This might be a good service and an opportunity to some families. But I wonder why it has come so far that families need the internet nowadays to get to know other people. Might even the internet be one of the reasons that we don’t socialize as much as our predecessors did? We have all the information we need (or want) at our fingertips and have a reason less to communicate with other people. I think that especially families with a child (or more) have the best chance of getting to know other people since they should take their kids out to activities such as sports, theatre, camp, etc – and isn’t one of the reasons for such activities that parents should teach their kids how to socialise (and have fun of course). If a family is child-less and just has moved or so I understand the utilization of the service a bit more.
Anyhow I bet the service is going to make some decent revenue. And the service is decent too – if you can’t connect with one family, or two, tree, four, and so on.. you have a whole year to try it out.

what, they didn’t let a ‘journalist’ review the ’site’ for ‘free’?
this won’t work. pay $20 for very little. there won’t be enough demand. you’ll pay $20 to look at one local family. interest matching doesn’t really work - if you were local and shared interests, you’d have already met!

Are black people allowed to apply?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson

“The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation … until at last they had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South to protect the Southern country.”

Good guy, that Wilson character. I mean, it’s not like he re-segregated the federal government or anything. (Doh!)

Friends for White Families Questionaire:
—————————————————
1) How do you like your National Anthem sung?
2) What kind of music do you listen to?
3) Do you like fried chicken?

Maybe they’ll let black families be friends with other black families…after all, dollar bills aren’t racist.

What about rainbow families? Brad said he’s not getting married until everyone can get married. Where does FFF stand?

Is it me, or does ‘FFF’ remind of some of our better-known white-supremecist institutions? The CCC. The KKK. etc.

I agree with Florian. The internet is most likely where our problem stems from. The solution to the problem cant be the.. problem. Can it? I also think its stupid to charge $20! How can you put a price on a new service that nobody has any faith in yet? Had it been free, I might sign up for it and most likely use for 1 hour and never again. Now, they dont even get that one hour of my time.

Not a bad idea - and a new type of niche. I think you guys are forgetting that making a service “free” means that they do not have to give you as much security around what you do and how you do it.

Once you “pay” for a service, the laws all of a sudden begin to change very quickly. Remember, you are dealing with families here - and more importantly, families that will post contact information online easily. Having this kind of information freely available online would be a killer service for all sorts of psychos out there, not to mention the stalkers and child predators. While its true they could easily pay the $20 – more likely than not, they wont even bother if a cost involved.

While its true heaps of people may not try the service because it isn’t free – I still think it’s a viable market. Example: Moving interstate for a new job, into a new neighbourhood and don’t know anyone. Get online to this site, pay your $20 and all of a sudden you meet families in the “neighbourhood”. Now your kids meet other kids, and you may meet other people with the same likes and dislikes.

Either way, no one has done this yet so don’t be all that quick to criticise it. Plus it’s a market that everyday “mums” may be interested in more so than everyone – and if you can get “mums” on board, then you pretty much say “their goes the neighbourhood”

I tend to agree with Tcruncher. I think because they are dealing with families, they can’t offer “free profile browsing” like match.com and others. I just went through their FAQs and they’ve put a lot of thought into answering a lot of these questions already. I think most of the answers were very logical and thought out when thinking about the safety of families. It’s only $20 for a whole year too. It’s almost like they’re just charging a small amount to make sure they can’t have people on there browsing through family profiles without them knowing who they are. I think it will generate some solid numbers but I do agree it’s going to take some time to grow. But that’s ok too because you have a whole year.

The aspect of security I did not take into account. It will be a whole lot safer if there is no anonymous way of surfing profiles. Still I dislike the idea that a family needs the internet to get in touch with other families if they live in a city among millions of other families. If you get a new job you sure will have some co-workers. And if you have a child it will have to attend school for sure - another great source for getting to know other parents.
As for the stalkers/predators I think they won’t waste a minute thinking about the 20$. It saves a whole lot of time to get a full family profile for that money.
Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s a good idea to give that niche a try – I just think its sad that people actually need this kind of service.

It looks like people are getting more and more isolated as we go forward, despite all that “technology” to keep connected with the world around you.

I too overlooked this form of “security” but its really not all that secure. If a $20 bill is all that stands between a predator and its prey then that is a false sense of security.

I still dont see this type of service taking off. I wouldnt “meet” new “families” on the internet and then have my family hang out with them. I think that sounds totally insane. $20 is not going to stop sombody from signing up and pretending to have a wonderful little family with 2 kids, a puppy, and a white picket fence.

If you *need* the internet to find friends, then chances are you should work more on your people skills than on finding internet friends.

Even worse.. if your entire family is like that and you meet another family like that…. thats going to be a wierd friendship!

As a parent of a four month year old. I can say that I definitely need help finding friends in my same situation. I also work from home and that combined with a new baby means I haven’t left the house in a really long time.
My best friends have not had kids yet so even though I still think they are awesome they can no longer completely relate with our situation.

I think you are right ‘Innovation Zen’ people are getting more and more isolated but sometimes it’s because of technology. That’s why I can work from home - I keep in touch with my clients by email and phone with only the occasional face to face meeting.
It is about time that ‘technology’ helped us get together instead of isolating us. And I don’t mean getting us all chatting together online, I mean some real interaction in person.

My sister met her husband on eharmony. Why can’t I meet my next friend on FFF? I hope I can.

i chose to spend the $20 to find out. personally I think it good idea. the complaints about the price just don’t make sense. most good companies make something and sell that something. they do a good job at telling you what the something does and if you are interested you buy it. if not you don’t buy it. they do a nice job of telling you what you are getting when you join and i think that makes sense for a business. i also think $20 for a year is cheap if you think such a service is good and i do.

the main reason i joined was to see about the “security” part. no contact information is sent to anyone. no email address. no phone number. not even last name. to think some weirdo is going to get on there and be able to find out enough about your familty to do harm is not true because they can’t. so what if weirdo man knows i don’t like being around people that smoke.

also, internet dating sites have proven that meeting people online is ok. tell match.com and eharmony that it doesn’t work. you people mention how it’s sad that people have to get internet to meet friends. this site is so much different than the other family sites because they are trying to get people to get out and meet other people. they are promoting getting outside and meeting people, not staying in and sitting on computer. i like it that is why i signed up.

Wow. Another one I missed. I had the idea of doing something similar to this about a year ago and didn’t. One of these days I will get it together. I buy into the philosophy behind it and of course that is why I thought it would do well. It will be interesting to see if I was right in not going after it or if I was wrong and should have. I do think this kind of thing is going to have massive appeal to a lot of people. I know the feeling of not being able to find people you have a lot in common with and it isn’t fun. I know a lot of other people feel the same way. Off to check it out.

Eharmony.com
Match.com
FriendsForFamilies.com

They all charge money and it works (will work). Take a look at Top20Network.com. They have a similar model, only they charge $10 for access to a network of people educated at the top 20 schools.

People will pay if you give them something of value.

This is a little bit spooky. Imagine as a kid being told that you’re going to have a family outing with some other family your parents met on the Internet. Have we, as a society, gotten to the point where we are incapable of developing friendships offline? Whatever happened to meeting other families through work, school, the PTA, etc?

“without the dating and sex, I assume”

Trust me, it will evolve into that. It starts off with friendly BBQs and then you start to notice Frank’s wife, and little do you notice that Frank starts to get close with your wife. It’s funny how Frank and your wife always go inside at the same time to get more soda pop for the kids and it always takes forever for them to find it. And Frank seems to get real winded looking for it.

Before you know it, everybody is sleeping with each other and you’ve become the typical American family. All thanks to the Internet.

They don’t call it match.CON for no reason - even their dating site requires money to be part of it - which is fine, except they need to stop using the word FREE everywhere.

The money is not my gripe. My gripe is the fact that you are putting your entire family in danger doing something like this. I did not pay the $20 so i dont know exactly how the site works. Dating websites have shown that this idea can work, I agree. The difference is that I am puting ME at risk with a dating site. With a family site like this, I put everyone at risk. I just dont think its safe… but again i didnt try the service so I cant comment on how it works.

Look at a website for parents like Minti.com. My friend’s wife signed up, tested it out, and ran across another woman who just moved to their small town. So she wrote her, and they got together. No $20 and online profiling necessary. That seems a lot more organic than this idea.

I don’t know. Forgive me, but this seems a little creepy and desperate. Get out of the house more as a family, go and be involved in community events, and you’ll meet other families that way. Volunteer at the local school or in your kid’s activities. And so on.

“Before you know it, everybody is sleeping with each other” - best comment ever on techcrunch. if this was crunchgear we’d give you a free ipod or something.

I think their might be a significant market for sites like this, lets call them safe Myspace sites. Our site (http://www.socialshield.com) helps parents learn more about social networks and how to use them safely. With the recent backlash of parents concerned about their kids’ safety and exposure they might ask (or even force) them to use family oriented sites instead of Myspace.com.

Also Michael, I really enjoyed seeing you speak at the Future of Web Apps summit this week. I was the one who asked about the Apple press incident. Just wanted to thank you for the great information and insight.

Hey thanks Sean. Great question to wrap up my talk.

“without the dating and sex, I assume”

heh

I list a stack of social networking sites on http://family2point0.wordpress.com that are free and run on the basis of meeting other families…take your pick :0)

What a great idea, and probably safer than two singles just meeting in a dark alley based on a thinly vield desire to have sex right away.

This is one more example of how I would never have come up with a good, new idea.

“What a great idea, and probably safer than two singles just meeting in a dark alley based on a thinly vield desire to have sex right away.”

Yes. Much safer to meet at a family BBQ and use that as a front to meet women for sex. So I agree it’s a great idea. There’s nothing more exciting than a high-risk affair with some other guy’s wife because she’s not being satisfied due to his workaholic tendencies.

“Mommy, why are you in bed kissing daddy’s friend?”

Techparent says: “As a parent of a four month year old. I can say that I definitely need help finding friends in my same situation.” I find that to be quite an awkward thing to say - as parent myself I can find a myriad of other parents who live locally and are in the same socio-economic layer as I am.

It’s called the nursery, the school or the high-school. It’s should sound pretty obvious, but when you go and pick up your son or daughter from school you are actually surrounded by opportunities to make potential friends. And if you find the ’school run’ too stressful to properly meet people, what about the evenings or weekend events such as schoolplays and such?

Now say instead you go online - you’re searching for people in your area with kids your age. Guess who you’re likely to find? Yup, the same people from school. The mind boggles.

My wife and daughter live in San Francisco and the school district still has the idiotic lottery system in effect. Parents scramble and fight - or pull inside strings - to get their kids in the best schools in the city. Then shuttle their kids to school way across town. So the parents we meet live nowhere near us and if they don’t have parking the chances are slim we will meet.

This is a shame, parents driving their kids to school. Even when they do not live that far. I learned more about life walking to and from school than in school. Parents are robbing their kids of this experience because of the fear of freaks and crazy neighbors. Even when you get involved with your community, you have to watch out for freeloaders. These people are no more a stranger than someone you meet online.

This matchmaking for families started a few years back as a university project, I saw it and was also going to improve it but I am not that interested in other families - just mine for now. And that is where “hooking up” families fail, nobody is craving other family companionships to snuggle up to.

The FFF also made a mistake by not showing how many families have joined and how many are even in your neighborhood. The FAQ response regarding “try it for 12 months…” shows there is nobody on there if you can’t find a match.

I guess the mixed opinions here just show that people assign specific values to certain tools. It seems to me that tools are neutral.

I read tons online, and I still get magazines in the mail. I’ve got 100-plus cable channels, and I still watch some shows on the old networks.

I think FriendsForFamilies.com is supplemental and all social networking will be. Some of my single girlfriends are signed up to match-making sites, and they continue to go out to bars and chamber of commerce networking events and arts festivals and whatnot.

Maybe my libertarianism is keeping me from seeing something but I think Friends for Families and other social networking sites are just expansions of the means available to us, that allow us to seek what we want in a variety of ways. More choices, more liberty.

I joined and liked that the questionnaires were all oriented toward activities people do together, outside the home, just like I remember my parents taking me and my sister to picnics and events with other families they knew from work or wherever. Those were positive experiences 99 percent of the time.

Michael - First, thanks for picking us up and doing the review. If I had known you were going to do the review without contacting me, I would have gladly given you a promo code to get in

I wanted to take a minute and just offer some points of clarification from FriendsForFamilies.com’s perspective. Hopefully this will give people an objective view of why we’re launching the service. These are really just counterpoints to some of the comments above:

1) It seems that some people view this as a service for “anti-social” or “lonely” families. While it can serve in that capacity, it’s not what was intended when we started working on this idea. We wanted to create a set of tools that could be used by every family to make finding friends a more efficient process. It’s true that the Internet is probably a major cause of why people don’t socialize as much as they used to. However, it’s our goal to use technology and the Internet to help people meet “Great” friends in their communities, not just the neighbor or other soccer moms that might not have that much in common with their own family. Meeting your neighbors or other parents at a school function is not the same as meeting those rare people that eventually turn into life-long friendships. You can’t exactly go up to people out in your community and start asking them about their kids, their beliefs, their religion, etc. Our site does allow you to do these things. It’s simply a tool that helps families establish significant common ground before meeting. Again, it makes the process more efficient.

2) Security. By the time we launch tomorrow, we’ll have all our security information posted on the site. This will explain a lot of concerns people have here about family safety. Of course this is a top priority of our company and we strive to protect every area where we can. I’ll hit on a couple of security points here.
- Requiring membership prior to viewing families offers traceability. The price is not a deterrent to “predators”, it’s the ability to trace back to a verified user, address and credit card number. By doing this, every user that is viewing other family profiles knows that they aren’t doing so anonymously.
- We log all user activity. Every page that every member views on our site is stored in a log. We can see which family profiles each member is viewing.
- We log all member communication. Our communication system provides anonymous access to talk back and forth between families. However, we store a record of that communication and know what each member has sent to other members.
- Like a couple of people have noticed (thanks for signing up!), no contact information is ever revealed to any other user on the site. You can browse profiles of families in your area but there is no way you can identify who that family is or how to find them with the data that is published. You have to communicate with the family and arrange all that on your own (which is logged and stored).

These are just a few precautions we took to ensure family safety. We understand some people may have problems with this from a privacy perspective. The fact is we know we are dealing with families, we think legitimate families will understand and we think they will appreciate the extra efforts we went to so that we could provide as much safety as possible to their families. We also think by openly communicating these policies, it will serve as a major deterrent for “predators”. If they know that we know who they are, where they are located, what profiles they are browsing and what communication they are sending to what members, it seems very unlikely they would use the service.

Hopefully this sheds a little more light on the two main issues which were the membership structure and security. Take care guys and once again, thanks for all the feedback. We can definitely use it to help us communicate all the great things we are doing.

John McAuley, CEO
http://www.FriendsForFamilies.com

Well I have a 1-year old and I think this service may be valuable. To the idiot jackasses who obviously have no kids, there are no social “activies” that a 1-year old participates in. You aren’t taking him to soccer and you aren’t going to “camps” or whatever else you clueless fools said. Unless you happen to know other people with kids the same age, you are SOL. So this service could be very helpful.

“However, it’s our goal to use technology and the Internet to help people meet ‘Great’ friends in their communities, not just the neighbor or other soccer moms that might not have that much in common with their own family. Meeting your neighbors or other parents at a school function is not the same as meeting those rare people that eventually turn into life-long friendships. You can’t exactly go up to people out in your community and start asking them about their kids, their beliefs, their religion, etc. Our site does allow you to do these things. It’s simply a tool that helps families establish significant common ground before meeting. Again, it makes the process more efficient.”

There’s a lot here that’s counter-intuitive. First off, if you’re a family with kids that go to school, you’re already probably fairly well-connected within your community with other families. In my experience, it’s precisely the people who are your neighbors, that you meet at the soccer game, that go to school with your kids, etc. that become your life-long friends. If you can’t find compatible friends and develop relationships with some of the people that you’re constantly around, I’d be surprised because those people are the typical candidates.

John argues that the people you already know in the community may not share all your common interests. Fair enough. A few points about this:

- If your kids go to school, they play a huge role in which families you socialize with. They choose their friends and as a parent, you can either develop relationships with their friends and their friends’ families or you can push them further away from you by disapproving of their friends. In my experience, even people that are very different usually share some common interests, values, etc. If you have a checklist of lots of criteria that you “require” families you associate with to have, you might as well move to a small, homogeneous town so that you don’t have to worry about associating with people that many have differences.

- People that are passionate about some topic or issue (religion, politics, charity, etc.) most likely already participate in community events (church, volunteer work, etc.) that connect them with others in the community that share common interests. If I’m very religious, my family goes to church every Sunday. If I’m into volunteer work and charity, I’m a member of the Rotary Club and take my family to the local Rotary Club gatherings. Thus, unless you live in a metropolitan region with millions of people, it’s very likely that you don’t need to go on to FriendsForFamilies.com to locate families in your area with these shared interests. You already know them!

Services like Match.com are great because when you’re looking for somebody to date and potentially develop a romantic relationship with, efficiency is important. There is utility in being able to use technology to filter out people that you know you wouldn’t be compatible with. You don’t want to deal with poor candidates. I’d say the dynamic of relationship development for friendships, especially between families, is not the same. Common ground is established over time through your repeated socializing in an offline environment. You find out about their kids, their beliefs, their religion by getting to know them over time by repeated interactions, not by interviewing them via email through a site like FriendsForFamilies.com. Again, these types of relationships are often developed through the friends your children make and through your participation in community activities. The brutual efficiency of “family matchmaking” ignores the social dynamic of how these relationships are best developed.

Does that mean there’s no market for this service? No. It may appeal to some people. But on the business development side, I think charging $20/year right off the bat when the service won’t have any utility until it reaches critical mass is a strategy mistake that will thwart any chance of success this has. I understand that the payment aspect serves as a form of quality control to make prospective customers feel more secure, however when weighed against the fact that for $20 I’m basically getting access to a service that won’t be of any value to me with its current userbase, I’m would not tempted enough to join. A better plan for dealing with the “chicken-egg” problem is needed here.