You’ve stalked your friends, now get a newsfeed from your family
Mike Butcher
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London-based Kindo, a social network aimed at your living family-tree, has won undisclosed seed funding from Estonia-based Ambient Sound Investments, reports TechCrunch UK. (Why are they Estonian based? Because they are formed from Skype’s founding engineers). Also in the seed round is Saul and Robin Klein of The Accelerator Group (TAG), and Stefan Glanzer, first investor in last.fm and executive chairman until the acquisition last year by CBS.
Kindo covers the “next generation” family tree, with communication features, stats and a family ‘news feed’ not unlike a Facebook feed. Perhaps it’s stand-out proposition is that because it is already translated into 14 languages including Russian, Arabic and Chinese it will be aimed at groups traditionally associated with a tight-knit sense of family.
Other family networks tend to be about the dead (Ancestry.com is about ancestors) or genealogy (Geni.com) rather than your living family. Kindo has as much chance as any other site in this area, but being translated into so many languages from the word go creates a barrier to entry for a lot of competitors. [Update: It appears Genoom does do something similar to Kindo].
Wow!!!
Already translated to 14 languages? Great.
Providing a Chinese version of any new service seems to be a normal way of starting.
Perhaps it’s stand-out proposition is that because it is already translated into 14 languages including Russian, Arabic and Chinese it will be aimed at groups traditionally associated with a tight-knit sense of family.
I can’t wait to get twitter/kindoed some of those “if hillary was president…” jokelists my distant cousin always sends people in my family. What a welcome development! Kudos, Kindo.
Genoom is way nicer that Kindo and also translated in many languages
http://www.genoom.com
They have had a seed round even if not as cool as skype or lastfm dudes..and that seems to be the point of the post
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I’ve checked a Russian version. It looks neat.
Misc trivia. This is what the “Skype’s founding engineers” did during the nineties:
http://www.bluemoon.ee/
I do like what Kindo are trying to do with their product. I have posted a review over on my site http://crenk.com/2008/02/07/ki.....-from-asi/
Disclosure: I am a Geni.com employee.
Mike - Thanks for the mention. I would invite you to spend some time on Geni. I think that you will find our feature set and growing user base is very much focused on enabling communication and collaboration among living family members.
In addition to all of the features you mentioned above (communication features, stats, family ‘newsfeed’), users have really enjoyed creating a shared digital scrapbook of their lives with our unlimited photo sharing and our new events and timeline features.
We have a number of significant enhancements and new features that we will roll out in the next few months - stay tuned!
-Noah
The Geni Team
Disclosure: I am a Kindo.com employee…
Mike, thanks for the post
I think the two most important things for us thus far have been our local approach (url’s, languages, outreach) and focussing on the living family.
Noah rightly points out that they are releasing more and more features aimed at the living family, although from the outset it did (and to some still does) seem they were aiming more at the genealogy enthusiast.
I guess that’s the point of this game - your competition keeps you on your toes, and your users should direct you in the features you build. What features work best for users and are most rewarding for people like us is still up for debate and proof…
Looking forward to the next 18 months!!
- Gareth
Kindo Coffee Maker
http://www.oneafrikan.com/
There is also a local (i.e. Vancouver-based) social network for families whose focus is on Facebook apps: http://www.kinzin.com
“I think that you will find our feature set and growing user base is very much focused on enabling communication and collaboration among living family members.”
Well, that’s a start. Any plans to enable communication with my other family members?
I would invite you to spend some time on Geni. I think that you will find our feature set and growing user base is very much focused on enabling communication and collaboration among living family members.
@Jefsp - Sadly having contacts to the right founders/angels, having worked with them, or having been high up at a prominent major digital firm, is often infinitely more important to gaining funding than having a great product or implementation; that’s not my opinion really, that is based on the evidence for all to see.
I have been trying it out and must say I love the interface. One major thing missing though is the ability to import GEDCOM files. I already have most of my family tree in this format.
@Olly:
We’ve got GEDCOM in the works, so don’t let that stop you from enjoying Kindo
Should be able to do an import soon. Will release export after that…
@Andrew:
I’ve run a digital firm and done client work for years now, and I wholeheartedly agree with you… although that doesn’t mean in any way that we’re intending to work on something we’re not proud of…