Over the last 4 weeks, iPlatform has been proud to be part of one of Facebook’s most significant developments to date, creating a potentially life-saving application.
TechCrunch hailed it as the first real online child safety campaign, designed to connect and engage with the user. They pointed out that previous ‘panic button’ styled formats, including that of Bebo, were little more than documents about online safety.
http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/07/12/facebook-has-not-launched-a-panic-button-its-smarter-than-that/
We learnt from previous efforts to keep children safe online, and looked carefully at the format in which the information was presented to children. Previous formats have been information-heavy, not something that children would find particularly interesting. Rather than trying to engage with the user they tend to speak at them, or moreover, speak to the adults who were far more likely to be reading them.
The CEOP app that we built with Facebook for CEOP intends to educate children on how to be safer online and is designed to encourage children to come forward and address issues that worry them online. Whether that is from negative wall postings from people they do know, or chats from people they don’t. It isn’t designed to appear as an overbearing adult, but rather ‘speak’ with the user and make them feel it is one of them. Its look and feel is simplistic making it easy for the user to navigate, whilst the tone remains friendly and reassuring.
Joshua March, CEO of iPlatform, says:
“It’s been great to have the opportunity to work alongside Facebook and CEOP, in a continuing relationship, not only to build this application but also to more generally help CEOP engage properly with teenagers on the Facebook website; making it a safer place and connecting with CEOP’s schools outreach programmes to really educate users”
CEOP Facebook Application
The application isn’t designed to scare children into believing that the online world is bad, but rather act as a safe haven where children can reach out if they feel threatened.
One of the most important roles the application may play is its ability to ward off sexual predators and cyber bullies. As TechCrunch discussed, the app acts as a visual warning and deterrent. It shows the user has an understanding of the need to be safe online and serves as a warning to those with less than good intentions.
In terms of users’ interest in the campaign, thus far it is proving a great success. In its first week over 100,000 children engaged with the app, with 20% adding the application’s tab to their profiles – ranking it highly even compared to big brand campaigns. For this campaign however, the true measure will not be the standard user stats, but whether or not it does make the web safer for children.
iPlatform worked alongside Facebook to produce the CEOP application, and Conversocial, iPlatform’s fan page management tool, is being used by Tempero to help moderate and manage the Click CEOP fan page.
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