Jeff Anderson

My wife found a great web site for teens and preteens that is safe for kids. The site is whadyapuck. My kids love spending time buying and selling items on this site. The great thing is that after a $25 membership fee I do not have to spend any money. They were given 50 pucks to spend with the membership. Pucks are worth a dollar. The site is safe and has parental controls. The only additional expence is shipping the things that they sell. When my kids first got on the site they were focused only on what they could buy but now they have a friendly competition going on to see who can obtain the most pucks. My daughter is in the lead with 80+. The one nice thing is that they are getting rid of a lot of things that they no longer use. There are very few sites that are fun yet safe for kids and we believe that this is one of them.

Tom

Why the MySpace reference? I smell a shill...

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Jeff Anderson

I am not sure what a shill is . Thanks Jeff

Tom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill

Seems to happen here daily...

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happy2bg33k

That's a nice word, Tom, I'd never heard it used in that format before. It must take a whole lot of time and energy to find websites to try to look realistic on. Although it doesn't really work...

Tom

Maybe I'm too paranoid or cynical but it's just about every day that someone comes, registers, and just posts "come to my size xyz.com!" or (more subtley) "hey I found this great site .. blah blah blah" as their first and last post (when they likely run the site). That doesn't help us - doesn't contribute - isn't (generally) valuable to our members. Myself or Kaytee catch a lot of these and remove them.

Also, doing a stint researching "internet marketing" I found that this kind of thing is around probably a LOT more than most people realize. e.g. (as I've mentioned once or twice on the forum before) - Amazon.com reviews - you can't believe everything you read on there anymore. There are people who will give positive reviews in exchange for small amounts of money.

And - if you ever poke around at all in the small business (which quickly turns to "get rich quick") sectors of the internet - then you really see this going on like crazy. You can't tell who is real and who is not. Poster claims they made some ridiculous amount of money by buying Joe Schmoe's product - then there are 10 posters backing him up saying "yeah this worked for me! - thanks Joe!" - problem is you really have no idea if they're telling the truth and many times it's the same person or a few people working together. The internet has largely (so far) been kind of reliable in this way but I think unfortunately that is coming to an end which is a huge shame.

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Kaytee

teehee I thought I smelled something off, a shill. How polite to use such a nice word.
Well my opinion on this type of site is well..... I am not giving some website my credit card info, so that my child, who would not be on a site like this can sell there stuff. Heck I'd come home to my 16 year old selling my TV.

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Jeff Anderson

I must say that the response my entry received on this site has surprised me. Nobody has looked beyond their knee jerk reactions to form an educated response you my entry. If you think your 16 year old would sell your TV, then you could always sign up for the highest level of security which would send you an e mail with each post asking if you would like the sale to stand or not and the decision is yours. I understand that every teen at is at a different stage of trust and development with their parents. It is your job as a parent to to do what you feel comfortable doing and I am glad their are still people out there who are not afraid to parent, but I think it would be an unfair statement that this site isn't useful when used by parents and children who understand it's workings. I certainly did not think that with all a parenting site could offer that this would become "the" hot topic. I hope to have interactions about other topics in the future.

Kaytee

I just don't think paying a site money is ever really worth much. My child may have myspace when she is a teen, but you better believe it will be looked at in view of my eyes

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Tom

My concern was and still is - are you truly recommending the commercial product (site) or are you affiliated with the site and posted here promoting it by acting as a satisfied customer? If the latter, then yes I want to make sure the users of this forum are aware of that. As I mentioned - it happens very often and it is sometimes hard to spot. I had asked you why the MySpace reference which seemed odd (perhaps just a keyword-stuffed and/or attention-grabbing title). Also I mentioned the term shill - you didn't respond to either of those 2 subjects so to me the question is still out there.

My obligations are to the users of this board who are looking for unbiased opinions. Unfortunately since the practice of faking reviews or opinions happens (often), sometimes you have to get a bit direct and try to figure out if a particular post is genuine or not. I hope you can understand.

In any case the site's premise is interesting, however I would say its presentation and user-interface would drive me off before I got too far.

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