Wee Web, a social sharing site for parents of newborns and small children, has merged with the Freshman Fund, a college savings gift registry. The integration of the sites lets parents create a single destination for families to both see updates on children and facilitate donations towards children’s education savings.
Created by the founders of online event planner Meetup, Wee Web lets parents create a central social networking site for their babies and children where they can upload photos, videos and Twitter-like updates and then restrict the site to be viewed only by friends and family. The site can be accessed by invitation and family and friends can receive update alerts on additions to the child’s page.
Freshman Fund is like a wedding gift registry for college savings. The free service lets friends and family make donations to a child’s college education fund that is transferred directly to a tax-free college savings plan that the recipient chooses.
The integration of the two sites is a pretty interesting idea, especially given that college tuition is a hefty expense for most parents. Wee Web estimates that private tuition for a private college can run upwards of $300,000. The ability for parents to solicit donations from the time a child is born until he or she is ready for college could be a very useful tool, especially in light of the current economy. There no shortage of competitor in the baby social network sites space, including BabySpot, KidMondo, and TotSpot which we reviewed here.
love this site. my husband and i use it to update friends and family with our private baby photos. the site has cool features, like poking you if family would like to see more photos. it also notifies your family and friends when you’ve uploaded new photos. great site!!
Disclaimer, I make a ton of errors in my comments on TechCrunch. This is for the author of the post, that’s all:
“There no shortage of competitor”
I’m not going to make any comments on the good or bad aspects of this particular idea, at least it’s a good cause. But isn’t about time that TechCrunch started a new blog called TechCrunched? Each post could cover all the startups launched and covered on TechCrunch and perhaps Mashable exactly one year ago and report on “where they are now” with a post-mortem analysis for the ones that didn’t make it and a report card for those that did.
I’d also like to know the marketing analysis done by these companies that prompt them to take the plunge in what seems to be (at least to me) a fairly unusual direction to take for a startup such as Wee Web.
Wee-Web is fun! This is my first time to see that site.
This is a great mashup of a Facebook kid/parenting app and a college savings site. I’d like to see an option, however, for saving for a child’s small business. In Canada, the RESP is great for those going to university, but what about the prime engine of the economy: small business?
I thought my parents friends would appreciate this.
Anything that will help parents with their child’s educational expenses is great! I hope parents will check it out.
I checked this site a while ago and all i can say is the webmaker of this site is really great!