I worked with Jeanette many years ago. She is bright, fearless in business and deserves much credit for her success with Ascend Communications. But I think she is naive about this venture. I wonder what kind of feedback she got from venture capital investors. Maybe that’s why she sunk so much of her own money into it?

Imbee seems analogous to kids having their own room but mom comes in to clean up when necessary. Anyway should pre-teens get complete privacy? Save something for the teen years.

After posting this critique of Industrious Kid’s imbee youth social network last week, I corresponded by email with executives Tim Donovan (founder and VP of Marketing) and David Walsh (VP of Partner and Subscriber Relations), and I should be speaking…

Here are some comments I have on Imbee, which I also posted here:

http://www.mrmarkets.com/2006/.....s_and.html

Substitutes and business model flaws could stall kid social network

Imbee is the new kid social networking service from Industrious Kid, and I just do not see this service getting traction. Why?

Let’s start with competitors. Think about their target audience of ages 8 to 14. Assuming the parents have miraculously prevented their child from getting a MySpace account, just consider the substitutes such as AOL Instant Messenger. Maybe it was just me, but I have been using AIM since I was 10 years old, and it was socially acceptable then amongst parents.

There were still parental concerns about the internet back then, and perhaps in some ways it was greater because it was quite new, and it is only human to be wary of new things.

Importantly, Imbee requires that all friendships be approved by the family. I am not a degree-holding social psychologist, but that is a problem for the kids because it is unnatural for Mom and Dad to pick your friends by that age. Sure, at age 5 the parents are mostly responsible for organizing social gatherings, but soon thereafter the kid takes control.

Even if you are among the few kids who do not have AIM, just talk to the friend in person. After all, do you really want Mom and Dad scrutinizing your correspondence?

For real evaluation, clearly there is need for disambiguation about the state of the market for Imbee. If AIM use is high and parents are letting kids get MySpace profiles, Imbee has major problems.

Consider the pricing model. It does not cost much per month, but it ignores the reality of friendships as a two-way street. Not all parents have the time or the inclination to police what their kids are doing online. Say a kid named Billy has controlling parents, so they get Imbee, but what about Billy’s friend Tommy. His parents let him on MySpace and AIM, so they see no reason to pay for this service.

After all, it takes two to tango, and even if Imbee appeals to 25% to 50% of parents, 50% to 75% of parents are not going to sign up, and thus the utility to Billy is significantly diminished because he cannot communicate with his friends anyway. Is Billy going to tolerate only being able to talk to a fraction of his friends?

One alternative is include two extra accounts for each subscription account. One could be used for Tommy so Billy has at least one person to talk to!

I was surprised this company got $6 million in funding until I read the company is operated and funded by people who are independently wealthy thanks to their success building and selling Ascend Communications. For their sake, I hope it works out.

Do you think I am on the right track, a little bit wrong or dead-wrong, perhaps? Please post in the comments.

Imbee is the new kid social networking service from Industrious Kid, and I just do not see this service getting traction. Why? Let’s start with competitors. Think about their target audience of ages 8 to 14. Assuming the parents have…

If you trust your kids, then you’ve never had any, and if you think your kids don’t lie to you, then you just haven’t done enough snooping.

I wonder why Arrington thinks, “it just might work”?

This will make for a great $6 million tax write-off, although it would have been much more effective to donate this to charity. It boggles the mind to see somebody, no matter how wealthy they are, invest that much money in a business that is clearly flawed. Previous posters have pointed out numerous flaws. As I see it:

1. The company has to market the service and convince parents to PAY for it. Tough to do when you have no userbase. A parent is not going to pay unless their kid’s friends are also on the service. It’s useless otherwise. As such, unless they manage to convince large portions of entire communities to pay, it’s doomed. I suspect the cost of acquisition for even attempting this is going to be very high.

2. Parents have to convince their kids to use the service. Anybody who is a parent knows it’s going to be an uphill battle getting your child to use a service where your every move is being monitored by mom or dad. If the company does convince parents to sign up but the kids don’t use the service, expect massive attrition.

3. If a parent signs up for this service but isn’t actively involved in their child’s online activities, the child will simply continue to use services like MySpace. The bottom line is that there’s no substitute for real parenting. There isn’t going to be a miracle product or service that handles this for you.

If this is the case than it makes perfect sense for Imbee to thrive …

There are other ways to see what your kids are doing online that don’t involve handing over your card and having to approve what your kids post or don’t post before they post it.

She couldn’t even try a demo without my card. That’s silly.

For this service to work, it seems that “neighborhoods of influence” — where the social network is kept to the families that know each other personally — will want to use this system, since its insularity is its charm.

But, that thinking falls down over time, I’d imagine, as it just takes one kid with AIM to tell his friend that he can only chat on free services… I mean, it’s like the Playboy conundrum: growing up in New England, my parents forbid R-rated movies and obviously pr0n was something that “didn’t exist”. And y’know, that policy worked just fine until I went over to my friend Jeff’s house who had discovered his parents’ stash destroying my parents’ seemingly impervious wall of protection.

So this service is great if you can indoctrinate entire neighborhoods and school systems — or brainwash your kids that anything not on this system is “bad like drugs”, but reality suggests that that’s a permanently losing battle. The role and responsibilities of parents are changing, and a technological fix is not going to replace patience, understanding and co-education. Let’s face it: there’s some bad stuff out there and you’re never going to innoculate your children against the reality of the world; you can, however, equip them with tools and attitudes that will enable them to protect themselves and as, has been said, know the difference between wrong and right.

that was, unfortunately, also one of my first thoughts.

there are a lot of great sermons here about “good parenting,” but parenting is just plain hard.

you can have all the love and respect in the world, but as S4NDM4N said, kids will get around things time and again. i do respect the effort of Industrious Kids. i don’t know how it will ever work, but i do respect them for trying.

No, it is not commendable “to try and give our kids the protection they need.” Good parenting is about allowing kids the maximum freedom to explore the world. If you can’t trust your kid then you’re not a good parent. Taking the side of sites like this, and parents this controlling, just promotes a slide into the perpetual-baby mentality that a lot of parents have. Your children are individuals who don’t want or need the kind of barriers you are throwing up in their faces. If you really believe you can keep your child in a padded room either in the physical sense or the technological then you are naive and a danger to your child in terms of their long term development.

Teach your children the difference between dumb as a post things to do and enjoyable things to do. Posting your address and times when your parents arn’t home is dumb as a post, posting your thoughts about pretty much anything else. Fine, go for it.

Your children are more experienced, more intelligent, and deserve more respect than these sites and the parents that use them can handle. Scared mothers are bad mothers, don’t support their paranoia.

-Ian