In case you missed it, there has been an interesting new development in the world of social media with retailer Lego beginning a journey into a platform of its own, clearly deeming the other existing social sites to be not meeting its purposes as a company.

Whether they are not satisfied with the ability of channels such as Facebook to tap into a younger market, or merely desiring to provide a channel for those not young enough, is unclear.

Secure Foundations

What Lego do say is that they have launched a “safe” social network for under-13s, called Lego Life. It is essentially an app just like all the others, and can be described as a kind of child-friendly Lego-themed Instagram.

The immediate concern that comes to mind would be how to regulate what is posted and said, but Lego seems to have overcome that by only allowing photos of Lego creations to be uploaded and imposing restrictions on what can be said. Text comments are impossible, but users can either use pre-written responses or custom Lego emojis and stickers.

Although it’s aimed at children, a parent’s details are needed to sign up, and there is no restriction on adults also joining the network. To keep kids safe, they won’t be asked for any personal information or photographs and the app doesn’t have tracking enabled. Avatars are Lego mini-figures and account names are random words.

Uniform User Experience

The company says the app is heavily moderated through automated filters and employees filtering content, but what will be interesting to see is how the adverts will evolve in order to take advantage of users. All the adverts currently on the network are for Lego products but that is not to say that kids will be deterred from spending their parents’ money on the app.

Currently it appears the app is trying to stay away from immediate commercial benefits by suggesting challenges instead such as building structures to encourage creativity. But in the future Lego hopes the app will expand to become a central hub for all its services, including games and instructions.

Whatever the final result, they could be setting a trend as other retailers, especially those that have a product as appealing to younger people as Lego, will surely start jumping on the bandwagon and start creating their own apps that function as social media platforms. Lego has been smart in keeping it simple and restrictive but there’s no way of knowing how it will (Le) go.