Imbee – social site for 8 to 14 year olds
Imbee has not launched yet, however they have a splash page up which you can sign in to get notified of the impending launch. However, imbee have been getting out there and getting press on the idea, and why not… the founder is serial entrepreneur, Jeanette Symons who has funded imbee with a cool US$6m of her own money.
It was conceived out of her need for a private place on online for her 8 year old son to have a blog and share it with his friends. Ultimately getting in on Myspace type niche offerings, imbee caters for the market where parents are still very much in control of the content pre-teens access on the web.
In my situation, my son is nearly two and his is already on the computer, learning his ABC's at Fisher Price's online toddler games area…so thank goodness someone is thinking about this…I have 6 years before I need to worry about him trying to work out how to hack the system 
But seriously, I am wondering how imbee enables true parent moderation, as well as prevention from nasty, real boogie monsters… I can only say at the moment…stay tuned.
Update: Thanks Tim from Industrious Kid for his note below…
Imbee.com was specifically designed for kids in mind with features that include rigours user authentication / verification; user generated content privacy; parental dash board offering the ability to monitor activity or to set age appropriate parameters and much more.
Our members only network with their real friends, and all friend connections must be pre-approved by a parent before the connection is completed.
About imbee from the site…
imbee.com is a new unique blogging and social networking site developed specifically for kids ages 8 to 14.
imbee.com is the new blogging and social networking site for kids!
View press on imbee…
Teaching Kids to drive the Net
By Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Update 2 on Imbee!
Raising Children Network – LIVE
*This is Family 2.0 related.
Raising Children Network is live. Check it out… here
Have fun finding out how us Aussie’s bring up our little tackers (eating vegimite on toast and singing Waltzin Matlida) hehe… no we aren’t all like the crocodile hunter, just Queenslanders (hehe – I’ll be hearing from you all now)…don’t worry I am a West Aussie, and the biggest response I get from some on the East Coast of Australia is…that sleepy town, isn’t it the most isolated city in the world???
Can you tell us Aussie’s pay out a lot on each other!!!
Anyway, I’ve had some fun…really Raising Children Network is a Federal Government and Non-profit backed initiative. Well done! PS. Check out the Baby Karaoke on the site…
Our Story – Our timeline puts it all together
Capture your life's story and the story of your family members. This is a great idea and the first I've seen in attempting to offer timelines for photos and video. OurStory is based on a Freemium model (part free part pay offerings). For the basic subscription that's free, you are able to set up your own timeline with a default set of features. Upgrade and pay; If you want to set up multiple profiles of other family members and timelines. Fantastic for capturing memories from your living histories from your grandpa or grandma.
I did road test the free subscription, and creating a point in the timeline was a little difficult, I didn't realise after the first timeline post, you can add story comments and keep doing so, I was wondering when I could see the timeline. Anyway, I figured it out and after a few posts I got the hang of it.
What's more you can capture your timeline and publish this into a hard copy book or DVD. How cool…
My wishlist would be to implement ajax into the form you use to create your post for the timeline and have the post and comments on one page. So it's one page for one post on the timeline. That would be heaven for time scare people like me and I could add a lot more info at a faster rate.
Another on my wishlist is the ability to be able to upload all my photos (2000 digital + stacks awaiting to be scanned) and be able to categorize them into events like wedding, trip down south, first born etc and then create stories from those categories. It would be a plus within these categories if you could also scroll through a thumbnail slideshow view and rename and place the photos in the right order. That way it's easier to remember the whole story instead of searching your computer folders which may be categorized but are organized within the category in the wrong order (due to uploading from the digital camera and renaming them, which is very common).Then you can click to create a story from your categorized photo library and away you go! What a dream…
Great start OurStory especially for being in Beta and for offering something unique.
Other blogs say…click here
Click on Comments below to hear more from The Founder of OurStory, Andy Halliday
Zamily
Another social site for families to set up family tree's, share calendars, develop connections in your network and friends. One thing I did find that I wasn't able to do was create my immediate and extended family as admin. I found that you have to 'invite' family members. Great for family members that know what do to, but for my extended family, the older family members may not sign up and the creation of our family tree is delayed upon waiting for the rest of the family to sign up.
I did like the ease of navigation within my account, however I haven't set up my tree to see what that looks like…
Hopefully, Zamily has plans to change this…?
Is Zamily bringing out some other features soon?
Stay tuned.
Families.com – internet’s community of friends and family
Families.com is a family resource site, which I am quite happy with. I find it better than trying to get info at iVilliage. It seems to cater for information orientated users. The site also allows for the ability to rate and comment on content writen by Families.com bloggers, similar model to Club Mom. Speaking of which Club Mom has a lot of advertising space it needs to fill and for those that don't like all the ads, Families.com is a place for you. Where as Minti, focuses on the niche of Parenting, Families covers all topics related to the subject of Families. Things like; food and culture, finance, health, fitness, insurance, safety and real estate.
The site also provides, forums, photos and personal or family journals.
Famoodle – Your entire family in one place
Famoodle is another player in the arena with Got Kids Network. It has LinkedIn, degrees away feature, but from your family not just you…there are classifieds, forums, news search. Famoodle has also provided a place for families to blog, organize via calendars and upload photos.
One thing I did like is (not necessarily the design of the homepage), but I liked the design within your account. Nice image buttons showing each feature available in your account. Really easy to work out how to get started for net noobie families.
I wonder about the name? Is there enough …ooodles out there, apparently not.
I wonder which site families will choose, Got Kids Network or Famoodle?
Got Kids Network – where parents share
Meet a Linkedin and Meetup combo for Families. This new network for families has the baseline set of community features that are demanded of by the new web; organize with a calendar, upload and share photos, and family networking. The interesting feature of this Family 2.0 site is that it incorporates 'degrees away' from your contacts like LinkedIn, you can list events in your local area like Meetup. The site also provides for classifieds, a service to find babysitters and nannies as well as messaging between members, bulletin boards and forums.
It appears the Got Kids Network is finding a niche in the business-end of family management. A real plus as life gets busier and busier, especially it if becomes a global offering with a local meaning.
With all these sites coming online it will be a wonder to me how money will be made, aha, enter the advertisers like Nestle, Kellogs, Johnson and Johnson…then it will be a matter of communicating a 'unqiue point of differentiation' for users…
It's also very interesting how this space is quitely growing amongst all the Web 2.0 hype with the likes of Club Mom and now iVilliage taking note…I wonder if they will go down the track of the likes of Fox Interactive, Yahoo and Google in snapping up these fast and furious Family 2.0 applications. Hello AOL are you listening?
One in a few Family 2.0 sites will have the 'chocolate sauce' but some may win with customers and it may not necessarily have to have all the 'Web 2.0' or 'Next Web' bells and whistles, but become a force to take notice of because these sites are endorsed by their powerful users and in the end powerful consumers.
Example of LinkedIn profile: Rachel Cook
Family Routes – Life is meant to be shared
Family Routes is site for families to set up their area to keep in touch. It’s like a family bog, with extra features. Family members can contribute to the one journal, you can have sections to discuss different topics like children, pets, holidays and send ecards, share photos and post quizzes on your site.
Your family page is made public, I am not to sure how much is public, I have signed up, however the site is in Beta and I don’t think it liked my Firefox browser. I would assume though, that as a member you can choose what you want to keep private and what you don’t mind being public?
I’ve likened this concept to an interactive web page that has a group of members assigned to it to keep it alive and meaningful. Neat!
If any of the Founders are out there and read this post, I would love to understand the meaning of ‘routes’, in the context of what this means to families?
This is the description from the site…
Family Routes is an online community for families. We offer free, unlimited blogging and photo sharing to help you share life’s moments with people you love.
Minti – powered by funds and a great podcast
Our CFO and fellow Co-founder, Matt (who has an impressive global M&A background) gives the boys at 2web Crew a bit of a taste of how to raise funds for a new start up, say like Minti. I know you will all say I am biased, but this would have to be one of the best podcast interviews I have heard, bar Richard Giles' Gadget Show ofcourse.
Intro…
Martin Wells and Richard Giles talk with Matthew Macfarlane the Chief Financial Officer at Vibe Capital Pty Ltd and Minti, a parent to parent advice-opedia. Minti launched recently, after acquiring some local Aussie funding, and is a great resource for parents using some web 2.0 concepts to assist in creating a helpful community.
We discuss Minti, Matthew’s previous ventures, launching Minti, and other topical issues like: is it a good time to start a web 2.0 business, how to determine growth projections, and the potential business models outside of Google Adsense.
Listen to the podcast, Matthew Macfarlane from Minti with a lovely cup of tea. Even the founder from Plenty of Fish had time for it
Mothers Click – new mom community (to be launched)
Another 'to be launched' mom community site. However, they may have a twist to just being a social community site for mothers. The twist may be providing parenting resources to mothers in an innovative way.
I wonder who launches first, Maya's Mom, New Baby or Mothers Click?
