS/text message, or on their Privacy Panel’s dashboard.

9. Bonus: Any advice for future entrepreneurs?

As with any endeavor, it’s essential to build a product or company that fills a void and provides vital resources for an underserved need. Focus. Live, breath, run your company around specific focus area. Every member of the team needs to all be on the same page or distractions will kill the business.

Social Nerdia was at the live taping of The Engadget Show in New York City. Lucky Charms is not a sponsor, but the cereal sure got a lot of attention thanks to Fable III’s designer Peter Molyneux. Watch the video with Somerlea to know why.

Here’s the story on Engadget’s site.

Lisa Murphy is the Product Marketing Manager for Metaio, a company that develops software products for visual interactive solutions between the real and the virtual world.

Metaio is responsible for some of the coolest augmented reality implementations and they recently partnered with Time Out New York Kids to bring P.S.22′s famous YouTube video to your phone through mobile AR (via their Junaio browser). It’s a brave new AR world and Metaio is one of the companies leading the charge.

1) From movie posters to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, augmented reality marketing is generating a lot of buzz. However, the usage and awareness of AR is still not very high. Is buzz the ultimate goal in AR marketing today?
 
Buzz is definitely a goal for brands and it sometimes is the ultimate goal. But for many others, brands are looking beyond the buzz to deliver an interactive brand engagement experience or help drive sales of their products. For example, LEGO, a partner of ours, created the LEGO Digital Kiosk installation at their retail stores. The LEGO Digital Kiosk allowed shoppers to see a 3D model of the actual LEGO toy with animations and sound right on top of the product package when held to the kiosk. ( )In this execution, LEGO not only created a buzz, a great brand experience, but also sold more products as a result of the experience.

2) Time Out New York Kids and Metaio recently partnered to create a mag cover with AR using the Junaio browser, similar to Esquire’s AR cover some months ago. Now that AR is becoming a reality on print, do you think AR is going to become a trend in the print industry?
 
Print industry is a great fit for augmented reality. As we see a more steady push toward digital ebooks and wide consumption of articles online, publishers are looking for creative and innovative ways to engage their traditional magazine readers beyond just text in a magazine. We definitely see more publishers using augmented reality to create this mixed and interactive experience for their readers and drive more sale of the magazines on newstands. For Time Out New York Kids, having a feature cover and an editorial on PS22 definitely pointed out how talented the Chorus was, but to be able to connect the reader to a video of their performance is instant and engaging.   
  
3) One of my favorite examples of AR is the Adidas Originals 3D Neighborhood sneakers. Where did that idea come from and how successful has it been?

The idea of creating an AR shoe that serves as a game controller for the Star Wars game came from Sid Lee Marketing Agency. They approached us with the concept and we jointly implemented the AR experience using our Unifeye software. The campaign has been very successful and generated much press coverage and buzz. I am not able to disclose any statistics regarding usage as they belong to the client. However, the campaign for the user was successful because it extended beyond just a simple AR campaign, incorporating interactions and social media features to make it engaging and fun. We have heard a lot of good feedback.
 
4) Apps like Tweepsaround (based on Layar) have been able to give us a hint of the integration of AR and the social web. Is Metaio doing anything in the social networking space?

Yes we are. Junaio, our augmented reality browser, has a social focus that allows users to leave “geo-tags” at locations to share with friends. For example, any user can create a “user augmented channel” and leave photos, comments, notes, or 3D objects at locations for friends to discover. Recently, I created a channel called “Lisa’s Adventures” and it’s full of my favorite places to go in the city. My friends can tune into my channel and see my recommendations just by pointing their phone. We have also embedded features such as adding friends, news to create a fun and social experience for our users.
 
On the channel side, Foursquare and Youtube are some of the social networking AR channels that we make available for users to discover. 
 
5) Going back to TONY Kids, what do you think this will do for PS 22, the YouTube sensation and Webby Award-winning fifth-grade chorus from Staten Island?

When we told PS22 about the AR cover, they were very excited. Part of the reason why they were so successful was their viral YouTube videos that garnered more than 2 million hits. Using augmented reality, we were able to connect those videos to the magazine article that allowed the readers to experience the magic as they were reading. More readers are able to see their performance.
 
6) It seems like kids these days are born knowing how to operate computers and smartphones. What about education? Is there an area in which AR could be helpful in the classroom?

Yes! Augmented reality is making books more interactive and fun to read. We did a project with Bertlesmann in 2008 where we turned a couple of pages in their Atlas to 3D AR pages.  The AR experience with visual, audio supplement allowed a reader to better understand the content of the book. Learning by watching a video or having a 3D construction of the terrains vastly improves the intake of information. Future is Wild is another example project.

7) Industrial AR is another interesting use case. Any examples of companies doing this effectively?
 
Yes, Peugeot, Opel, VolksWagen are some of the pioneers in factory planning and prototyping. 
 
8) In what other ways could the world benefit from increased use of AR?
 
Augmented reality creates a simple interface to data and information that is available in the world. By a simple point of the phone, users can get information immediately. For example, if I am a tourist in San Francisco and looking for places to go, I can use AR to discover landmarks around me.  No more searching through a map or reading a guide, you now can get instant information that is relevant and location-based.
 
9) We’ve gone from webcam/printout examples of AR to all kinds of AR-enabled games and mobile applications. What’s next in Augmented Reality?
 
The growing area is definitely on the mobile side. Everything that we have seen about AR can now be done on a smart phone.

What’s next is mobile AR games? Check out Zoombie Shooter.

Touchscreens have been around for a while now. We’ve become used to them thanks to the wide array of small and personal mobile devices we carry on our pockets, manipulating them to open and close windows, zoom in and out on maps, and bring data to life as we move, swipe, hold, and press pixels. No longer do we have to think about interacting with computing devices with one single point of interaction. And no longer are we limited by a stylus, a mouse, or even a keyboard. Today, our fingers give us access to a wealth of digital information that we could only imagine decades ago.

While the mouse is still the main way in which we talk to the desktop, but that is certainly starting to change. I’m not saying the mouse is going away, but it’s starting to feel old, tired, and full of limitations. Its only a matter of time before all screens are controlled by our touch, and new and exciting applications that are manipulated by two, three, four or more points of interaction become the norm, not the exception.

Watch the various videos in this post to see the Microsoft Surface and Windows Phone 7 Series in action, as well as parts of the SXSW Interactive 2010 presentation “That Game Feels Nice: Tomorrow’s Touch Interaces” about Win7 touch games by Microsoft’s Amish Patel and Fuel Industries’ Philip Glofcheskie.

The Social Nerdia Show! Episode #20 is now available for streaming below, on blogtalkradio, or as a podcast on iTunes.

In this episode, @socialnerdia and first-time co-host @domineconcept talk about the latest..

Tech News: eBay finally sells a large portion of Skype, personalized in-videogame ads, Augemented Reality in your eyes with Wi-Fi in your brain, Wikipedia color schemes

Not-So Tech News: Disney acquires Marvel, Fox’s Twitter commentaries on re-runs, and Macaulay Culkin rumored to be real father to MJ’s “Blanket”

Upcoming Movie Releases: Gamer, Extract, Amreeka

Upcoming Music Releases: They Might Be Giants – Here Comes Science, Derek Webb – Stockholm Syndrome, David Bazan – Curse Your Branches, Andrew WK – 55 Cadillac, The Used – Artwork

Randomized Topic of the Day: Crowdsourcing (CP+B / Brammo, Fiat)

Announcement: Don’t forget!!! Today’s the last day to vote for SXSW panels… Please vote for “Here Come All the Latino Bloggers“ http://bit.ly/votesxsw

Cali Lewis is the producer, writer and host of GeekBrief.TV, a video podcast about tech, consumer electronics, and web 2.0. An influential person in the tech community, Cali is also quite down to earth and recently did an awesome job as an organizer of WordCamp Dallas 2009, where I was able to ask her some questions.

In the two videos below, you’ll learn about Cali’s real (but not very googleable) name, her geeky roots, and her transition from self-storage manager to full-time video podcaster.

Cali also told me about having friends not “fans” (with one exception), the exciting future of AR and 4G networks, and the threat that bloggers pose to journalists. Cali is aware that “the internet is not going to wipe out TV, just like TV didn’t wipe out the radio, and the radio didn’t wipe out the newspaper“, but it’s clear that online productions of high quality like GeekBrief.TV are  transforming the way we watch and think of content on the web.