Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi all,

Found this site and I'm anxious to get involved in the forums.  I'm involved with a startup and we're just now moving into beta.  So, not only looking for a critique, but if the site appeals to anyone, we're looking for beta users too.

In a nutshell, the site is a place for parents to go to share their family stories (and photos) in a social networked environment.  It's kinda like blogging, journalling, and scrapbooking all rolled into a facebook-type of interface so you can share your family life with your closest relatives and friends.  The stories can be archived for a lifetime so that years from now the kids will be able to go back and have a kind of life history on the site.

Here's the URL:  http://www.kidjot.com

I'll try to keep a thick skin.  :)

Cj

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Kidjot.com - because every mother has her own Da Vinci

Your "Help & Support" and "Legal" at the bottom are currently linked to the home page.

The signup page is easy to understand and complete.

I'm curious, what is your revenue model? Will you charge subscriptions or sell advertising?

Best regards,

Molly Donaldson

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Start Here. Go Far. LaunchX

Hello,

I checked out kidjot and so far I like it. Very simple and not cluttered. Is it like one of those time capsule type themes? I am interested in seeing how this progresses. There is one concern that I have, maybe other people will disagree. If I were to join this site there would be one thing I would worry about. Something like this could be time consuming on a person and what guarantee would they have that this site would be here 15 years later? I would hate to have done a lot of work for the site to be shut down, hacked or something. Yea I know thats a bit strange, but that is something I myself would think about as a visitor. Now since you are in beta stage, maybe you can implement something to take that fear away. Maybe inside the site you can compile everything and be able to download it, as a backup of some sort.

Well I like it, and I bookmarked it cause im interested in seeing how this grows!

Good Luck.

Thanks for the comments.

We know that the bottom links aren't up and running yet.  That's because the site isn't quite finished.  Still working with the lawyer on the legal stuff and we haven't set up our customer support yet.  Like I said, we're in beta.  THe major functionality is there, but little things like this still need work.

As far as revenue stream, we're doing it like this.  Site will basically be free, but, like facebook, posts will fall off after a certain time period - we're thinking 3 months.  A subscription account will allow anything posted during the subscription period to be permanent on the site and not disappear.  We think that many people will want to keep this history of their kids lives archived forever.  The sub fee is modest: $25 for a year.  Also, we have a trophy feature that will allow parents/grandparents to give trophies to kids for accomplishments.  Kids will want to collect them (already tested this on my nieces and nephews and they love it).  Accounts will get some starting trophies for free, but then they'll be like $0.10 each (unlimited free w/ a subscription).  This will work a lot like facebook's gifts, but they'll be cheaper and I think more compelling.  After all, what grandparent wouldn't shell out $0.10 to make a grandchild happy?

As far as the thought of the site disappearing, I don't think there's anything we can do about that.  I mean, it's a legit worry.  If the company fails, you'll loose everything.  I read an article somewhere recently about that though that said that research shows that the general public has this perception of persistence with the internet.  They kind of assume sites are always going to exist.  The only thing we could do is assure everyone that if we shut down, we'll make sure there's a time period where they'll be able to pull all their content off before we close.  I should add that to the FAQ I'm working on.

I would be really interested to see what you guys thing about the interface.  So, if you'd like to sign up and give me some comments on that too I would appreciate it!

Cj

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Kidjot.com - because every mother has her own Da Vinci