Totspot - It’s A Social Network For Babies

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1. Alx Klive
   

   March 1st, 2008 at 3:28 am

   The idea of a service that lets you create a diary of your baby’s first steps, milestones, etc, and connect with other parents has value, but the challenge for all these sites is churn. Every couple of years it means marketing to a whole new set of people.

   Most people with young babies (myself included) tend to gravitate to Facebook to share pictures and videos of their newborns… cos that’s where the family/friends are.

2. dave mcclure
   

   March 1st, 2008 at 3:49 am

   absolutely viable. we have 2 kids (almost 3, just turned 1) and i can’t begin to tell you how many demands i get from grandparents to put more kid photos up on Flickr (and right now, kid shots are about 1/2 of my ~5,000 photos).

   @alx klive: churn? are you kidding? it’s naturally viral thru play groups, where the age range varies by ~3-9 months. quite easy to think that word spreads continuously from older moms to younger moms, so not so much a concern about churn as about peer-based sharing.

   seems like a very likely service for new moms, easily 3+ years of customer potential there.

3. Justin Fleming
   

   March 1st, 2008 at 3:54 am

   Sounds like a good idea but the 4yr age limit will probably kill it. First that means that you don’t want to join since you can already see a limit, second, what are you supposed to do when you reach the 4yr limit? Just say, “thanks for all that and see you” and never come back?

   Also, the previous comment is a good point - most things you want to share with “normal” people without kids who wouldn’t be on that site.

   A better idea would be to focus on making new friendships (mothers getting together to support and share), but I can see that may be a bit scary to do online.

   Maybe it if asked to somehow prove you had kids or something and then auto link you up with people with parents with same age kids in your area?
   Again, privacy/security would be an issue.

4. john
   

   March 1st, 2008 at 4:26 am

   Ok, it’s a bit ridiculous but your a fucking ass michael. you still haven’t backed up anything in your stupid fucking story about microsoft and the eu… you are a cunt

5. john
   

   March 1st, 2008 at 4:27 am

   just in case you didn’t hear me michael, you are a cunt

6. lawrence
   

   March 1st, 2008 at 4:30 am

   Every idea is good in theory

   - but the best chance of this site lasting, is if they’re able to partner up somehow…with diaper, baby food, clothing, online and offline baby-related items and stores, etc

   viral and guerilla marketing is all good, but it can only take you so far

7. Yakov
   

   March 1st, 2008 at 4:44 am

   It’s certainly on demand. We are seeing a strong uptake with our own kid-friendly search engine Quintura for Kids http://kids.quintura.com

8. danielthepoet
   

   March 1st, 2008 at 4:50 am

   No way my wife uses this. What’s the incentive? She already has her other mommy friends on MySpace. Why join another site when she’s already having a tough time scrap booking? There’s no obvious incentive for her to take the time.

9. Patrick
   

   March 1st, 2008 at 5:19 am

   I think it definitely has a place, but I’m not sure that it will be THAT big. Also, what about the privacy concerns? I have pictures of my son up on our shared webhost and my wife made me password protect the site. I’m sure they’ll have some protections in there, but who owns the data? What are their terms?

10. Steve Purcell
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 5:35 am

    Such a service has been around since late 2005; http://sproglogs.com

    Sproglogs is also built on Ruby on Rails, and has established a highly international and fanatical (if modest-sized) member base.

    Best of luck to TotSpot — there’s plenty of space in the market for services that provide any amount of convenience to parents of small children.

11. sourceroot
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 6:11 am

    I will never understand why the framework that a site is developed in has anything to do with the company. I mean its just not a descriptive attribute, why mention it??

12. Steve Purcell
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 6:21 am

    sourceroot: Citing the use of Rails has some marketing value, in that it instantly establishes Web 2.0 credibility!

    Wouldn’t have mentioned it myself if I weren’t pointing out similarities between the two services.

13. J
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 6:44 am

    I agree, mentioning Ruby on Rails is a bit lame. Is it built on Rails 2.0? Rails 1.2? LOLOL. Does it have RESTful design? OMG, it doesn’t? How many Lines of Code is it? Did using Ruby on Rails speed their development?

    Who cares?

14. antje wilsch
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 7:07 am

    I’ve seen several sites geared for capturing babies’ milestones, although the cut off age is kind of self defeating it seems.

15. Anatoly
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 7:20 am

    My prediction -
    Totspot will be acquired by Google, and released 18 months later as Google Tykes.

16. Lisa
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 7:43 am

    As the owner of a web-based kids’ party planning company, the demographic of new parents is a substantive one to look toward building this type of service around. One of the biggest things parents do during that first year is spend a lot of time planning that first birthday party!

    Often the Moms have some time off from work and once they have their routine somewhat established, they have some time to go on-line. Sharing what they are going through and how their baby is growing, etc. certainly is on their minds and may be an incentive to use Totspot. However, the concerns are: competing with other larger social netowrks that have so many of their friends using it already, with or without kids, the fact that the service ends at 4 years old, i.e. they should move it to other ages eventually for the conceninece sake of the parents, and people finding out about it in light of so many local/community social networks, like the Silicon Valley Moms, etc.

    Still, I have a friend who just had a baby and will pass it along to her. One thing: parents are a viral market and it’s amazing how quickly something can take off strictly from word-of-mouth like this.

17. Janet
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 7:46 am

    not sure about Tots with age limits, etc but I like Parentricity http://parentricity.com/letmein

    Jan

18. Michael Broukhim
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 7:53 am

    Thanks Mike for the post. Just a few quick thoughts on the discussion so far:

    1) We’re not only targeting new mothers, but new fathers as well. TotSpot is neither about mom nor dad, its about the kid. We think thats one of our differentiators viz-a-viz sites like Maya’s Mom, CafeMom, etc.

    2) “Social Network” - well, kinda.

    We’re actually thinking about this more as a social publishing tool; initially, we’ll be more about giving parents the tools to publish securely about their kids, then we hope to evolve more of the social functionality around that.

    @3 made a good point that “most things you want to share with “normal” people without kids who wouldn’t be on that site.”

    That’s why we’re going to have multiple account-types on TotSpot and ways in which family/close friends can view and contribute content (so, Max’s Uncle, can add photos of Max if you want him to).

    3) A few of you brought up issues of privacy, content ownership, etc.

    Privacy is key: Parents can limit their content to only the people they want to share with.

    We also make no bones about it, the content you upload is yours. We are big fans of the Data Portability Project and will be doing our best to incorporate standards there and elsewhere. We expect to both make it very easy to bring content into TotSpot from existing web services (Flickr, Picasa, Youtube, Vimeo, etc.), and, through an eventual API, make it very easy to take your content with you.

    -
    Please do sign-up for the beta if you have kids. We hope to keep hearing from you all (this feedback has been great). Don’t hesitate to get in touch: michael [at] totspot [dot] com.

19. MonkeyMagic698
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 8:10 am

    I really like the site however I don’t have any kids yet, if there are any Web 2.0 sites specializing in the please let me know.

20. Terra C.
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 8:29 am

    I’m not sure of the full functionality, but I think I would be all over this if my kids were younger (twins 3 years old now). As evidenced by their blog (http://www.bloggingboys.com) and the online store that I started 1.5 years ago centered around baby stuff (http://www.flyingpeas.com), I’m way into this stuff… perhaps more than your average Jane.

    So, coming from a mom who bought her kids name domains and signed them up for webmail accounts… heck yeah, I’d be into this. Just as moms want to feed their kids good foot to set them up for healthy eating habits, in some kind of twisted way, I want to make sure my kids are set up to have a successful online life – even though it will be oh-so-different by the time it matters to them. Oh my god, that sounds so lame. But it’s true.

21. Matthias Zeller
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 9:14 am

    Why not setup a Blog for your baby? That’s what I did 2 years ago (http://blog.maxzeller.com). Maybe eventually Max wants to take over his Blog and has the added bonus he owns his name domain. Also does not lock in one specific site format.

22. Anand
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 9:28 am

    Michael, it is a social network for mothers/parents…it is misleading to call it a social network for babies..

23. Veronica Alvarez
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 9:48 am

    I think it’s a great social publishing tool, and if it’s easy to use for the parents it definitely has potential.

    As the founder of http://www.FertilityTies.com an online community for men and women trying to conceive and/or going through Infertility, I can tell you that the bond established when people share similar experiences such as parenthood and trying to become parents is extremely valuable.

    Our goal is to create this bond with our users from the beginning of their Journey. We provide both medical and community support, Infertility is something that affects over 7MM people in the U.S. alone.

24. CJ
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 10:03 am

    It definitely appeals to a certain demographic only, I wonder is there a good social site that follows a family throughout their lives. Imagine a site where parents log in and create a social page for their kids at any stage. I’ve got a 4yr old son and a 1yr old daughter, but it would be cool to find other families with 2 kids the same distance in age and see what they are going through both now and coming in the future. If had any spare time I’d start a site like this but you know how that goes…

25. Bob
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 10:14 am

    I would use this. Well, “we” most likely would, meaning I think my wife would use it along with other members of her mom’s group and I would ooh and ah at all the stuff they posted when she showed it to me)

    When I read the title of the post I cringed at what I thought was sure to be a ludicrous dot-bomb idea. But based on the description, it’s actually sounds like a pretty smart concept — both from a business model perspective and for the need it might fulfill for the gagillion doting moms out there.

    My wife is part of a very active Mom’s group (one of quite a number of organically organized mom’s groups in this part of the Northeast) and I can tell you their existence completely relies on the web for their existence. I can also tell you that they are way behind-the-times in terms of using available web technology. They use a rudimentary Yahoo Groups site for all their communications and activities. If any of the moms are members of Facebook or other Web 2.0-feature-heavy sites, it’s not apparent to me.

    I’ve already been telling my wife that they need to find some better solutions for managing all their communications and event stuff. For example, there’s a great site called Renkoo that I just learned about through one of Scoble’s video interviews. It’s a major Web 2.0 upgrade to the super-shitty-but-no-other-good-options-out-there-to-day EVITE. It allows to you tag places, create networks with friends and invitees, plan events collaboratively by giving people options for times/places and having the group “negotiate” the final plan through a voting process, invite everyone to save pictures and notes after an event to a “remember” page that’s linked to the event and the place, etc. So I’m like, why don’t you start using this kind of thing for your every other day constantly changing playdates?

    But this site could actually integrate more of the total set of functionality and activities they need, and I’m sure it would be even more valuable for moms who are NOT part of a moms groups because they need that community and collaboration hugely.

    I also think the scrapbook and album thing in their service will likely do well. My wife spent LITERALLY 6-8 hours trying to upload photos to some Kodak Partner site that allowed you to “design” a baby scrapbook for the grandparents and the site would print/bind/ship it directly.

    She painstakingly pulled photos one at a time from her laptop, uploaded them to this site (3-5 minutes per each picture as the site was running super slow), arranged them on each page, entered text and design elements, picked her ordering options then paid to have shipped. We did 3 of them at @ $20/each for a total of $60, plus about 8 hours of work and frustration.

    Then when I saw the final product at my mom’s house I was really disappointed. Printed on basically stock color printer paper (thin, flimsy, not rich colors, definitely not photo paper), a cheap bendable binding with very thin canvas like mesh over cardboard, and it was bent upon arrival to boot.

    If this site could make it easy for the women to share baby and event pictures with one another as a matter of course in their regular interactions and then integrate an easy option for them to generate an album out of that whenever they wanted to send a gift, it would be a real value add.

    Also, the albums themselves would then become enduring assets to share and reuse among the groups, rather than the wasted use of 8 hours that to create a cheap one-time album that will never be seen or used even by us again, much less anyone else.

    Wow, did I really just write all that blah blah blah about a moms and babies social cuddle site? I think I’m growing a vagina…

26. Cyndy Aleo-Carreira
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 10:20 am

    The churn commenter is dead on. Here’s why: the site would only appeal to first-time parents, who would stay on possibly through the second baby. With the age cap at 4, you are essentially driving away your user-base. For anyone who already HAS an older child, why would you join just to utlitize it for the younger child?

    When you look at the 1.0 parenting sites that survived, it was because of the wider demographic that they went after that allowed the users to continue using the site long after discussions of breast vs. bottle were forgotten. CJ references a great point; BabyCenter has had forums for different age spans, multiples, etc. A lot of these companies have jumped so wholeheartedly on the “narrow focus means better services” bandwagon that they miss the point. You want parents to say “OMG, it’s great! I signed on when I was pregnant and have been there for eight years, still talking to the same great bunch of folks” rather than “Yeah, we used it for a while, but after little Bartleby turned four, it was useless so we moved on over to this other site that we love. I wish we’d just started out there.”

27. Joe Hunkins
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 10:28 am

    No. Baby Bubble Alert. Even Jeff Clavier couldn’t make this work.

28. xavierv
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 10:29 am

    This network would be good if:
    1. Baby model agencies were crawling through the network to spot babies for ad campaigns (sounds dumb but it’s a great way to make money grow for your kids’ college tuition in 20 years).
    2. There is some serious profile lock to keep intruders out of the network. Sometimes it gets scary. My wife has a video of her pregnant on Youtube that hit 7.000 views and growing. Twisted pervs are all around and Totspot sounds like a potential pedo hotspot.

29. Joe Hunkins
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 10:31 am

    Lisa wrote:
    One of the biggest things parents do during that first year is spend a lot of time planning that first birthday party!

    Lisa where in the world do you live - the Hamptons?

30. Jeremy Toeman
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 10:58 am

    There’s a huge opportunity here, I don’t know if these guys have it or not.

    One problem is they require some major changes in behaviors. My wife and I track lots of details about our son’s life, and take zillions of photos of every new smile or other item that probably bores the pants off our friends, but keeps us thoroughly engrossed. I don’t think either of us would flock to a Web site to start noting when he had his first tooth or other “diary-like” events.

    I haven’t seen the site’s “social networking” features, but this is a good potential offering, depending on how they use it. We already have our friends and other parents for playdates, and there are plenty of ways to find new ones fairly easily. That said, there’s a lot to be had in seeking out similar values, wants, needs, etc of a community - for example, looking for certain products (and getting reviews of them), as well as service providers (pediatricians, nannies, babysitters, etc). If they do this aspect very well, I think that alone could get things rolling.

    I’ve asked my wife to sign up for the beta (I already have a blog and private flickr profile for my son, so it’s really unnecessary for me, but I know I’m in the sub-1% who takes this level of effort). The other site I really like for “family” sharing of content is Multiply.com btw (although I don’t use it personally, for the same reason).

31. Grandma-to-be
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 11:00 am

    Y’all are leaving out a very important demographic - grandparents! Think for a moment I will hesitate to post pictures and milestones of the very best grandchild in the world so I can gloat over my friends that don’t have same?

    Ok, maybe I won’t be that bad. But this does seem like a way to share the adventure with friends and family.

32. Pete Skomoroch
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 11:22 am

    Baby dashboard? Its been done, with better visualizations:

    http://www.juiceanalytics.com/.....dashboard/

    vs.

    http://www.crunchbase.com/asse...../14139.jpg

    

33. DC
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 11:48 am

    You mean I can create yet another virtual identity, except as a baby! Sweet! I can connect with all my baby friends and babble over twitter. Even better, I can mashup my baby friends with my ERP.

    This is the perfect tool for ubermoms who need to share every freaking detail of their child’s otherwise boring lives pooping and spitting.

    What’s next? A soshnet for people on the witness protection program.

    This is crap.

34. Paul Mendoza Mangosteen Nation Founder
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 11:52 am

    It’s so true about social networks being for every demographic out there. I worked on a social network a couple years ago where the whole goal was to connect athletes to sponsors and now I’ve just built a new social network called Mangosteen Nation

    http://www.mangosteennation.com

    It’s a site for XanGo distributors.

    Social networks really are good tools for bringing people together for things.

35. Candice
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 12:22 pm

    In terms of distinction and defensibility, what’s going to prevent a big media site, like publishing co. Meredith’s Parents.com or even a niche network like MothersClick.com, from simply starting a baby channel (BabiesClick?) within their existing sites and leveraging their audiences?

    Sharing baby photos, sharing stories, and social networking are all part of the same thing: online community.

    It’s a good idea, no doubt. But creating a standalone site just for tots may not have enough gas in the tank to go far.

    p.s. Arrington, do you have an investment in this startup? Just curious. Not sure if you have to disclose that given last year’s story on MayasMom.

36. david
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    Just get your child’s domain name and set up a site (www.khayaknight.com).

37. antioxidants
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 7:42 pm

    I think it’s a good idea. Many expectant mothers out there, who doesn’t know about babies and parenting for that matter, are hungry for information. I’m sure that one way or another, they’ll find useful information there.

38. Mark Barry
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 7:50 pm

    I just sent an email to Michael, but I thought I’d post a comment just in case I don’t get a response…

    Bundlo - http://www.bundlo.com - (a baby website service) was launched in May 2007 and has 1400+ people using the service. I’m the only employee and the company has been (cheaply) funded by me. There are a number of competitors out there offering similar services. Just do a Google search for “baby websites” and start clicking.

    As for all the comments concerning privacy:
    Bundlo (and from what I gather from their comment, Totspot as well?) offers completely private sites by default. A child’s private information should not be shared with just anybody. Bundlo takes security seriously by allowing account holder’s to fully control who has access to their site and track their visits. No one (not even search engines) has access to a Bundlo site unless they have been invited by the account holder, which will then give them their own unique password. Of course, if the account holder chooses, they can opt to make their site public.

    For those commenting about Mommy networks:
    I won’t speak for the Totspot crew here, but this isn’t what Bundlo is about. There are tons of really good options out there for Mom’s to socially network among themselves. Maya’s Mom, Minti, CafeMom, ParentsConnect, etc. Bundlo, however, is about giving baby a private space online, for which none of those sites are really built.

    Comments on age cut-off concerns:
    Bundlo has at least one customer that use the site to keep their friends and family up-to-date with what is going on with their school-aged child. They are a military family stationed overseas, so it works well for them. There may be others, I don’t know. I only know about them because I was asked to log into their site in order to help them with some technical questions. So the cut-off is likely there, but it’s not set in stone at 2, 3 or 4 years of age.

    I’m rambling now. But if you’re interested, check out Bundlo’s site to learn more. There’s a free account as well if you want to get in there and see what it’s all about. Or if you have any specific questions, you can find my contact info there too.

    Cheers,

    Mark
    Founder, Bundlo

    http://www.bundlo.com
    http://blog.bundlo.com

39. Azam Khan
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 11:15 pm

    Google could do something like this and far better and actually have it integrated along with everything else. Or am i thinking too much like Microsoft?

40. Mack
    

    March 2nd, 2008 at 5:06 am

    Polish site http://dzieciaczek.pl has been around from about 2004 …

41. tre
    

    March 2nd, 2008 at 10:30 am

    Michael, the idea already exists: http://www.ourcutebabies.com Highly successful and profitable.

42. Zameer
    

    March 2nd, 2008 at 10:55 am

    My name is Zameer Upadhya and I am the Co-Founder and CEO of http://www.babyspot.com. We are a social networking and informational tool for new parents to connect. Totspot looks like a great site, however, we are in the same space and launched in December 2007. Our site has been live since then and was started because my co-founder, James Rivera, wanted to share pictures and videos of his son, Danny, in a safe and secure manner. Enclosed in this email below is a press release regarding our site and our company story. We hope that you can take a look at our site and we would welcome the chance to chat with you. Love your blog!!

    Presenting the Youngest Social Networking Profiles…Ever.

    Highly successful http://www.babyspot.com emerges to revolutionize the way families and parents interact with one another. Parents create profiles for their children that allow the world to watch them grow each day. The site offers blogs, videos, pictures, comment features, and parenting-based content.

    Miami, FL (PRWeb) Jan. 21, 2008 - With the birth of a child came the birth of one of the Internet’s greatest ideas. Though the Internet now offers a substantial number of social networking sites, none exist like the one created by co-founders James Rivera and Zameer Upadhya.

    Shortly after welcoming their first child Danny into the world, James and Monica Rivera became bombarded with requests for news, pictures and videos of their little bundle of joy. Seeking to quell the mob that demanded to see the new family member, the fresh-faced parents logged onto the Internet and started posting pictures here and there and sending scattered emails that were sometimes filtered out by Spam-screeners. Frustrated by their need to act as technical support for the newborn’s various online profiles and photo sites, the parents turned to long-time friend Zameer who, as it turns out, was experiencing equal chagrin at how challenging it had become to try and receive news about his distant baby-cousins. Together, they hatched a plan to create an entirely new breed of social networking site that would forever change the lives of parents the world over.

    They created Babyspot.com, a site that allows users—specifically parents—to create profiles that give them the ability to post news and pictures of their children for fellow parents and family members to see. The prevailing sentiment is that not everyone can completely appreciate the sublime joy of becoming a parent, but Babyspot.com brings together the people who do.

    Delving into the site, users can see the site offers as many (if not more) features as most social profile sites. With the ability to write biographies and blogs, and update pictures and videos, parents can create an immersing baby-centric experience for the viewing pleasure of their families and friends. The simplicity of the site eliminates the need for tired newborn parents to spend what little energy they have left bouncing from site to site and writing countless emails to relatives, over and over. The site is very user-friendly, and has thus far been incredibly successful at keeping families in touch and creating friendships between parents living cities and countries apart. The creators of the site even understood that not all parents want the world to see their children, so they added an option that allows you to block your child’s profile from anyone who was not personally invited to view it.

    Just like watching their own child learn and become successful, the Riveras will be able to guide their website to a healthy future adulthood. With the recent explosion in popularity of networking sites, one thing is for certain: it’s worth keeping an eye on Babyspot.com to see what it’ll be when it grows up.

43. Ray Hernandez
    

    March 2nd, 2008 at 5:44 pm

    Since we’re all throwing in our sites to prove that this isn’t a new idea, I guess I’ll throw mine into the mix as well.

    MyBabyOurBaby.com launched on valentines day of 2008, and seems that me and my co-founder Beau Lebens were on the same page as TotSpot. Since both MyBabyOurBaby and TotSpot seem to be identical in focus. We also take the same approach of a some-what social network around a child, but don’t really feel that’s what it’s purpose is. A network of memories really. Where family and friends can contribute their photos and stories, and a parent can discover memories they didn’t know existed.

    I don’t want to go into detail what our sites all about, but really wanted to comment back to a few of the comments above. I can somewhat agree with the people that say there is only about a 4 year lifespan of a member on these types of sites, but what’s wrong with that? I feel like that’s the part of my life that I don’t remember, and I wish there was some kind of documentation I could look back on in my own life. I don’t think it should be someone’s goal as a company to trap you into something for life, but for you to really help someone in the time that they are a member. I mean if you’re a busy parent that wants to have a little scrapbook, but really can’t find the time. Maybe grandma or aunt jenny do have the time. You invite them and they can upload photos and write stories, which I see is a big stress reliever. You’re saving memories and that’s really the point of any of these sites. They only happen once.

    Anyway I hope you guys check out MyBabyOurBaby.com and let me know what you think.

    http://www.mybabyourbaby.com

44. Jay
    

    March 2nd, 2008 at 9:07 pm

    Don’t you happen to know the founders of this quite well…

    And you mocked pay per post…

45. Rony
    

    March 2nd, 2008 at 11:19 pm

    parentcenter.com has all the info that a new mom needs. understood everyone is trying to cash in on social networking but the motivation of $ is not going to pay off. New moms have too much to deal with than to have time to post photos and have tons of info from coworkers, moms , parentcenter etc. Find something else to do.

46. Justin
    

    March 3rd, 2008 at 10:46 am

    Couldn’t this just be a facebook application?

47. Gianni D
    

    March 3rd, 2008 at 1:17 pm

    Could you imagine the mom connected ad network they can build from this… niche market social sites = niche market advertising. Target all new mothers. HUGE

48. Ming Yeow
    

    March 4th, 2008 at 11:38 am

    great idea! unlike what most people in this forum think, most mums are pretty much tech idiots who want to make sure of a very very simple way to keep track of their baby’s growth. Idiot-proof pointers, steps, tips to do so will be a big hit with them