One man's travesty
...is another man's opportunity.
My friend Chad, upon reading an article in USA Today, questioned (in his usually calm way) why there is evidently no organization that tracks pedophilia and other sexual threats on the internet. He was fairly pissed that no one seems to be doing much to wake kids up to online dangers. While this definitely sounds like something that should be done (and maybe is, I haven't yet confirmed USA Today's claim), I see an opening in a research market swollen with filled niches.
The article claims "Whether crimes against children connected with the Internet are actually increasing is unknown, because no organization or agency keeps comprehensive statistics." Why not start tracking that kind of stuff? Start out with a collection of tracking info, like the google map application someone put together that maps convicted sex offenders' addresses, add in tallies and lists (with due respect to privacy) of reported offenses, interview or poll kids online, visit community sites like MySpace and Yahoo! Groups and see what kind of policies or safety announcements they have, and start publishing stats, with press releases and summaries for free, and detailed reports for sale. Give the whole thing a catchy name like whistleblower.org or chastitybelt.org, sell t-shirts and bumper stickers with the logo, schedule some speaking events, and make a million dollars. Then move to Mexico and marry 8 or 9 child brides you meet on the internet.
I sometimes wonder at this voracious shift in my view from 'this sucks, and it needs to be fixed!' to 'this sucks, and I bet I can make a lot of money fixing it.'
My friend Chad, upon reading an article in USA Today, questioned (in his usually calm way) why there is evidently no organization that tracks pedophilia and other sexual threats on the internet. He was fairly pissed that no one seems to be doing much to wake kids up to online dangers. While this definitely sounds like something that should be done (and maybe is, I haven't yet confirmed USA Today's claim), I see an opening in a research market swollen with filled niches.
The article claims "Whether crimes against children connected with the Internet are actually increasing is unknown, because no organization or agency keeps comprehensive statistics." Why not start tracking that kind of stuff? Start out with a collection of tracking info, like the google map application someone put together that maps convicted sex offenders' addresses, add in tallies and lists (with due respect to privacy) of reported offenses, interview or poll kids online, visit community sites like MySpace and Yahoo! Groups and see what kind of policies or safety announcements they have, and start publishing stats, with press releases and summaries for free, and detailed reports for sale. Give the whole thing a catchy name like whistleblower.org or chastitybelt.org, sell t-shirts and bumper stickers with the logo, schedule some speaking events, and make a million dollars. Then move to Mexico and marry 8 or 9 child brides you meet on the internet.
I sometimes wonder at this voracious shift in my view from 'this sucks, and it needs to be fixed!' to 'this sucks, and I bet I can make a lot of money fixing it.'
posted by jim at 2/14/2006 09:41:00 AM
2 Comments:
This is one of the more gounded ideas I've read from you, but it's still more ambitious than any of the stuff I come up with.
"This shuttle system sucks, let's fix it. We'll make HUNDREDS!"
You can laugh, but if you'd only invested a few years of your life, you'd be able to afford an XBox now. Oh, wait...
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