Children and students have always incorporated some sort of gossip and drama into their social lives. Before the early 90’s this gossip was spread only via word of mouth and extremely expensive touch-tone telephones. With the expansion of social media, WiFi and mobile technology the malicious nature of adolescent socialization has grown massively. University students can gossip about who vomited on who the night previous, high school students can spread rumors about peers that are more sexual active than others and elementary school students can find out who has coodies before the infected even finds out.

It was only a matter of time before a coliseum-like battle ground was constructed where children of all ages could gouge each other’s eyes out. It has been created, the arena being JuicyCampus.com, and the gladiators - university students from all over the world. JuicyCampus is a Twitteresque micro-blogging service that promotes university students to gossip about their friends anonymously. Ruthless huh? Well at least the battles are now sanctioned.

Recently TechCrunch wrote an article about JuicyCampus being banned at Tennessee State University (TSU) - the service’s first university-wide banning. The article doesn’t go into depth about why specifically the program was banned, but it talks about Matt Ivester’s (CEO and President) rebuttal with regards to the whole situation.

I want to start by saying I’m completely behind JuicyCampus, however I’m not completely behind Ivester. He starts by saying in his statement (full version can be found here) that JuicyCampus is “joining the ranks of the Chinese government in internet censorship, and spitting in the faces of everyone who believes in free discourse online”. I’m sorry but… What? I can’t seem to draw a real comparison with the Chinese government blocking sites regarding Tiananmen Square to a university banning a service entirely made for aggressive gossiping on THEIR network. It just seems that Ivester’s response is somewhat immature and probably something you’d actually find on JuicyCampus.com. I really hope that the offensive nature of Ivester’s statement is just a means of gathering publicity, as it’s done a great job in that respect.

On a side note, I’m also going to use this article as a call to Ivester. It seems you don’t have Canadian university networks highlighted on the site. Quite frankly, Canadian university students are surrounded by social media. I don’t have a friend that doesn’t have Facebook and doesn’t use it religiously. So in the next round of college networks to open, open Wilfrid Laurier University and I will open an account. Thanks!

I currently belong to and am a contributor to 28 social networking websites. However, I really only pay close attention to a small handful of them. Here they are:

Facebook – I use Facebook the most. There’s something so comforting about knowing what everyone is doing at all time. It’s almost like I don’t have to interact with my friends in person at all. I mainly have friends from school – past & present, on Facebook. I refresh it maybe every ten minutes. Ugh.

My Facebook (Click)

Myspace – I used to be a bit of a Myspace slut as such I still have close ties with my former slutty self. I don’t really contribute on Myspace anymore, because I have no idea who is a real person and who is some sort of robot computer script. However, I check my Account for updates like every twenty minutes. It’s a terrible habit. At one point I had about 20,000 Myspace friends, but now have about 12,000 – Popular fella! Plus Myspace has all the indie bands I need…

My Myspace (Click)

Twitter – Twitter, oh how I loathe you. At first, I thought Twitter was the dumbest social updating site I have ever seen. Then I began to tweet. Now whenever I see that Fail Whale, I want to strangle something.

Follow me on Twitter! (Click)

Twine – Twine is still in BETA, however this is really the first semantic social networking site. The program is a creation by internet brainchild Nova Spivack. It’s a fantastic medium to share information. If you want an invite to open BETA, just post a comment with your email.

My Twine Profile (Click)