I think we all see the success of instant messaging in our every day lives. I would have expected that this type of instant messaging be included in Glubble as core feature.

It is the interaction between parent and child that is most important and instant messaging in a Glubble way would enhance this communication as well as help to facilitate and strengthen the family’s social network. I would have thought that with open source messaging applications such as Pidgin, this would have been a must for Glubble.

I have seen some discussion pertaining to control and privacy however it all seemed a little too confused / off the mark for me. Here is what I feel is required:

1) Real time messaging interface – in the tried and true fashion as with yahoo, google or msn. This interface should be capable of interacting with all of the known services just as Pidgin does.

2) Parental control – child accounts are locked so that new “pals” would only be added with parental consent. Similarly, request from other users to add a child account to their list would also have to be approved by a parent.

3) Privacy – conversations would by default be private. All conversations would be logged however, consent must be provided by the user to view the conversation log.

4) Family wall – the messaging should include the “Post message to family wall” option. This option would use the instant messaging interface to post to the family wall, instead of to an individual. If this option were selected, then the message would be sent to each member of the Glubble family as and instant message, as well as to the family wall.

5) Master user access – in the event that for some reason a user log had to be viewed without consent, then the master user could access the log however a message would be sent to the individual user indicating that the the master had acessed the specific log. This master access should be limited to any log that includes a child user as one of the participants. Conversation logs where there is no child account involved should remain private.

This does not seem like rocket science to me. The messaging interface and parental control over which pals a child can add is a no brainer. The default privacy rule, I feel, is extremely important as it teaches children that they do have a right to some level of privacy. Requesting consent to view a child’s conversation log is only sensible as it shows a child that there is respect for their privacy and would promote a conversation between parent and child where a concern had arisen. Master access notifications (and the normal absence thereof) letting a child know that their logs had been accessed without specific consent, would provide a level of comfort that no one, not even mom or dad, could view their conversations without their knowledge.

I sincerely hope that you would agree with what I have proposed and make it the focus of development for the next release.