Teen networking site adds multimedia sharing

Piczo, a social-networking website aimed at 13-16 year olds, has added a tool that allows its members to share multimedia content.

Piczo Zone will enable users to add videos, pictures, and HTML code that will then be available to the site's 28 million registered users to view or add it to their own profile.

There are 35 categories, including sport and music, that people can post their content under. A design section also allows users to personalise their pages with 'glitter' and photos.

Piczo claims to be different from the likes of Facebook and Myspace as it focuses on allowing a member to be creative. It gives user the opportunity to build personal communities and share life stories with friends by designing a personal website.

Although user pages can be linked to other friends, the site claims that profiles are not, and cannot, be made public. The visibility of friend lists is also restricted.

The site advises people to think about their reputation before posting anything on Piczo Zone or their profiles: “What you post online stays online forever. You never know who has copied it, printed it out or cached it, even if you take it down right away.

“The rule here is ThinkB4uClick,” it advises on its safety page.

John Carr, chairman of the UK's Children's Charities' Coalition on Internet Safety, agreed. He said: “Any site that makes a child think before they post any content online is a positive one. However, the key message here is always think before you post, whatever site you visit."

To find out more about how to ensure privacy when using social networking sites, users can buy Computeractive's Ultimate Guide to Social Networking. This new title includes 100 pages of features and workshops showing how to make the best of social networking sites, and will be available to buy from 1 November.