Famster’s hamster wants to network with your mom
Marshall Kirkpatrick
44 comments »
Famster is a Flash based social networking site with a long list of features. Created by Whittier California web design company Ivenue, it’s an attempt to take online social networking mainstream for adults. There’s no clear business model yet and I find the site’s branding a little creepy, but the feature set is staggering and the site is so well designed that it’s likely to win over a lot of people in its target audience.
Features include 1GB of “filing cabinet” storage, 1 GB of encoded video storage, a Famstermail email account with 1 GB of storage, unlimited photo uploads, scrapbook pages, a blog, a simple RSS reader, calendering, to-do list sharing, contacts lists with Yahoo! maps integration, a recipes section with 23,000 preloaded recipes and a place to store your own and several other family oriented features (like family tree mapping).
The company heralds a feature that monitors for registered sex offenders in your geographic area. Famster has pages of links to off-site articles about online safety for children, with titles like “Online Predators: It’s worse than you think.” At least one recent study finds that the risk is actually not as big as you might think and Famster’s pandering to widespread fear is a little off-putting to me. Combine that with the stale name of the site and the annoying hamster buddy icon and the site doesn’t do it for me personally, but whatever.
Web IM, better photo handling across components, mobile blogging, photo and video sharing, SMS support and calendar reminders are all listed as coming soon.
It’s a good thing storage is so cheap these days! Storage space was far more limited until Famster hit the front page of Digg last week and people complained. There are no ads on the site and no premium accounts. This is obviously a site that has had a lot of time put into it. It looks great.
There’s also a visual component where you can create an image of your home and avatars for your family members (think CyWorld minihompies) though the long list of things you can change about your avatars does not include the cheekbones. Without the ability to change cheekbones, everyone ends up looking the same in a creepy sort of way.
Cheek bones or no, the site has a strange mix of features that will likely appeal to early adopters and to family users. Ultimately it’ll be the family users that the company needs to satisfy and they may not need things like permalinks for photo pages. These sorts of services must be a stab in the dark and mystery moves like corporate partnerships could make or break Famster. Just as likely, the company could be hoping to be scooped up by someone larger. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for a large media company seeking a family friendly social networking site to grab Famster. Look out Good Housekeeping, here comes the Famster Hamster.
So… wait… your’e saying social networking has not gone mainstream yet?
WOW
fair enough. added “for adults.”
It looks really great.. for families.
The design looks awesome by the way, really friendly and all.
I’m a big fan of this site. The design is clean and easy to navigate with a ton of features. Did I mention how clean the design is? Impressive tool for families!
I don’t care if your food is cold, I blogged dinner time a half hour ago!
Aaagh, this is horrible.
With recipes, search is broken. There’s no way to “favorite” / save a recipe into your family cookbook, and how do you share it? And there’s annoying little bugs, e.g. Menu => My Recipes => Family Cookbook => Add Category: the input field doesn’t have focus.
“My News Feeds” is weird: they don’t explain what RSS is (they want this to be mainstream?), and then they have pre-categorized and pre-selected feeds. The political bias is clear in the choice of those feeds. Oh, god forbid you would want to subscribe to another person’s blog on, say, livejournal or blogger.
It’s a pretty site, they’ll probably get lots of traffic and a company that likes walled gardens might buy them out. But it’s sterile and depressing.
Any company that puts the word “beta” on their site should fail automatically. This knee-jerk copy-catting of a fad that has long out-lived whatever minor advantage it conveyed on Google (”Ooh so hip! They’re releasing beta code so that we can try it out and be part of the development cycle!”). That was cutting-edge marketing for about 5 minutes.
Please stop calling your idiotic sites “beta” as though that somehow associates you with Google and Web 2.0. It’s just stupid.
Steve:
Hey, wait! Wasn’t exactly that what defined Web 2.0? Shiny logos, check… endless betas, check… social networking crap, check… people killing each other for a ticket to a nerdy “party” where all everybody wants is to be bought by Google or kiss Kevin Rose’s feet, check!
What I find offensive about this site is that there are only two body types available; “hollywood friendly thin” and “oops I gained 10 pounds.” As if anybody with any other body type couldn’t possibly ever want to portray their avatar as, oh, realistic maybe? Yeah, let’s give our “adolescent” family members yet another message that there are only a couple “acceptable” body types. If you are anything else, better keep that out of the “social arena.” Whose “family” is this supposed to be friendly to? Not mine. And where’s the avatar in a wheelchair outfit?
@Zatfig
What do you suggest? Adding a “morbidly obese” body type? That would go over really well.
Mike D - that’s dumb, I think the comment above is pretty legit
whoa zaftig, calm down. there’s no cripple avatar because crippled people clearly don’t belong on the internet.
The web 2.0 fad reminds me of http://www.vojosalsa.com/
I’d check it out, but it seems to require a version of flash player that Adobe has not ported to my platform yet. I guess it’s for the best anyway, I don’t have a family.
@ Mike D
What would I suggest? Simply to have more options to make the avatars a little more inclusive to those who wish to be represented accurately, and don’t fit the two body types made available. While I wouldn’t expect Famster to be as intricate, SecondLife certainly gives folks an option to fill out their avatars. The famster folks would do themselves a service by not alienating (consciously or unconsciously) the majority of the U.S. population that has no representation of body type.
There are plenty of 8 skin tones, 13 eye shapes, 21 hairstyles ranging from preppy princess to punked out and fricken 15 noses to choose from (at least on the adolescent girl avatar). A wide variety of demographics could be represented by ALL THESE CHOICES. Except when it comes to body type. What’s the big deal that I have a problem with this?
@adsvin
whatever, dude
I’m already enthusiastic about Famster. Social networking is very interesting!
I don’t do “Flash” Maybe i’m too old.
What other “family-oriented” social networking sites are there?
I’d think of joining this one, if it didn’t have a hamster superhero as a mascot. How about a big yellow smiley face with an “F” between the eyes?
Also, I would like the idea of different themes for different age groups. I’m not sure that the kind of design that attracts mom would also attract her teenage daughter.
I’m impressed. VERY impressed. I am wondering how the flash-based site will hold up under heavy traffic. Will that make a difference? It’s got it all, laid out very intuitively with complete webmail, file storage, photo albums, 1GB space, IM, easy blogging tool with rss, and a lot more. I actually think a lot of sites - social networking or not - could learn a lot from this design and simplicity.
Actually now that I think about it, their logo seems a bit demonic. What, with horns and all. (Two sets - one for mommy and one for junior!)
This is laughably bad. I am about to have a seizure with all this flash. Ugh. Flash is an amazingly technology, but it isn’t suited for a social networking site.
Oh and anyone else notice they have stolen all 25,000 recipes from AllRecipes.com? I think AR might be getting an anonymous tip soon.
hello.
In terms of interface , i also think that website is grate. but there is another issue that i think worth mentioning. As they mention tey are creating social network for famylies and that they are protectin children from abusers.good
thats greate . but while you providing protection on one side you promoting pornografic content on other websites also owned by you , and contain links to websites that contain child abuse photos. the following link shows websites also oned by same people. http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....amster.com).(Check out websites)
I thougt it s important to mention this becouse once this article in blogosphere many peole would regiter their and upload their info and personal family photos. And is there a garanti that this images will not end up in unwanted places. Another point how ethical they re going to be once they have got so much of personal information. their field of business is porn, suddenly because of social networkin popularity they decided to try it out.
Before warnig others for dangers of child abuse you have to clean your dirty
laundry.
I am in my mid 30s….married with kids….this site seems solid to me. I also find it very easy to use and nice interface. Maybe I am too easy on them but i like the product. My only concern is that with no apparent revenue stream am I going to get pinged with some subscription fee 6 mos down the road after i have loaded in all my images and video, etc. I would rather know now that it will cost $XXXX per month.
I could care less about the hamster, this is what s
Information Collection and Use
* Famster collects personal information when you register with Famster, when you use Famster products or services, when you visit Famster pages or the pages of certain Famster partners, and when you enter promotions or sweepstakes. Famster may combine information about you that we have with information we obtain from business partners or other companies.
* Famster collects information about your transactions with us and with some of our business partners.
* Famster works with vendors, partners, advertisers, and other service providers in different industries and categories of business. For more information regarding providers of products or services that you’ve requested please read our detailed reference links.
Information Sharing and Disclosure
* Famster does not rent, sell, or share personal information about you with other people or nonaffiliated companies >EXCEPTMAY
Oh goodness. Yeah this is certainly a “family company”.
http://alexa.com/data/details/main?url=famster.com
Not sure if :
jizzonmyjuggs.com and hardcorepetites.net and bustyadventures.net and taylorbo.com
are the type of sites I want associated with my 11 year old daughter’s photobook.
Looks like these guys are pretty sleazy and just out for a buck no matter what domain it is in.
Off topic, but their logo is a total rip off of the Freeway logo.
Fearmongering, no discernible revenue plan, and walled-garden features that are done better by Yahoo!, Google, 37 Signals, etc.
Gee, I can’t WAIT to sign up
Interesting that a site like that (quite a mouthful) has no contact-info anywhere to be found.
I have a theory: that at least 30% of critics in the comments section of TechCrunch are competitors, or jealous wannabes.
I can never prove it, but if I’m right - you know who you are! (Although if you’re a wannabe, you know it only in the back of your mind.)
Anyways, as most everyone has pointed out, it has a great interface. While reportedly buggy right now, its featureset is pretty impressive.
@Steve:
“Please stop calling your idiotic sites “beta” as though that somehow associates you with Google and Web 2.0. It’s just stupid.”
*sigh* Google? Eh? Web 2.0 perhaps….but no-one thinks adding “beta” to their site somehow associates them with Google. *rolls eyes*
Beta means something, OK? It means the software is not yet stable, changes and improvements will be made.
God, I am SO SICK of you Web 2.0 critics. You’re BORING. Shiny logos, beta signs, pastel colours, gradients, meaningless buzzword…unoriginal, yadee yada yada. Hush.
There’s nothing wrong with fads, and some of the brighest companies on the Web are the main players in incorperating and perpetuating them - I’m sure they know more about Web services than you do.
Long live the Web 2.0 design fad (Web 2.0 itself is entirely different, but not to you) - I think it’s great.
(Not so much to jealous I-can’t-make-it-so-I-hate-it types though.)
TC forever.
Well said. The site looks pretty interesting and I’m enjoying the web 2.0 fad.
If this is a social network, should show some user content on the front page, then new users will know if it is of interesting to them.
I covered Famster few days back (link here, Overall, their biggest asset is the well-thought feature set…and the sleek UI..
Only thing that lack is probably a defined business model (still not ad supported, no premium account stuff..)
The study that you link to about sex offenders has to do with online harassment. I think the feature that monitors for registered sex offenders in your geographic area is a totally different thing. If sex offender moves in across that street from me I’m not worried that my kid will suddenly start IMing with the dude - I’m worried that the dude will snag my kid.
You seem to be comparing apples to oranges - seems misleading on your part.
Hello World,
This is an Official response from Famster.com. We are very thankful and happy about all of the praise and attention we have been receiving from the online community. Believe it or not, from time to time incorrect information gets disseminated on the Internet :-). Unfortunately this is one of those times. The comment by Iain(http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/19/famsters-hamster-wants-to-network-with-your-mom/#comment-147314) regarding information found on Alexa.com couldn’t be farther from the truth. Famster.com nor any of its parent or subsidiary companies are affiliated with any adult websites. The information posted on Alexa.com is completely out of date. The domain name Famster.com was purchased in July 2005 from Safe Site Central, located at 2900 S Valley View #292, Las Vegas, NV 89102.
If you look carefully at the information posted at Alexa.com, the owner of Famster.com is listed as Registerfly.com, located at 623 Eagle Rock Ave, West Orange, NJ 07052. The URL, http://www.registerfly.com/ is a Web site hosting and domain registration company. All of the adult sites listed as being owned by Famster.com aren’t even owned by Registerfly.com. Various owners all around the country and world own them. The only consistency we can tell from the information posted on Alexa is that all of the adult sites purchased their domains at Registerfly.com. They are also all hosted on various servers, not ours.
Anyone is welcome to check out the owner of any of the sites listed by doing what is called a “Whois” lookup at any domain registration Web site. Seek and you shall find that they are not owned, hosted by or affiliated with Famster in any way. We have contacted Alexa.com to have them update our profile to the most recent and correct information.
We hope you take the time to evaluate our product on its merits and not that of an erroneous, out-of-date post on Alexa.
Thank you,
Famster
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