from teh locker talker folks

(some issues with formatting - but good info)

Mission statement: The mission of Locker Talker is to present news and facilitate educated discussion in a safe and secure online environment while appealing to the social interests of middle school students.

In doing this, we want to emphasize that we are not another social networking site. The features used by Locker Talker which may be similar to or resemble features found in social networking sites are simply there to attract this demographic to news. Otherwise, Locker Talker would be the same thing as reading your favorite newspaper online and our audience research has proven that this is not an activity occurring with this demographic. We feel the implementation of Locker Talker will also begin to force news organizations to better tune into our demographic.

Demographic: The initial demographic for this is the middle school age range, both males and females. Our initial target audience is 10, 11 and 12-year olds, although we hope to retain our existing user base past the age of 12 by enticing them with new features. See “initial marketing vs. add on” section below for more on this.


Review of features:

* Notebook groups (aka Haverhill MS Boys Soccer or Hilary '08): These will have to purposes: 1.) to direct what sort of news clippings get posted in your locker and 2.) to help jumpstart community involvement.
o These groups are designed to initiate community involvement and foster thoughts among similarly aged people in the community based on news articles appearing in their local paper. By clicking on your notebook group, the notebook will be removed from the locker shelf and be opened on your screen. Two sections will appear:
+ Left hand side of screen: Message boards storing recent discussions on topics relevant to whichever group you clicked on. For example, if you click on Haverhill MS Boys soccer, there may be discussion on lat night’s game or thoughts about the upcoming tournament. On the right hand side of this page will be upcoming activities: the week’s game or practices. On more national sites, upcoming activities will refer to marches, meetings or community events.
* Leave notes to your friends: These will appear in your locker. You can only send notes to someone whose username you know. They can then choose to accept or decline your message
* Use of a flip book feature to encourage the sharing and creating of ideas, which seems to not only be a big trend right now, big to this project, but also very popular among this demographic. Your flip book could turn into something very similar to a yearbook to keep with the whole "school" theme
* News: A local news carrier. News headlines appear on the mock newspaper page on the inside of your locker door. The news headlines on the left hand side of your page are determined by your groups. The headlines sectioned off on the right hand side of the page are the day’s top headlines, not necessarily relevant to what notebook groups you are in.
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* Marketing to parents/privacy: we want security to be a high priority. No one can see the inside of your locker but yourself, so any images you chose to upload will only seen by you. Also, refer to the below discussion on privacy statement and username guidelines.




Advertising: Obviously, a way for companies to create revenue through advertising via stickers or magnets on the inside of the locker door, all the while sticking with the theme and mission of Locker Talker:

* On a local level, this could be the pizza shop downtown or the local gas station.
* If this were to go to a national level, the attraction would be for large names: Nike, GAP, etc.



Customizable options: (Refer to mock up image). This is the place for customization of Locker Talker. Here you can pick:

* The color of your locker (again, this is no longer for the middle school girl demographic, but for the entire middle school or younger demographic, both sexes) … pink, blue, green, camouflage or other predetermined patterns
* Choose stickers or magnets corresponding with advertisers
* Font: make it glittery and cursive or masculine and block style
* Add your own pictures or images (remember, no one else can see the inside if your locker, so all personal images will remain personal).
* Tab here to browse for your personal items such as pictures or images to add on
* “Customizable library” will also contain the assortment of notebooks. These, however, will be geared toward non-exclusive groups. For instance, global warming or Hilary ’08.
o Locker Talker members can also create there own groups, which much be pre-approved by a general site administrator before going “live.” Members can then either be asked to join this site (invitations are delivered via the post it notes which members also use to communicate with other members) or they can request to join a group. Once the group has been approved by the site administrator, whoever created the group then becomes the group administrator. They are responsible for who is allowed in the group.



URL vs. access from news sponsor: Locker Talker will be accessible from two points. One, there will be a link or icon present on the Web site of the news organization sponsoring Locker Talker. This will lead you to a new page (independent URL) for Locker Talker. By doing this, we are attracting parents who may be on the news organization’s Web site. Reoccurring users, on the other hand, can access the site through the URL. In this way, it is not a stand alone site and still pairs nicely with a sponsor. We can also inform parents of privacy features and the mission of the site through the news organizations site. This fits in with our original thoughts on marketing to parents and educators.

Privacy statement: A privacy statement will eventually need to be crated for Locker Talker, being that much or our target audience is under the age of 13 and considered a minor in terms of Internet rules. Please refer to a sample privacy statement retrieved from the popular site Stardoll as an example:

“To use Stardoll.com you don’t have to register or give up any personal information. We explicitly ask for your personal information when we want it.

In order to register as a member at Stardoll you need to give us your email address, name, last name, and age. that is identifiable as Personal information.

The way we use Personal Information

Your email address is used by Stardoll to send information about new services at Stardoll and will not be handed out to third party vendors. The information about age is mainly used to identify minors that need to get permission from their parents or legal guardian to become members at Stardoll. (Minors in the US are defined as children under 13, in non-US minors are defined as under 16 of age.)

We reserve the right to collect and disclose (to our affiliates and to non-affiliate third parties) user behaviour and Personal Information to the extent permitted by applicable law, as specifically restricted below or in the Terms of Use. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this Privacy Policy or elsewhere, we reserve the right at all times to disclose any information as necessary to satisfy any applicable law (including, without limitation, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act), regulation, legal process, law enforcement requests, demands by parties claiming your infringement of their rights or governmental request, to edit, refuse to post or remove any information or materials, in whole or in part, in our sole discretion; or to act in an emergency to protect someone’s safety or legal rights.

We have no control over third parties to whom you may give Personal Information through the use of Stardoll.com. We use the information you provide about yourself or others to complete the transaction for which the information is intended. Such transactions may include: administering a service, such as email, search, advertising sales, ecommerce; completing an order; replying to support requests; or contacting you if you have granted us permission to do so.

From time to time, we also use the information you provide about yourself or others to inform you of additions or improvements to the Stardoll services as well as conduct member surveys in order to improve our services.

We may also use personally identifiable user information to provide targeted content and commerce opportunities to users based on their demographic and behavioral information.

Finally, we never use or share the personally identifiable information provided to us online in ways or for reasons unrelated to the ones described above without also providing an opportunity to opt-out or otherwise prohibit such unrelated uses.

Opt-Out and Termination:

We believe that our ability to share your Personal Information with our affiliates, vendors and certain third parties improves our ability to provide services to you. However, if you object to our sharing of your personal information and would like to exercise your rights under the Financial Services Modernization Act and the Fair Reporting Act to limit our use of certain information governed by the mandatory opt-out provisions of those acts (should we ever collect such information and even though we are not governed by those acts), and if you would like to terminate our use of your Personal Information on a going forward basis (except as it relates to prior financial transaction and communications) you can do that by filling in the form below. However, this will result in the termination of your Stardoll user account(s). Please click here and fill in the form.

Cookie

We may place a text file called a "cookie" in the browser files of your computer. The cookie enables us to collect information about your visits to Stardoll. We may use this information to enhance your Stardoll experience and may share some information with our members, vendors, sponsors or others.

You can turn off the cookie function in your web browser, then you won't be able to register as a member or log in.

Parental rights

As a parent you have the right to review your minor child’s personal information, have it deleted and refuse Stardoll to further collect information from your child. This would of course require a proper identification. Please contact us at parentalrights@stardoll.com or fax us regarding this to…”

From: http://www.stardoll.com/en/about/sections.php?section=privacyPolicy

Initial marketing vs. add on: This also relates to the demographic. We have several ideas that we see becoming available “down the road” for Locker Talker that will hopefully retain our user base”

* One idea relates to notebook groups such as Girl Scouts, 4-H and the Catholic Youth Organization, groups where members are often required to work on projects or are responsible for creating, sharing or presenting information on a particular topic to other members. Members can post relevant information to other girls in their troops, ie: organizing rides or discussing merit badges. This is also a way for networks to have an idea of what is occurring in other networks



Example 1: The Haverhill Girl Scout Troop 234 is working on a project on breast cancer awareness for a new badge. Part of their project is to research the topic and create some sort of presentation. They choose to create a PowerPoint presentation on the topic matter. They can then send this presentation to the Locker Talker site administrator who has the rights to distribute this to other networks as a way of “sharing” projects. This can also utilize the lap top feature.

Example 2: A male Locker Talker member is working on his Eagle Scout project which consists of making a new nature trail behind his high school. He documents the project with video and still images and adds commentary. Because obtaining your Eagle Scout badge is an admirable project, his leader wishes to share this with other surrounding Boy Scout troops. This project, once approved and sent through the site administrator(s), can then be viewed by members of other networks belonging to a Boy Scout/Eagle Scout notebook group.

Other ideas for future add ons include:

* The addition of education based games focusing on a topic (for instance, geography, politics, current events)
* The ability to upload personal images to use to as your locker background instead of being restricted to colors in the library, national networks
* Incorporating national advertisers (see above).
o This may also eventually change the demographic down the road. While we are initially targeting 10, 11, and 12-year-olds, it is our hope that be combing their existing user status with constant additions and new features, we will retain them past the age of 12.



Responsibility of news organization:

* Set up of site: go off of our mock up to create a site that is in working order including a complete customizable options, privacy statement and note to parents, and integration of news
* Designate a general site administrator(s): duties will include overseeing the site, approving group requests, sharing of projects, and facilitating any necessary inter-network communication. The site administrator(s) will also be responsible for “overseeing” the discussions occurring on the notebook group message boards to ensure posts are staying on topic. They reserve the right to remove group members. Once you are removed from one group, you lose all group privileges (your locker then serves only as a place for you to decorate, receive news and participate in Internet safety education). Other Locker Talker members can also report what they feel is inappropriate behavior to the site administrators (s).
* Continually adding and updating new features to add to and retain user base: A list of possible features to be added in the near future can be found above.
* Rewriting stories: Something we have discussed, but at this point may require more news organization involvement than possible to initially start. Some stories are written in such a way that they may not be entirely “understandable” by the aforementioned demographic, but could be worded to appeal more to this age group.



Networks: A Locker Talker Network consists of the towns served by the sponsoring news organization. You can only belong to one Locker Talker network. If this idea were to be picked up (at ONA for instance), it is likely it would only be picked up by one news organization at first. Following our example of the Lawrence Tribune, it means students living in the towns it serves (Haverhill, Andover, North Andover, Groveland, etc), will be able to access this network and its corresponding groups. In the future, it this was to be picked up by more news organizations or reach a more national level, it would work of a zip code basis. When you initially registered for Locker Talker, you would enter your zip code, which would provide you with a list of the papers/news organization serving your area. Again, you would only be able to select ONE network.

Username/password: Everyone will initially have to register with the site and create a username and password (your locker combination). After much discussion regarding the apprehension of requiring a user to create yet another username, we came to the decision that we are reaching to a demographic not heavily involved in existing social networking sites. Therefore, this is not an issue. We also did not want students posting to the message boards using their name for privacy reasons. As a result, each user will create a username, much like a screename. This will serve two purposes: 1.) your name will appear on your locker and 2.) when using the sticky notes feature. The only way you can send a sticky note to someone is to know their username. The exchange of usernames is done outside of Locker Talker, for security and privacy purposes. Instead of telling someone your AIM screename, you will now tell them your Locker Talker name. Knowing someone’s Locker Talker name in no way allows them access to their locker!