Glubble, social network for families, is launching several new features to improve photo sharing within its social network for families. Formerly a Firefox plug-in that let parents control what websites kids could visit online, Glubble evolved into a social network that resembles a FriendFeed but for families. Glubble has also raised $1 million in Series B funding from European investors, bringing the site’s total funding to $4 million.
Glubble lets families set up a private family home page where they can leave messages on the message wall, create online photo albums and organize their familyʼs schedule using the family events feature to post appointment, birthdays, holidays and reminders.
Glubble has always let users post photos to their families’ site, but the network has launched a useful tool called the “Family Timeline,” which provides visual navigation of family photos, events and messages through a timeline. Glubble has also created a new Toolbar interface (a Firefox plug-in) which provides families real- time message and events updates from the Family Page.
Currently, Glubble has 300,000 “family pages,” on it’s site and is still small. Glubble plans to make money from a freemium model, which will let families pay $39.95 for more storage space for photos.
Glubble’s interface and photo sharing features are easy to use but there are a plethora of social networks for families and it may be tough to differentiate itself in such a crowded space. Competitors include Cozi, Geni, and MyFamily.com.
4 million… not bad for a Firefox addon.
I wonder how much Adblock is worth?
Don’t you think that all these stuff couldn’t be done on Facebook by parameting a group like ‘family’ and even more like ‘brothers & sisters’ for private photos and ‘All_family’.
Nowadays, people are trying to develop new social network where I think, the huge network already exist (FB) All it need is good application and this is precisly where we have to work on in order to provide new services and functionnalities.
(sorry for all grammatical errors, I’m french and well, I have to improve my english)
Destroying competition and setting up a monopoly, is that what you really want? What if Facebook does some more stupid crap that people don’t like, and some people want to leave for another social website?
Once some companies get too powerful, they do things that can do things that break their trust with their users/customers. Besides, Glubble is aimed more towards a family while Facebook is aimed towards everybody instead of being a niche.
All I want is for someone to solve the following problem: It’s Thanksgiving dinner. There are 5 cameras at the table. Many pictures are taken. Everyone goes home and downloads it onto their individual computers. Give me read only access to all of these pictures, without having to take it out of the place where I (or anyone else) know how to manage them (aka Picasa, Windows Photo Gallery, etc)
@aronchick how about Geni.com?
I’m sorry but that has to be the worst company name I’ve ever heard.
The logo looks like Russian “Matreshka” doll, LOL…
You can do this with Windows Live groups…
http://groups.live.com
How? I don’t see any timeline functionality there…
If you have small children and would like them to use a computer and access the internet, Glubble is very interesting. For all of the openness of social networks, this is one family network that I want to keep as a walled garden. Glubble creates that environment.
It might sound like a me-too feature, but in the context of Glubble, it matters.
I agree with Alex! Don’t reinvent the wheel. This is what FB already does well.
“Glubble”? “Glubble”!?!
Sounds like some super-annoying kid-show character which watching 5 minutes of leaves kids bewildered and parents ready to find the nearest Glubble plushy doll and have it drawn and quartered.
I’m using Glubble with my family, but I think the timeline while a useful feature should not replace photo albums. Its annoying that one cannot simply flip through photos (though the slideshow allows this somewhat awkwardly).
I am hoping for a pseudo-eventual integration with Facebook…that way I don’t have to maintain two social lives but can selectively import from Facebook into Glubble (and receive Glubble notifications in Facebook).
Famipix.com has had this walled-garden model in place since 2005.
I added your blog to bookmarks. And i’ll read your articles more often!