Writing, Sharing And Protecting Your Life’s Story

The Story of My Life does look like the best of the 3.

Shows that you can still accomplish a lot with Self or Angel Funding when you have a good team and concept.

Story of my life looks neat. Yeh, a great team with a good concept can make wonders.

you folks must break out into laughter when writing this copy (or at least i hope you do):

“getting and then keeping customers for decades, and encouraging friends and especially family members to join, too. Once they’re hooked, they’ve spent so much time building content that they are very unlikely to ever leave”

hohoheehee. these urls will be parked at godaddy this time next year. or maybe not, running a crappy little 1k hits per day (if that) site like this probably doesn’t cost more than $100 a month. but at some point these people have to realize they could be making more money flipping burgers.

Don’t forget about http://www.dandelife.com - they have been out for a year and are pretty far ahead on this..

Enjoying life meaning being able to look back at it and laughing.
We want to keep our past,plan for our future, and live our present.
I think this app will be a hit. Simply because it appeals to our emotional
feeling.

Side note:
Apple has had great by success by appealing to our sense
iPod(hearing)
iPhone(feeling)
????
What will be next ? TASTE ?

http://inetdoor.narod.ru/

Side note:
Apple has had great by success by appealing to our sense
iPod(hearing)
iPhone(feeling)
????
What will be next ? TASTE ?

iBlor (waching) LOL……

Check Out http://kinzin.com
Released this year, it’s a gathering place for families - http://blog.kinzin.com/about/ - Bonus being: Kinzin has a sweet Facebook App that is launching this month, “Are You Normal”, that introduces people to the idea that Facebook can be a great place to connect with your family, as well as your friends. And better still, future applications from Kinzin will allow you to extend that conversation to family that are not facebook users… ahhh, another great app that will live outside of FB as well! Look for it to launch week of Sep 24th

WHAT’S MY FLIVOR?

Get ready for a revolution in the way you get connected. Flivor requires no downloads and lets you find and interact LIVE with people in your area all through your mobile phone. With Flivor you will be able to experience live streaming video feeds of other members in your locale. You can search, watch and go live yourself all in a matter of seconds.

HOW IT WORKS?

Using WiMax, compass and GPS integrated in the mobile phone, Flivor will connect to users in your area and allow you to video call them without having to share your phone number; it is a live stream IM where you don’t need to add buddies.

Imagine a Friday night where you feel like checking out the latest summer blockbuster. Just click the Flivor icon on your mobile phone, select an activity, in this case “movie” and Flivor does the rest. Flivor’s server searches members in your area and displays those who share your interests. One click will open a video feed between you and the user you choose. If you don’t match up, go back to your list and click on another prospect to watch their live stream. Flivor offer variety of activities such as restaurant, movie, concert, football games, art exhibit and opens up endless possibilities to interact.

Using Adobe Flash player, Microsoft’s new SilverLight player, Quicktime H.264 or Opera’s native flash replacement, Flivor lets you join in on someone’s cam chat or go live yourself. Have a private conversation or a cam party. You can search for other live users and easily hookup with your friends or make new ones. Flivor also delivers premium live video content from music and movies to sports and style. Whatever you’re into it’s on and it’s LIVE. Your live streaming experience is moving outside the box. With Flivor you can access, post, update and watch live video from your computer or your cell phone to any computer, cell-phone or TV.

HOW DO I GET MY FLIVOR?

It’s coming soon…real soon. Keep checking back and we’ll keep you in the loop as we approach the launch date. To get more info about FLIVOR and be part of the private beta contact us, we’ll be happy to fill you in. If you are a content creator and want to know how your shows can be featured on Flivor get in touch with us as well. Tell us what you have in mind and we’ll let you know more about the features in our private beta and how we can help you reach an audience.

Flivor™ - Copyright 2007 - Alex Becker - All Rights Reserved

hi Whoopie, MyFamily (albeit a lot of driven it via Ancestry - their genealogical side) through their family networks has tens of millions of users and spends $10M on ad campaigns (plural). So I doubt their CEO would agree with you about working at Burger King. The space has a lot of potential.

If you think about it - a lot of data about you is out there already, so when your great-great-great-grandkids are reading about your youthful exuberance on archive.org, why not have an official memoir out there and linked together thru the generations?

And SOML has a separate non-profit foundation whose endowment fund maintains the stories so they don’t get lost when we forget to renew our domain name

Alex

SPAMMER

Lifeconnect ( http://www.lifeconnect.com ) seems to be emerging, too

Very interesting concept. But isn’t this just an archive of someone’s blog?

To be honest with you, I couldn’t imagine who would want to read MY life story, anyway. LOL

Ummm, they missed the best and easiest one. http://www.Easysite.com. This site rocks and I help build it. It’s the easiest way to create a family website.

@ Bill, I think that’s one of the hardest parts about all this actually - overcoming intertia, trepidation, etc. They don’t all have to be great writing If you found your grandfather’s diary wouldn’t you be interested in reading it? Even if he were the worst writer in the world it’d be interesting just to see what he was thinking about, what was important to him, what life was like.

Blogs are just one big, long chronological journal. These sites have a lot more features but yes they are archives of stories and such. I’ll help you write your story…. i’m looking at your blog right now. You have lots to say! (that’s a good thing)

Steve - those types of sites are not connected though. We want to be the Story-opedia, or Human-opedia, of people’s stories…

This seems a bit scary to me, especially for stalkers or others who are trying to build a dossier on you, your past and whom you’ve associated with. And how long is it before credit companies/advertisers target your information and begin inundating you w/ unsolicited material?

One of the best thing about SOML is that it is “Self Funded” and it seems they have it together nicely without millions in VC money. I just love stories like that.

Wish you the best of luck Amy.

Ive been using a site called FamilyEcho at http://www.familyecho.com - it doesn’t have so much features but its really easy interface. I liek the fact they let you download your family tree in lots of ways, so even if the site disappears your information isnt lost.

Stormwater, you can keep it all completely private, limit access to certain people, or release things in the future like a time capsule.

And I hate to tell you but right now for $25 I can go buy your SS# & credit history in >10 minutes.

@Jimmy - yay! $$ is nice too
@Michael M- all of the sites mentioned have print (or will have) or download features too. Most have, like ours, redundancy and mirrored sites, off-site tape/disk back-up etc. so losing data probably isn’t the issue. Going out of business for some of the others might be (our foundation has endowment money to ensure stories are kept accessible).

I think of the 3, Our Story has the best chance of gaining mass adoption. If the screenshots look as intuitive as they claim to be(drag/drop) it will be much more appealing.

The problem w/Story of My Life is the sheer mental horsepower it takes to write thoughtfully about one’s experiences. Granted not everyone is as critical of their writing style, but one you think about how many people dislike reading let alone writing, i think the barrier to adoption is pretty high. I see the main audience for SML to be high school/college age girls.

As for My Family, it doesnt really compare to the other 2 because it is less narcissistic and more about family connectedness.

Personally, ive been thinking about this space for awhile and given the popularity of ‘vanity/connection’ sites like MS, FB, Linkedin, something like this enables people to bring meaning to their lives.

how do i get to web site? i dont wanna go crunchbase- go direct but mike have order from heather to get link and traffic for crunchbase so sell ads

please post normal link for us to use - not ploy to get more traffics from us

How could you miss http://www.eachday.com? This is how our extended family shares stuff, and it automatically organizes based on date-of-capture meta data. Screw those old albums.

You should add Kinzin (www.kinzin.com) to your list, although, like myfamily.com it is more of a social network optimized for families than a personal story space.

Disclaimer: I work at the company that is funding Kinzin. I’m also a happy user, and friends with pretty much the whole team: they’re good people.

dear amy - if these sites have 10 million legit unique users i will eat my hat.

and why would i want to store my data “for life” on a service that will be parked at godaddy in a few years?

and spending money on ads on other people’s sites is equally meaningless.

you see the trends already, people are beginning to realize they are populating databases that have twelve months to live. this is why people use google and yahoo and even microsoft tools - they know in five years these sites will still be here

no site living on venture funding should use the term “for life”. oh but i am still trying to pay for products with beanz, i was told they were web currency for life

kind of off topic, but amy - you are attractive…

you should add a photo of yourself on your profile. i believe, there’s no closeup of you in that photo archive

Make that five that companies that Techcrunch covers in this space since Sampa is squarely focused on family sharing scenarios that combine the power of easy website creation, collaborative family trees, email integration and the right tinge of social networking (personal private networking) for family and close friends to stay engaged in your life.

Another one of those cute sounding ideas which are doomed to failure..

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

At OurStory we struggled with the arrogance of a product promise about keeping your data forever, so we made it easy to download a complete copy of your work at any time to Blurb’s Booksmart software for print publishing, and we integrated Englaze so you can create an archival DVD of your data as well…keep that in the safe deposit box if you count your annotated and well-organized photos and videos among your most precious possessions. What we learned at OurStory from our users is that they really connect with the idea of sharing authentic writing about real experience with others doing the same. While we thought of it first as a way of connecting more meaningfully with family and friends–and that certainly happens–what really emerged was a community of people who had never met each other in person, but who know a lot more about each other than most family do because they are chronicling their life experience in view of the others . Few, including me, will ever “finish” their timeline, but the beauty of a timeline is that it is ongoing, and it is in this ongoing sharing of the moments and memories of life past and present that richer relationships rise from social media like OurStory.com.

I’m impressed by the offering of Story of my life. I want some sort of guarantee my stuff will be kept forever and now it looks like someone woke up and are offering something tangible. I’m not going to waste hours of my time uploading pictures and profiles on sites like Facebook, MySpace and many others. It’s waste of time since they will disappear at some point. I’m not a writer so my story will speak more through pictures and videos. I think Story of my life as the most chance of success. If they can do that with little money, those guys will rock if they land funding.

On Storyofmylife.com, if you want to see the full-sized user photos instead of the little thumbnails, right-click on the photo and select Properties. Then highlight the URL of the photo and hit CTRL+C to copy it. Paste the URL into your browser. Then delete the part of the URL that says: “ImageSize=80×80,” (or whatever numbers appear) so that the ampersand follows the question mark. Then hit enter.

Why? I don’t know.

Lucas, currently you can clck and see full images for all the files and download them from the site (”Download the original” option) except for that main profile image; but we’ll add that, along with bunches of other stuff.

@Whoopie - you need to eat your hat my friend…

I’m impressed that Story of my Life is addressing the “what will happen to my data” issue head-on, but I’m still skeptical that their approach will work.

Oh yeah, protect my life story by giving it to a brand-new company with few prospects for lasting into reality. That sounds like a good idea.

After reading the story about how a big company was trying to squash this scrappy start-up firm, I signed up and gave it a spin.

The site is great! I love it. It’s easy to use and navigate through.

This site has a lot of potential.

“getting and then keeping customers for decades, and encouraging friends and especially family members to join, too. Once they’re hooked, they’ve spent so much time building content that they are very unlikely to ever leave”

Surely the biggest joke is: ‘Story of my life, keep your story forever BETA‘

Tsk, a couple of you are un-silicon-valley-like negative. I’m almost hearing: ~No company should even bother to try. No company should start-up. The only companies who are trustworthy are MSN and Google.~ Beta just refers to the software. We’re not going anywhere. Forging new grounds is quite fun.

There is a Foundation involved in storing the data so it’s not just some start-up saying they’ll store data. If you have ever had any dealings with those they are not just something you slap together and then leave with no consequences. The IRS is all over that.

http://www.surnamedb.com

Is trying to build a social site around surnames, with a database of 50,000 surname origin reports we have an ideal starting point. The idea is that for people researching their surname and it’s history, a group of pages based around their surname makes for a great base of operations and will often lead to the exchange of information with others researching the name.

The site still needs a lot of work, especially in the social networking areas… but with zero development budget work has been frustratingly slow.

With the recent Monster Phishing scam, I’d think twice before uploading my life history anywhere. Not that I think it might be of any tangible value, but keeping it there for everyone to see might not be the best idea.

After listening to all the hubris, can we get real? Unless a person is back in the WEB 1.0 mindset, there must be a profitable business model or the burn rate will leave nothing but toast. Are the founders of these sites so naive they think selling eyeballs to advertisers will work?

Baby Boomers are some of the savviest consumers on the planet. They are extremely astute at mentally filtering ads or outright blocking them entirely from their browser. Ooops, that ’selling eyeballs to advertisers’ idea won’t work.

So what else generates revenue? Perhaps the goal is subscriptions to upload personal information to a website? Really? 90% of Americans don’t trust websites… and for good reason. Quote the law (federal or state) that protects data voluntarily disclosed? And any promise that the information is secure is ignorance. Web site security is a scam sold by the unscrupulous to simpletons. The list of web sites that failed to secure data adequately includes every major bank, military, government and business organization in the world. To believe that’s going to change for these latest ‘family history’ flavored start ups is beyond absurd.

The tout is ‘ease of collaboration’. We should all join hands and sing Kumbaya I guess too. Upload pictures of your kids and house and then tell the friendly police officer who thinks you are an idiot that you had no idea there were bad people on the Internet who would break into your home while you were at a family reunion; or masturbate to the photo of your grandchild till they can snatch her for real.

Am I a cynic? No, I’m a Baby Boomer. Most of us are experienced enough to see through the obvious BS. Any human being with the audacity to assure another human being that they should be trusted, is either a liar or a fool. Trust is earned. Talk to me when you have been around ten years. Most won’t make it ten months.

PS: I really loved that line about selling participant’s information back to them before you go out of business. How about people use their head and not upload it in the first place? That way they don’t have to pay to get it back after ‘bots have data mined it and sold off anything of value. You want to prove you are for real? Put up a GUARANTEE that if ANY information EVER gets lost, stolen or sold from the site, EVERY participant will receive a check for ONE MILLION DOLLARS. In my day that was known two ways: “Put up or Shut Up”… or the more vernacular: “Put Your Money Where Your mouth Is!”

Wow, so many negative spins on what I hope were sites with good intentions.

I like the story of my life site. Sharp design and easy to use. Maybe venture funding is a good idea after all. Some friends and I created something similar but aimed particularly at Boomers and our parents.

The My Heritage family tree app is also very easy to use. We still need this on our site. Maybe we can work something out to connect the two.

GreatLifeStories.com was started as a means to celebrate the lives and accomplishments of our parents and grandparents. Some users might slip into this self focused “Watch me water the garden” hubris but what I have seen is real people that would like to leave something of worth for future generations.

They all have photo albums and they are afraid they will stay in the box and no one will remember.

Each of our founders had close relatives have near death experiences or pass away in a very tight 2-3 month window of time. We realized that TIME was short and that our parents and grandparents were transitioning into the last phase of their lives. All of us were so busy with the here and now that we missed the urgency.

If our site fades and we have to move the information into something more successful, we will, but it is my intent that we will support these stories securely for time to come. We all have real jobs and supporting this site just doesn’t cost that much money.

“…it is my intent that we will support these stories securely for time to come.”

As any attorney will tell you, that you intended to do no harm is irrelevant. The Internet is a tool. Like all tools, it has uses that are extraordinary while others are foolish. Parking personal information on a web site is not wise.

I understand and respect your desire to enable people to leave a legacy but unless you can quote the law (federal or state) that protects data voluntarily disclosed, then agree to the Million Dollar Per Person guarantee. If you can’t back up your Kumbaya claims with cash (and you can’t because no insurance company will write such a ludicrous policy) then admit what you’re encouraging is worse then telling people to unlock their doors. You are removing all the walls and advertising no one’s home.

Will you issue a sincere apology when all the data you naively solicited is ravaged or do you actually believe you are smarter and more secure than the NSA and the Pentagon?

My anger is you’re apparently not even aware you’re creating ideal conditions for identity theft. Consider this: how will you feel if you devastate even one individual when your supposed security system fails?

I read the words and catch the drift that you’ll then walk away to “something more successful”; as you so glibly put it. Unbelievable!

# Antje Wilsch

“And I hate to tell you but right now for $25 I can go buy your SS# & credit history in >10 minutes.”

1. And if it happens to him, you’re also a prime suspect for issuing a threat in public. Thank you for making my point about naiveté.
2. You’re paying too much. East European, Russian, Chinese and Indian hackers can get your entire life for that price.
3. The same creative - albeit nefarious - folks can and will slice & dice a web site in seconds to data mine the info for resale.

I’ve been accused of being an old cynic. Maybe… but I’ve been around long enough to recognize the song of lambs to the slaughter. If you forget everything else, remember items 2 & 3.

We are careful to advise our users to not post any personal contact information, addresses, or other contact info. The site is for their memoirs and stories. http://www.greatlifestories.com/advice.html

Every user has the option of holding their information private to themselves or to their friends & family. Most users have chosen to share these with other visitors.

We do review and delete anything that could be personally identifying but no oversight process is flawless.

I believe Robert’s point is that all search engines expose every one of us to the risk you describe. It is similar to terrorism. You do everything you can but the World Trade Center still fell. Does that mean you abandon all hope and try to live in a bunker?

I hate finding that my previous comment was moderated for 2 links. Anyway, check out FamilyLink.com http://www.paulallen.net/2007/.....mily-tree/

And you should always mention the free service from the LDS church called FamilySearch.org I bet you’d be surprised if you compared the worldwide digitization project they have going on compared to Google’s book one.

Wow, now you really have to be trusting to use the FamilyLink site. You start off with a simple log in but then a full profile with your address, birthdate, etc.

It wasn’t really clear to me out of the gate what they would really do with my info and after the second screen how much more they were going to ask me for. Did their step by step process just keep going? So I stopped there.

If I was desperate that I wanted to find my roots, I might be more motivated to follow the flow.

OK, so when I went back to the page, I was able to click on something else and got back to the actual home page. There you can browse and see the application and get a bit more of a feel for it.

The family tree app looks easy to use and obviously connects into some deep resources. The beta label does make me a bit nervous still.

Thanks for the links. I’ve been considering writing my art story and these links sound like they might help.