Essential Baby A$4m – Web 1.0 acquired by Fairfax Digital
Well its a good day for Family 2.0 sites. Australian Web 1.0 company (hence it’s temperamental in Firefox) Essential Baby was offically acquired today by Fairfax Digital (Australia) for a rumored A$4m (however no official announcement from Fairfax, but The Age does). Essential Baby had organically grown over the years since 1999, hitting nearly 100,000 members today. Other acquisitions in the Web 1.0 market has been Baby-to-bee for US$40m and BabyZone for US$22m by Kaboose Network , as well as this lastest acquisition has given Web 2.0 family sites a boost.
Family 2.0 sites are appearing everyday with leading edge technology and Web 1.0 family sites have the longevity and organic growth. I never thought this blog would go very far, but now I am getting so many family 2.0 sites to review, I am giving myself another job!
As many of the old world sites realizing the value to upgrade to Web 2.0 or rather Family 2.0 in this instance, the popularity of Family 2.0 will no doubt grow, as these leading edge sites have the knowledge and IP in the latest social media. When I first started to popularize Family 2.0, the term was unknown, now Yahoo! has conducted research into this space with research firm OMD , CNET has talked about Family 2.0, and eMarketer (for which all those formentioned this blog was a source); there is a lot of activity with sites launching everyday as we can see the need to bring technology to parents or moms/mums and learn a lot more about them and their social needs. I do have a desire to one day to set a foundation or charity to help mothers online that face huge challenges each day…
Minti launched as the first Family 2.0 site so it made sense to find more to talk about. (I am a co-founder of Minti), and is quick on Essential Baby’s heals in members upon launching on the 8th of March last year. Minti’s focus is the global stage, however recent stats by Hitwise has noted a rapid increase in Minti’s market share in the Australia Online market (it has to do with our current marketing efforts bringing in a nice healthly demographics of Aussie members until our focus shifts to even members from different countries)…
“Dubbed as the “Myspace-for-parents”, Minti has had steady growth since its launch in March 2006 and in December more than doubled its market share from 2.2% to 4.5% between weeks ending 2 December 2006 and 16 December 2006. Minti ranked at #14 amongst local websites in Lifestyle – Family for the week ending 13 January 2007.”
“Essential Baby, recently acquired by Fairfax, was the leading website in the Hitwise Lifestyle – Family category, with 7.13% share week ending 13 January 2007. The nearest Australian competitor was The Bub Hub ranked #4 with 3.53% share.” Hitwise
What is promising is that Essential Baby has a lot of potential to compete with more of the Mom Social Sites. I see Minti becoming a provider of content of parent generated featured advice to these sites wishing to focus on their core business, who knows, I am just trying to see what this space will look like down the track. I do know that Essential Baby is a very indepth portal and destination site (as well as having a retail shop) for mothers to connect, almost like a Clubmom, who have recently launched their own Family 2.0 site, Cafemom. Maybe Fairfax needs to check out Mumspace in Sydney.
Both MomJunction and Minti have raised capital…I think this latest acquisition is opening a gateway into the lucrative Mom/Mum market (in US is a trillion dollar industry)
What makes Minti slightly different?
Minti is a global social networking site, aiming to be a voice for all parents regardless of country and facilitate knowledge sharing on parenting, but it’s main feature is allowing any parent to publish their own advice…Minti is part social search, part wiki, part community…with members from US, Canada, UK and Australia making up it’s bulk…Minti was a top 5 finalist alongside Essential Baby in the NetGuide’s Web Awards.
Well done the the Essential Baby team all those years of hard work has paid off!!!
efamily – everything family matters
efamily allows contributors can add links to content that parents will find interesting to read about, the same concept that Digg allows contributors to seed or add news content in areas such as Technology, Science, World&Business, Sports, Entertainment and Gaming. However, efamily is a niche site that only provides content related to the family. Netscape provides something similar on their “Family News Channel“, although it seems with efamily you can seed articles that don’t necessarily need to be news content, article information is also allowed. Contributors can rate and content that is popular rises to the top. efamily provides many family related categories from which you can add content to. I think this will be a great parenting resource as content builds and the community grows.
More Mom social sites into mix
All these sits below offer blogs and social networking. MomJunction has just raised $1.5m to fuel their site, CafeMom is a spin off from web 1 vetern ClubMom, Cincymoms is a local area based social network and owned by The Enquirer and Mumspace is a Sydney based startup with an impending launch. These four sites join the pure “mom” targeted social networking group of sites that include, Maya’s Mom, Newbaby and Mothersclick and OpMom Phew! It is getting busy for mommy eyeballs or maybe my eyeballs (I must get sleep). Mothers will benefit, but will mothers play nice with one another? I am sure for one thing moms will find it easier to make friends regardless of state boundary or country, opening up a whole new world of chatter…lol
Region Based
(Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky)
(Sydney)
Scouta – recommending audio and video for you
(Web 2.0 related to family)
I just got a tip that Scouta (pronounced, SCOWTA) – a stealth mode start up has it’s splash page up. Why all the secrecy? Well, I’ve used my special invite and just logged in to have a play. It’s a very funky design, but most importantly I personally think it’s really cool, awesome idea. Something I haven’t seen on the web at all and I am constantly dreaming of finding something to play with that’s unique and just recently or about to launch. I will say, I am mates with the co-founders, but I am blown away. Families share videos on YouTube and scrounge around the Internet looking for great podcasts, generally finding either by referral from a friend, or something they have read on a site during their web travels…how cool would it be if the latest family trends and videos are all reccommended to you based on you typing in what your interests are and voila, Scouta feeds you what you may like. Type in Family and I watched a really funny video on “YouTube – family survival kit”…
“it’s also not just typing…..if you rate or add an item, it takes that into account and recommends similar audio or video…call it enhanced word-of-mouth, we help people help each other find great content“, Co-founder, Richard Giles, Scouta
What Scouta does is let members recommend and link to videos and audio podcasts and Scouta organizes what content to present to you based on what you like. Love it.
Get your daily podcast news before work, and get other recommendations from other members of similar content…more of a unique way to listen to top quality content without having to leave Scouta and spend hours searching. Scouta, increases the hit rate that you will listen and watch web content that you will really like and connect with.
Now that’s saving time.
More on Scouta later…sign up now at their splash page..
More on Scouta..read their blog.
Mamasa – Mobile social network targets mommies
According the blog “Japan’s Cellphone Edge” (which is a great read), Mamasa will launch in Japan, as a “mobile social network” for young moms. The market for mobile social networking in Japan is phenomenal with Mixi doing a myspace but on a mobile phone apparently getting 100 million page views in one day. The future of Web 3.0 is closer than we think. Obviously, it seems we can socialize using tiny devices and get fast juicy broadband… Japan is on the ball and all this socializing on the phone, seems to be all on tap.
I wonder how intergrated the phone devices are with the social platforms interacting with it. It seems Japan has been concentrating on developing solid telecommunications infrastucture to take the use of the mobile phone to the next level.
I don’t have a link to the acutal site, however, from “Japan’s Cellphone Edge” it states…
Mobile social networking market in Japan is undergoing further segmentation in pursuit of marketing opportunities. The latest example is the launch of Mamasa mobile website that identifies young mothers as its main audience. Mamasa’s founders – Kimuratan and Xavel.com – hope build a solid user base by encouraging members to share information regarding pregnancy, child rising, fashion and other questions through mobile blogging.
I think moms in Japan will find it helpful that they can stay in touch with other moms, over the most utilize piece of equipment in any funky handbag…and women love being on the phone!!!!
Minti’s parent adds to family
Minti’s parent company Vibe Capital (that I am a Co-founder of), has recently acquired a strategic stake in their technology partner, Market United (also a successful digital marketing agency), innovative wizards in open source software applications and their first Web 2.0 project delivery. It was a pleasure pioneering a Web 2.0 Company, however the Co-founder’s of Minti/Vibe would not have been able to bring their intellectual property and vision alive if it hadn’t been for a technology partner that could execute with precision, innovation and creativity.
What’s great is that myself, my business partner and hubby have been providing web-services to the US market for the last ten years, with our other Co-founder Matt extensive M&A experience in Europe in Telecommunications…and Market United already had successful US deployment experience, which makes for a complete fit. If you see that the fundamentals are right, it’s a good step to explore and take a look at. Some Family 2.0 sites may encounter this down the track, to make a decision to get a tighter and closer knit team and having a technology partner gives you the results without the hassles of management of technical processes and an expanding wages salary to content with. (ie. keeping a lid on your cash burn rate vs time to market)
This is the second round raising of angel capital and the first shareholder debt facility to funding future capital requirements of Vibe Capital eager to venture into other verticals and markets.
Vibe Capital is very pleased with Minti’s growth and search traffic, with the supporting vibeEngine the cornerstone of Minti and upcoming verticals and licence partners. I can hint that we may have two site’s due for launch soon on the horizon.
View the press release here… Vibe Capital, Owner of Minti, Completes a Further $1.2m in Funding and Acquires Strategic Shareholding in Technology Partner
Zooof – The Family Network
Zooof (with three 000’s) is an international site in many languages, currently in beta catering for families wanting to develop their family genealogy and social network. MyHeritage is also another genealogy site, however is more focused on search genealogy and which I profiled back in June, and had some great facial recognition software tool to attract users to the site. Zooof, also is aiming to ‘united’ the world with Zooof members taking pictures of themselves with Zooof flags in countries all over the world, neat.
Zooof provides…
- Choose from 35 languages
- Build a contemporary interactive family tree
- Invite family members to a private environment
- Write your biography and immortalize your family history
- Discover the ZOOOF Family levels
- Chat, mail and share!
Amiglia is also another genealogy site I have profiled… that encourages families to document and capture the family history, dynamically representing the family tree in a unique animation, video and photo albums. I am looking forward to Zooof and what it offers, and how they will be able to manage the visual presenation of family trees and generation of these families. I can tell you now, my ancestory would be enough to exhaust any budding family historian. I would have to search the O’Brien’s, MacFergus’, Adarne’s and Antasuda’s (Irish, Scotish, Spanish, Filipino) and apparently my grandmother was the illegimate daughter of a Prince of Scotland (the mystery deepens – lol)…anyway sounds like a any more reason to start and get that school project ready for when your son or daughter asks, “I want to know about my ancestory?”
Parentography – it’s about time!
I had to chuckle, it seems Mashable is getting clucky or is that mashy – lol…
…apparently, there are these little human beings called “kids”. Lots of people have them, and those people like to team up from time to time and devise strategies for keeping them under control. As a result, we’ve seen dozens of parenting social networks appear on the scene…
Parentography is the lastest to be launching on the horizon and it’s a dream dome true for any parent trying to find “kid friendly” places, services and vacation spots. I profiled LittleLegends who are in Beta aiming to provide a similar service for the UK.
Mashabe explains it perfectly…“Parentography aims to solve those problems, providing profile pages, a network of friends and the ability to find and write reviews on kid-friendly services, restaurants, parks and playgrounds, lodgings, activities and major attractions.”
I really hope this site will be available for all parents from all over the world, not just parents in the US. I really believe that with social software and tagging, it is so easy to geo-tag and open up the offering to any parent regardless of where they live, and allow the software to group by geography. All parents have the same need and desire to find “kid-friendly” places. It is almost an obsession and most definitely is a big consideration in the services and places parents chose to use or frequent. I even have personally boycotted places I used to frequent before I became a mother (I am sure I spent loads at this one particular place over the years, it had become a second office) and now I go to a competitor on the other side of the road for dinner, because the owner understands “kid-friendly” having four kids himself. It’s so less stressful now for an early dinner out with the hubby and a two year old in tow.
I wonder if the service will be free with advertising on the site or parents paying for a subscription? I would think the former would be most attractive in my opinion as “kid-friendly” providers would find it very appealing to advertise on Parentography, given the concept. If they can provide this globally with the ability to be local, I think this will work on a large scale…eg. a million members. The content in time would then be valuable for use on other devices other than the internet to access. Imagine, accessing your account from your phone, downloading all your “kid-friendly” providers onto your car’s GPS system and then being able to select where you wanted to take the kids for the afternoon whilst on the road, rather than having to do so before you leave the house…my ultimate dream.
Currently you can sign up on their splash page to be notified of their impending launch due winter 2007 (summer 2007 for Southern Hemisphere).
Famundo – Organizing the family
I am fresh back from holidays and have a whole lot to organise before school goes back…It’s great news that Famundo have released their family platform and has also provided Famundo for FREE for organizations. Currently you have the option of trialing the family version of Famundo with a simple demo or a 60 day trial version…but what is Famundo?
“Family life has become increasingly unmanageable with parents juggling multiple schedules for school, work, sports and social activities. Until now, there hasn’t been a single solution that is tailored to specifically meet all the needs of today’s on-the-go families.”
Not anymore, Famundo is here…
Managing the logistics of family life and family members schedules is manic, with the mom usually at the centre of wirlwind. I have seen some pretty elaborate and colorful schedule charts that are both confusing and time consuming to maintain. What I like about this offering is that the mom can set up all the family members, each with their own set of areas for keeping addresses and contact information of their friends, store files, manage their calendar and events, list of to dos and so on (entire features, here). I do like the fact that it is very customized and specific to the behavior of the family in maintaining all the “logistics” that goes into managing and running a family. I found with Cingo, I only used the “to do” area, grocery and recipe list.
With Famundo I can see myself managing all aspects of the family not just from my viewpoint but from each family members lives and what relates to them. That is very useful.
I wonder if Famundo will consider, maybe not entire calendar syncing, but maybe the appointments or events in calendar can be sent to Outlook and updated individually, as you wouldn’t want to sync everything…
Give the 60 day trial a run and let me know what you think?
