Michael F. Shaughnessy
Senior Columnist EdNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University

Daniel Scalisi is Executive Vice President of www.MyLifeBrand.com He is a seasoned wireless and digital media executive with immense consumer facing start up experience. With over 10 years digital and 7 years wireless, his experience brings deep content, digital media and mobile partner and product development experience to the MyLifeBrand team. In his role at MyLifeBrand, Daniel is responsible for business and partner strategy as well as web services development leadership. His career in digital media commenced as CEO of an interactive marketing company he founded called ShowStyle which revolutionized ITV commerce in 1996. His subsequent experiences took him to the wireless industry were he amassed seven years of wireless and web content and applications development experience both on deck with the largest carriers in the world and off deck market channels through content and marketing partnerships with the largest media companies in the world. Daniel's most notable achievement to date has been to create the first mobile Local TV on demand application in the United States to be carried by Sprint and Cingular and deliver mobile video news on demand for over 80 local broadcast stations in over 80 markets in the United States.

1) There has been a lot of concern recently about predators and sex offenders stalking and seeking out under age minors for exploitation. What are you doing to cope with this problem?

We are taking a hard line and instituting specific measures. Those measures include:

1. Children's account (under 14) requiring and being tied to a parent account.
2. Parent has parental controls on the account.
3. Users can privately and anonymously mark e-mails and senders of those e-mail as inappropriate
4. Those senders are flagged in our system and can be dealt with directly
5. We have 'site marshals' who are being enlisted that are from police departments who have access to monitoring the inappropriate content section and contacting the offender.

2) Let's face it…some of these predators are slick psychopathic individuals. Where is the criminal justice system failing?

The failure lies in the lack of a concerted corroboration and communication between the criminal, the law authorities, and community around this matter.


3) D o you have a "typical profile" of a sex predator that is preying on these kids on MY SPACE?

I do not have access to their database, but in our experience they tend to be over 30, but beyond that the profiles are varied. They are from professors to business owners.

4) How are you working with state and local law authorities in this regard?
We have begun an enlistment process with specific law authorities being granted site monitoring access to review offenses and in justified cases contact the offender.

5) What does the future hold for My Space, given the problems in the past?

It is beholden on them and any other social network to take a hard line on sexual offenders and to take specific measures to prevent the offenses from occurring. The Challenge they currently have is they've let the cat out of the bag with over 150 Million members and no measures in place to deal with it.

6) Tough question-My Space prohibits kids under 14 from having a space or location. Now, what I want to know is who specifically decided that 14 is the magic age for kids to be able to have a site or space? How did 14 become the age wherein children or young adolescents, if you will are able to make informed decisions about some of the slime and predators that are out there?

That is a tough question, one which I believe to be more cultural than anything else as coming of age in other countries are vastly different. My best guess is there is a cultural belief you have cleared your first stage of adolescence at that point and are by way of schooling and parenting well informed enough about situations such as these occurring.

7) Should MY SPACE consider raising its age to 18?

They could raise their age to 18, but that will not prevent people from lying about their age to join a social network they really want to be part of. That frankly is the hardest part with age restriction over the internet, which is why we at MyLifeBrand, are instituting hard policies to stop predators when we can. Eventually we might be able to go down a path where a verifiable driver's license is required to activate a social profile, but that kind of corroboration is still a ways away.

8) Should MY SPACE get parental permission somehow to allow their kids to post their blogs or sites?

MyLifeBrand is enabling parental controls by tying the child's account to a parent's. The parent must accept the activation of the member's profile and can monitor the activity in the child's account. They and any other social networks should initiate such permissions.

9) What question or questions have I neglected to ask?

All looks good - MyLifeBrand is the latest in social networking for communities. Check out www.mylifebrand.com to learn more.

Published May 21, 2007