KidZui is an ambitious project, launching tonight, intended not only to make the internet safe for kids (aged 3-12), but to provide a browsing experience that caters to their cognitive powers and surfaces the best juvenile content as well.
The concern for children’s safety on the net has been around for years and has usually been addressed with software that attempts to blacklist all the worst parts of the web (and pornographic websites in particular). The fundamental problem with this type of software is that no blacklist can be complete given the rate at which the web grows each day, so holes through which children can access the inappropriate content they’re supposedly protected from are bound to appear.
KidZui takes the opposite approach to these traditional solutions. Instead of blacklisting all the “bad” sites, it whitelists only the “good” ones. The application, which is essentially a custom browser built on top of Internet Explorer and Safari technology (depending on the platform), has been in development for three years. During that time, the company has hired around 200 teachers and parents from across the United States to scour the net for appropriate sites and content. So far they’ve whitelisted about 500,000 websites, as well as many videos found on YouTube. Spiders have helped to gather this content, but ultimately all of it was reviewed manually by humans.
As a result, KidZui has effectively cordoned off a safe area where parents can let their children roam free. This safe area will grow for KidZui as a whole. Each time a kid clicks on a link to an unapproved site, it will go into a moderation system and either approved or denied within an hour. The area can also grow or shrink for each KidZui user. Parents can decide to whitelist certain sites, such as Facebook, not ordinarily allowed for KidZui users. Or they can blacklist a site, such as Club Penguin, that their kids spend way too much time on it.
The KidZui browsing experience is very graphical and consists of three primary types of content: websites, photos, and videos. This content has been categorized into over 8,000 categories such as “soccer” and “whales”. Kids can search the site by keyword, and the results are determined by a “kidrank” system that keep track of how popular they are. Kids can also use the homepage as a jumping off point for browsing; it displays both popular and most visited websites.
There’s also a social networking facet to Kidzui, but it too has been designed with safety in mind. Kids can set up their own avatars (”zuis”) and make friends with other users. But all friends must be approved by parents first, and there’s no messaging between friends; they can only share rated content with each other and view each others’ points (kids garner points as they spend time on the site).
Overall, KidZui is the first offering I’ve seen that virtually guarantees kids’ safety and provides them with a portal into the best parts of the web. I have no doubt that parents will be willing to cough up $10 for the monthly subscription fee (or $5/mo, its current promotional rate).
$8 million seems like a lot of funding for this type of project, that implies the VC’s want $40-$80million back. But if they could tap into the education market this could be pretty huge
Nothing but LOVE for KidZui… KID APPROVED!!!
I think the whole white listing the good sites is pretty much standard in that niche
I think kids have no business being anywhere near the internet until they are teenagers… it’s bad enough that each kid around here has a cell phone. They need to learn how to use their MIND, these games do little but provide marketing knowledge that is used to sell them products (like commercials during weekend comics).
Jon
http://woodmarvels.com – Create Unique Memories
Love the idea. I think they need a better marketing message. In other words they need to somehow package this as 500,000 kid sites for $10 per month. If they sell it as a browser people will not buy, imo. BROWSERS ARE FREE
Jon said: “I think kids have no business being anywhere near the internet until they are teenagers…”
So they said about TV when it came around.
Then he said: “They need to learn how to use their MIND”
No, they need to use their BUTT for something other than sitting on, if you know what I mean.
As for Kidzui, yes it sounds ok for parents (I have a 2 and a 5 years old), but why should I pay for something I can already get for free w/Firefox and a free extension such as Glubble (glubble.com) or many others.
As a parent of 3 kids (7,5 and 4) I was intrigued as I read the article and was prepared to shell out $30-50 for the product. However as soon as I saw the $10/month subscription fee I balked. Even the #5/month promo fee is bad. I already use parental controls in Safari to block everything except the few sites that I white list. They have to understand they are competing with free. Whether its parents that don’t care what their kids do on the net, parents who only let their kids surf while they sit next to them or parents like me who know how to work parental controls. So $60-$120/year is ridiculously overpriced.
Jon, you may think you’re protecting your children by keeping them off the Internet but think of the disadvantage they’ll have. You’re only hurting them.
I agree, protecting kids is a double edge sword. You feel safe, but really your kids are suddenly unprepared for the real internet. The internet was not meant to be blocked. Let kids enjoy it in all of its glory.
@Erik – I hear you, but you should check the product out nonetheless (30 day free trial). The whole thing is catered towards kids in a way Safari can’t match. Quite impressive really..
I think it is a great idea, but I am not paying for a browser.
fucku
dats where the problem with marketing is!!
as Alex said, they shouldn’t promote is as a browser. It’s a service that does the whitelisting for $10 per month. (But I definitely think that is overpriced)
@Mark – Thats what has me so intrigued and if it weren’t for the subscription thing I’d be all over it. Unlike Fabian I’m not opposed to paying for a browser especially one that has these kinds of features but I can not justify a subscription for it.
they need to lower the price…to say $3/month.
Mark, isn’t http://www.glubble.com/ free already? As it’s so similar then I think it’s worth a mention. We use it for our kids and it seems ok so far.
they need to bring down their price
Wow, I just downloaded Kid zui. I’m not familiar with Glabble, but this browser does look very interesting. I will install it for my 5 and 9 year olds tonight. Can kids do their homework on this? Does it work in schools? Doesn’t sound like too much money if I can really let kids explore without worrying about them! My husband installed netnanny, but the kids find it so limiting; I love the idea of letting kids find interesting things on their own. Google, MySpace and YouTube terrify me. what a great idea.
#13 David – Yes I agreee. I also use Glubble for my kids and for the price (free) it certainly delivers. I can see some features at KidZui that Glubble doesn’t offer, but they don’t justify the price IMHO from a consumer’s perspective. What a parent wants most from these tools is “parental control”. Everything else is secondary. I’d pay for PC if that was my only option, but paying for that “secondary” stuff? I’ll give a try their 30 days free trial but I’m not so sure it’s really that worth it.
And we must not forget that no matter what software you use, that’s no excuse to stop keeping an eye on what your kids are doing online.
Hmm well, is it really necessary?
It would of been much easier and much security safer building it on Firefox, since it’s open source.
here’s the same comment i posted at gigaom – where i believe this was covered before you! so there!
…as a parent, this idea TERRIFIES me – what draconian measures will content suppressors dream up next? this is absolute nonsense, pretending that this hasn’t done before…
hello – HELLO? do you remember when AOL tried to build a wall around the internet? how did that turn out? exactly.
this is no different. and kids are clever, and they’re clever younger, and so they’ll find the sidedoor within minutes if not hours or days…
the real solution: talk to your kids, explain what various content types mean, govern usage, follow ideas that work with young children (e.g. we have a ‘no computers in bedrooms’ rule, laptop remains in plain view in living room, anybody using it – kids – know that adults walk by, or others walk by etc)
plus kids will think it’s lame, the same way they’re losing interest in club penguin…
easy bypass.
unplug the computer
rush to the library and download a portable flavor of linux onto your flash drive/floppy/burn to CD
boot up with linux
any kid can figure that out, if they can’t they prolly have the “friendly neighborhood geek”
Today Firefox have added Glubble, a parental control suite for Firefox to their recommended list of add-ons! It is 100% free without advertising & families get 100% control what kids see online, check it out!
Glubble blog post announcement
Mozilla recommended add-ons list
btw folks. kudzui is for IE, Go Firefox!!!
I second David…
Glubble is very much the same thing, but it is a Firefox extension. So, therefore, it is free, probably more secure, and cross platform. It deserves a fair look since it has been recommended by Mozilla.
http://blog.glubble.com/?p=27
http://www.pikluk.com has been around for a few months if I’m not mistaken. Looks like the same thing except their site looks more professional and they’re free.
Leo is right – also http://www.kidzcd.com is very good one – also free.
I like to use Surf Knight (http://www.surfknight.com), it is also free and you can customize pretty much anything.
What this space really needs is a wiki based solution that parents and teachers can use to collaborate together in creating the whitelist of approved material, which then can be used by all filtering programs.
& another, also free. http://kidrocket.org
The business model of individual subscriptions for this very niche market is daunting, and ultimately potentially cost prohibitive. The play for social networking on the side, is valid but must be done differently.
netTrekker, already has a proprietary whitelist of links that has been vetted over seven years and a highly desirable taxonomy — all licensed by credible partners. It already has a published user base of 11M children via school subscriptions and over 20 national awards.
KidZui faces a very steep uphill battle that even aol@school failed to climb. With a variety of other children focused search tools, some of which other bloggers noted, Maveron’s $5M in capital may be insufficient for a B:C play.
ilove to play games
KidRex.org is free and is powered by Google. I love the whole crayon effect too.
kids should allways have fun
cool