CareSquare – where parents share trusted babysitters
It has been very interesting of late, the amount of questions I get asked about who I use as a trusted nanny or babysitter is at least 4 to 5 times a week. During Chirstmas time and major events, finding a trusted caregiver for your children becomes even tougher, let alone just trying to find one for a night out. I have always felt a little uneasy going to a site where babysitters post their services as I never really know how good they are. Enter CareSquare, what excites me about CareSquare is the “real time booking” (you heard it parents, REAL TIME BOOKING), now before you disappear in disbelief, it’s true. “Caregivers display availability on their personal calendars – parents can view specific calendars, or search the entire system for availability.” What I really like is that CareSquare is providing a social based platform for families to set up profiles, rate and refer caregivers within their immediate family network within CareSquare, so search last minute is possible, as you have the ability to check availabilities real time, 24 by 7.
It also gives caregivers the chance to show a track record without having to sing their own praises, but with families rating their performance as a caregiver and singing their praises for them. I believe the caregivers will set up their profiles and availabilities longterm, as this platform could become a standard additional check on top of security checks…”are you on CareSquare?” if not something’s up. On becoming a mother, I was totally oblivious to the power of the “mothers referring ad-hoc networking” and now come to think of it, I have referred my cleaner, kindermusik, gymbaroo, montessori, Smart Start, nanny, babysitter, swimming classes countless of times and all these services where originally referred to me.
Australian based, ABC Learning Centres has a market cap of A$2.5 billion and have just acquired many US learning and childcare centres, with profit up at A$81m, becoming the world’s largest childcare centre provider this year. Imagine how many parents are asking their daycare carers, if they can do some after hours babysitting (usually at the nod of the centre co-ordinator)…I wonder then, how big is the social market for after hours babysitting or nannying, I think CareSquare has enabled parents to feel a sense of trust with referrals coming from other families they trust.
I think the concept is a good one. In terms of a looking at the model from a social networking view, I am looking to see if the concept lends itself to scaling towards massive page views and a high average length of stay on the site…building content and conversation will be challenge in building value, however, there are many solutions…maybe families could join groups to reivew products they use and companies provide free samples, which could help with advertising…there is potential. Proctor and Gamble, believe that the power of word of mouth is compelling, and is doing this same kind of incentive. The trick is with every great concept that is incorporating social networking within it’s site is the ability to create a lot of content or conversation driving continual user stickiness and dare I say it, boardline addiction. However, if explored more I do think that there is a lot to talk about and referral of caregivers amongst family may be just the start.
CareSquare is in Beta, founded in the heart and soul of Silicon Valley.
More on… CareSquare is dedicated to connecting parents and caregivers in their local communities. CareSquare was created by parents of young children who understand the personal and complex process of finding trusted babysitting and nanny care. We’re here to help families and caregivers easily contact, schedule and book childcare.
Minti – Reaches 10,000 member milestone
Minti – Powered by Parents (I am a Co-founder of), launched back in March of this year, has ticked over the 10,000 member milestone. Since launch, Minti has released groups (which is now healthily populated by Minti members and growing); the ability to claim your external blog and have these posts displayed within your personal Minti blog; a search functionality that allows each search term to display parenting results in tabs via articles, articles comments, groups and Q+A areas. This provides a breadth of information across Minti’s parent-generated content (published, conversation and answers) for one search term, for eg. sleep.
The advice-opedia component of Minti is also starting to grow with the best rated articles rising to the top within Minti, as well as articles written by parents starting to appear within Google’s database for parenting terms. It is also nice to start to see Minti members becoming popular amongst the Minti community and rising amongst the ranks in popularity for what they share.
Where to from here? Community cohesion, fostering of friendships and the continual sharing of parenting content… the vision is to become a content and social support system for all parents around the world, complementing their lives and taking part in enhancing the parenting experience.
GetVendors.com – Social network for households
GetVendors.com provides households with access to professional services to fix household problems, by entering your requirements into a form and you are provided results closest to your needs. It is great if you are in California, as they already have *15,000 referred professionals within their vendor network ready to be matched to you. Like Cingo.com (which is based on widgets and allows you to organise content, the household and family members), GetVendors.com also provides a household organiser which is great for the working mom, it provides a list of templates and the ability to set up your a list of your own. The site also provides for community groups.
Like the UK start up, Little Legends, and now GetVendors.com, we are starting to see a better yellow pages meeting the social network. I think it is a valid need for working moms to be abe to seek a vendor, view how they rate amongst the local community all online, which saves time and effort. Hopefully, one day we will be able to book a vendor online and in ‘real time’…now wouldn’t that be neat?
Little Legends – UK beta
UK start up “Little Legends“has taken the real aspect of your immediate local community to the next level. As we have seen with Mothersclick, who encourage offline playgroups to set up online as well, Little Legends encourages your street, or neighborhood to get online and connect. This also extends to finding places for kids all over the UK. What’s more this social community includes Web 2.0 search set; tags, tag clouds, bookmarking places of interest. Is this the new Yellow Pages, meet social community…? I like it, users contribute places that they suggest and provide a rating and comments. Great referal for business catering for families? Will this be an area to generate revenue? It looks like Little Legends has recorded 34,000 places in the UK for families and counting.
