One of the most important projects that has happened this year was the launch of Yahoo! Safely in Vietnam, to promote online safety among children and young people in Vietnam. The launch roped in Vietnamese celebrity Ha Anh (also Unicef’s local Ambassador) and up-and-coming local boy-band “365” as Yahoo! Ambassadors to help spread the word. Leveraging the Yahoo! Safely website and plans to extend to offline activities such as a “train-the-trainer” programme, road shows and school visits, the initiative is the first of its kind in Vietnam.

Yahoo! is the first Internet company to establish a presence in Vietnam when it entered the market in 2007 and enjoys a very positive brand image. The launch of Safely in Vietnam, to me, was testament to Yahoo!’s commitment and responsibility to the market. Vietnam is a burgeoning new-to-net market brimming with huge potential and business opportunities – and everyone wants a slice.  31% of the population is currently online, and Vietnam has experienced the fastest growth in Internet in the region in the last 10 years. Yet, online safety is largely overlooked.

While online safety is important all across the world, it is critical in emerging markets in Asia as the majority of new users are youth aged 15 and above, where the Internet is an uncharted landscape, not just to them, but to their parents and educators.

Yahoo! has robust online safety programs in every major market. Above Yahoo! Safely which has been launched is in most markets, there are also online safety initiatives in the region outside the umbrella that push strong similarly strong agendas.

In India, the online safety programme led by colleagues from Yahoo! India comes under Learn with Yahoo!, an initiative to educate users about the Internet, and like Vietnam, targets new-to-net users. In Taiwan, a mature market where Yahoo! enjoys a 98% reach, the Internet Security Program for Children aims to educate users as early as elementary school.

Reaching out in India
India’s online safety program kicked into high gear when its school program, upon travelling to 27 schools in Delhi last year, found that while 98% of this school’s growing audience knew about the Internet and considered it a destination for learning, fun and entertainment, net safety was not a feature on the kids’ radar. Awareness about Internet safety was virtually non-existent.

This insight shaped a new focus for the team, who took the safety message outside of the original program framework. Harnessing the reach and popularity of animated cartoon characters, Yahoo! India aired vignettes on Internet safety on kids’ channels such as Cartoon Network and Pogo, with the characters sharing tips, along with an interactive quiz on TV through SMS, to effectively get the message across to kids and parents.

Now, Yahoo! India reaches 82% of the Internet audience in India and is a market where users are growing exponentially. Today, above leveraging kids channels and school programs, Internet safety tips are shared across 2,500 Internet cafés in 50+ Indian cities, helping a brand new audience make smarter, safer choices online.

Keeping Kids Safe Online in Taiwan
In Taiwan, Yahoo!Kimo’s partnership with the government and academy brought to bear its Internet Safety Program for Children in 2009. It is estimated that 1.6 million Taiwanese children under 12 use the Internet. The project addressed kids aged 12-14 and touched on three main areas: managing time spent online, befriending strangers on the Internet and giving out too much personal information.

The campaign started in Taipei with camps, blogs, online material and an ambassador programme, and extended islandwide the following year. Materials were developed for classroom use, and Yahoo!Kimo travelled to 2,650 elementary schools across the country to spread the message.
This year, teen idols were invited to speak on the program together with the launch of fun videos and competition. And the kids noticed – making over 100,000 downloads of the material. Yahoo! Kimo’s efforts have seen them win the Taiwan PR Awards- Corporate Social Responsibility Campaign of the Year, and  the Outstanding Award – Education, in the annual CSR awards presented by Global Views, a leading current affairs publication in Taiwan.

And the online safety push isn’t over in Vietnam. In July, the PC for Life campaign, in partnership with Dell and Intel, saw 2,000 youth journeying across the country on foot to spread the word on internet safety, and educating villagers along the way on how to use the Internet. The Yahoo! Safely partnership with Unicef also saw an MOU signed, partnering on various children issues.

To say the least, I’m very proud to be working for a company which understands the need to better the community it serves.

Kuek Yu-Chuang,
Yahoo! APAC’s regional director of public policy

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series entitled, “In My Own Words,” that gives employees the opportunity to share their own stories about Yahoo!. Feel like yodeling your own? Post your Yahoo! story on your social networks using the hashtag #myYahoostory.

The nature of the online and mobile environments is rapidly changing and so are the challenges for teachers and parents – from digital-reputation management to addressing cyber-bullying.  Kids need to be in control of their online persona – that is the ways in which they represent themselves online, and how that persona can have an impact throughout their lives.  In this day and age, you are what you post!

Today marks Yahoo!’s third annual CyberCitizenship Summit in Sunnyvale, Calif. addressing the leading issues youth face today –  digital reputation management and cyberbullying.  Along with our co-hosts, Technology for Learning Partnership, we are bringing together more than 180 educational leaders from around California, child safety experts, and local law enforcement leaders to address how to guide students’ online persona.  With an increase in Internet and mobile gadgets coming into the home this holiday season, teachers and other participants will come away with real and practical information to help them understand the online environment in which their students live and toolkits to help students manage their digital reputations.

Over the years, Yahoo! has worked collaboratively with industry peers, child safety groups and law enforcement with the common goal to find new ways to protect children online.  At this year’s summit, we are thrilled to partner with some of the most notable national child safety experts to offer educational leaders guidance on digital literacy.
Presenters include:

Anne Collier, ConnectSafely
Marsali Hancock, iKeepSafe Internet Safety Coalition
Larry Magid, ConnectSafely
Diana Paradise, Technology for Learning Partnership
Catherine Teitelbaum, Yahoo! Safely
Glenn Warren, Orange County Office of Education

In advance of the summit, we worked closely with iKeepSafe.org, and sponsored the development Project PRO – a hands-on curriculum guide and a resource kit to help educators coach youth on protecting and managing their digital reputation, and strategies to keep youth safe from bullying.   Summit attendees will be guided through the program and implementation strategies and be provided with the kit for immediate use at their school site.
Hosting this summit is just one of the ways we work to help foster a safer experience for children. To learn more about digital reputation management and tips for preventing cyberbulling, visit safely.yahoo.com.
Catherine Davis Teitelbaum
Director of Policy for Child Safety

Yahoo! Mail goes vintage: Frustrated by not being able to to get the email address you want? We’ve heard you and we’re doing something about it with the introduction of two new email domains: ymail.com and rocketmail.com. If “rocketmail” sounds familiar it’s because it’s vintage Internet. RocketMail was one of the first free webmail services in the ’90s, was acquired by Yahoo! in 1997 and formed the basis of the first version of Yahoo! Mail. So, whether your style is brand spanking new (ymail.com), hip vintage (rocketmail.com) or comfortable classic (yahoo.com), head on over to http://new.mail.yahoo.com/addresses and get the email address you’ve always wanted.

Media Player gets foxy: Check out the latest wily addition to the Yahoo! Media Player. Through a rather clever integration with FoxyTunes you can now control all of the music inside your browser as well as outside of it. The latest version of FoxyTunes enhances any page that has music on it by automatically adding the Yahoo! Media Player to that page. This allows you to play any track on that page or even the whole page as one big playlist. The best thing is that once you start playing a web page with the new player you can instantly control it with FoxyTunes, even while surfing in other tabs or browser windows – just make sure to leave the page that’s currently playing somewhere in the background. And, if you close that page, your FoxyTunes will automatically switch back to your regular media player, be it iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc. Now that’s foxy!

Kids and technology – a parents’ guide: Wondering where to find the best information on keeping kids safe on the web? Well, look no further. Yahoo! Kids launched a new Parents channel this week bringing together some of the best resources in the business. Larry Magid, longtime technology journalist, Internet safety advocate and co-director of ConnectSafely.org, will be blogging alongside Ann Collier who’s been providing some of the best kid-tech news to parents on NetFamilyNews. Together they co-authored “MySpace Unravelled: A Parents’ Guide to Teen Social Networking.” So head on over to learn how to help your kids navigate the online world safely.

Internet Explorer – more del.icio.us: Last month we unleashed an early beta release of an Internet Explorer version of our del.icio.us bookmarks extension. And this week you can now officially begin to enjoy social bookmarking on Microsoft Windows XP and Vista operating systems. While the features are similar to its Firefox 3 extension counterpart, this little number also has more unique additions including faster searching within larger accounts of bookmarks and signals for new network activity and links for you. Learn more and download it now here.

Smithsonian goes to the Commons: The Commons photo collection on Flickr welcomes its fourth member in the shape of the Smithsonian Institute. As you’d expect the collection is rich in history – from photos by the Institute’s First Photographer, Thomas Smillie, to portraits of Artists, Scientists and Inventors (yes even Albert Einstein makes an appearance) and People and The Post. The contemporary collections include American Celebrations and a documentary from the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. And don’t forget to check out collections from the other three members: The Library of Congress, Australia’s Powerhouse Museum and The Brooklyn Museum.

Kids don’t email often anymore. They text-message and send instant messages faster than you can figure out what they’re saying, and sometimes faster than they know what they’re saying. The new iPhone will be available in July; just what does that mean for the kids who use iPhones? There are plenty of controls parents can put in place to help guide their kids to use the web safely, but it’s not always the simplest information to find. And even when we put controls in place, kids grow into teens quickly and move beyond simple controls. They need to learn how to navigate the online world safely, and parents need to know how to help them find their way.

There are some great resources on the web for parents to learn all of this, of course. It’s just often hard to know where to look. Yahoo! Kids launches its new Parents channel this week with some of the best resources and top minds who have been looking out for kids on the web under one roof: Yahoo! Kids Parents.

You’ll find Larry Magid, a longtime technology journalist and Internet safety advocate blogging about safety issues, including what parents need to know about the new, less-expensive iPhone that will surely make its way into more kids’ hands. Larry contributes to CBS News, The New York Times, The San Jose Mercury News and several other major news outlets.

He also is the co-director of ConnectSafely.org, an interactive web site for teens, parents, and educators with Anne Collier, who also is blogging on Yahoo! Kids Parents. Anne and Larry are the co-authors of “MySpace Unraveled: A Parent’s Guide to Teen Social Networking.” Anne has been providing some of the best kid-tech news to parents in an accessible, measured way on NetFamilyNews, and she’s now bringing her well-informed, clear-eyed perspective to Yahoo! Kids.

As a Yahoo! Tech blogger for the past few years, I followed Anne and Larry’s take on kids and technology closely. I also checked in often on Common Sense Media, a wonderful resource for parents to vet movies, video games – all media available for kids to consume. Now, you can find all of these and more expert voices and resources on Yahoo! Kids Parents to make sense of the latest technology advances and what they mean for kids of all ages. I’ll also be blogging on Yahoo! Kids Parents, in addition to blogging for my daily Yahoo! gig, editor of Shine Work+Money.

Finally, a place on the web to find reliable information from several trusted sources about kids, technology, and online safety.

Dory Devlin

Yahoo! Kids Parents Tech Blogger

Photo from galina135