Not for profit family website receives AUD$4.4m grant from Australian Govt
Here’s the info – lets hope the Family 2.0 space can be ignited with some grant or funding our way. The only problem for Family 2.0 sites that are based in Australia that are for-profit is access to this kind of funding. I will, in the coming weeks begin to highlight the differences between RaisingChildren (non-profit) and Minti (for-profit) and why the Government of Australia should consider developing this sector not only for one non-profit website but for all of us aiming to provide a free service and support.
Raising Children gets more Govt funds
$4.4 million for parenting website
11/05/2009
The Raising Children website will be expanded to include parenting information on pre-teen and teenage years with the help of a $4.4 million Australian Government grant.
Funding will also enhance the site to target people with low literacy and numeracy levels and the Indigenous community, through the addition of new and innovative visual based and interactive information resources.
Celebrating Families Week, the Minister for Families Jenny Macklin said this funding will enable the expanded Raising Children website to be a valuable tool to help parents with the day-to-day raising of their children from birth through to their teens.
The Raising Children website already offers up-to-date, research-based material on more than 800 topics spanning child development, behaviour, health, nutrition and fitness, play and learning and sleep.
The site, which currently caters to parents of newborns to eight years, is a valuable resource for Australian mothers, fathers, grandparents and anyone else who cares for a child.
Parents have found the website to be informative, interesting, well-researched and user-friendly. The site also helps connect people through discussion forums.
A recent survey confirmed the benefits of Raising Children, with 97 per cent of users agreeing the website was useful, clear, comprehensive, credible and easily navigated.
Ninety-one per cent felt the website could make them more confident as a parent and 95 per cent would recommend the website to parents or carers.
The Raising Children website has received more than 9.5 million visits since it was launched in May 2006.
The Raising Children Network is a consortium made up of three early childhood organisations Smart Population Foundation, the Parenting Research Centre and the Centre for Community Child Health at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne.
Raising Children website: www.raisingchildren.net.au <http://www.raisingchildren.net.au>
Enter Clay Cook CEO of Minti
I am handing over my beloved blog to my husband (oh no) until I come out of my self-imposed maternity leave. Mind you I am loving my little 5 month old and the blessing I have been given for a second time. This doesn’t mean my mind isn’t turning a hundred miles per hour. Quite the contrary, I am planning a re-birth, with video or a show, new hosting, revamped design, and with me showing myself in full color (which means I need to hit the treadmill and not the chocolate bars). Until then, my capable and intelligent husband will ignite the pixels and add some flavorsome text to this already interesting project.
So grab your surfboard and come for the ride….although I can’t help but let him only be a ‘contributor’ for now, otherwise I’ll check back and the theme would have changed to something black – lol
Taking some time off
Howdy all, I haven’t blogged for a while. However, being only two weeks away from my due date, I felt I needed a break from work/blogging, so I guess I will be back to my blogging after baby number two is born (Due April 2nd)…Minti is soon to upload some pretty cool features very soon, we’ve just added youtube embedding, Greatschools.net community is now live on the vibEngine platform and Gooruze is pumping along well. A few new mommy sites have appeared, nothing that has jolted my enthusiasm (yet) but I am keeping an eye out for really important launches that impact the Family 2.0 space.
Take care and keep continuing to enjoy Web 2.0!
Maya’s Mom – mom social network has a new home
Quick news flash. Maya’s Mom was bought by Babycenter for a reported $7m. After roughly two years the site will now come under Babycenter’s ownership, the site will remain as Maya’s Mom and a smart move for Babycenter to roll out the technology across it’s network. A better means to understand and get closer to the mom customer. Out of New Baby and Mothersclick, pure mom focused social networks, Maya’s Mom was the first to be acquired.
Glubble – the browser for kids
Quick news flash, Glubble is the safe children friendly internet browser. Read the full details over at Techcrunch, Nick Gonzalez writes the perfect analysis, which I don’t need to add too much here ;0)
More info quickly on Glubble…(source, Glubble)
Glubble puts the web in the hands of families…
- Glubble Trusted Surfing for children under 12 years of age enables families to be sure they only see the best of the web they choose to allow.
- Glubble Altered Search makes Google and Yahoo show results from childrens trusted Glubbleworld instead of the world wide web.
- Child friendly look and feel with interfaces for pre-reading and reading age young children.
Doesn’t that already make you feel better. Now I think I will download, as it was one problem stopping me from teaching my little cousin (8yr old) how to do basic html coding. Now I think I will teach him and not have to worry about his dad being concerned.
Check out Glubble…
tags: family20, techcrunch, glubble, rachelcook, talkingtechfamily20, kid-friendly, browser
Mommy Club – The Canadian resource for moms
Canada has a community for moms to be proud of, MommyClub, which has been around for a while, has relaunched and built the site out into a complete resource for Canadian moms. I am starting to see great niche sites, becoming an enhanced version of the portal destination days. Now, the message is clear, we provide for everything a mom could want for being a mother. The great message is that you as a mother is now more and more, very important. This segment is ripe for providing a targeted audience world-wide or targeting this demographic locally or just by country. As Australian’s have an affinity with Canadian’s, so do mothers with their country. And why not connect with your fellow canadian moms.
Check out Canadian moms, the site provide all the features for Canadian moms to interact, share, and find resources.
It looks like MommyClub has been gettng blog coverage and press.
I think one important item to note for Family 2.0 sites, especially the ones that are direct competitors and have almost a mirror image of each others services, is how long will it be before your members discover other direct competitors? May be that is a good thing. One thing is for sure, there are a lot of mommy network offerings, which may suggest the market is big enough, and they are also positioning themselves, knowingly or otherwise for an acquisition. Here comes Kaboose, Babycenter and Cafemom???
My question is, how will these pure social networking sites just for mothers, continue to innovate? Mobile, sms or something we haven’t seen before? It may not be a need, although being the strategist I am, I can’t help thinking what cool features will these great Canadian moms want?
Tags: MommyClub, family20, minti, canadian, social networking, babycenter, kaboose, cafemom
Glam – eportal social network surpasses iVilliage
Glam.com last week became the number 1 women’s destination site on the web, taking over 800 pound gorilla, iVillage now owned by NBC Universal. Full analysis and story here at Venture Beat
More importantly, I am a 30 year old, tech glam geek gal, and I have just signed up. Having a retail background, I was very skeptical to join being suspicious of the sign up process, as well as participate in the Style Q+A questionnaire…but I did bite. The results? I was happy with the quick sign up and was very impressed with the style survey. Believe it or not, the survey did actually define my unique preferences accurately.
I also discovered that my style may not just be unique to me. Glam.com have taken the time to tell me that I belong to the LA style (i like) and that they actually have a description for my particular style based on the preferences I chose. More importantly it tells me I that I can buy the wardrobe to create my LA style on Glam.com. SOLD.
This good sign up process. The experience built trust for me by delivering what I expected (which were very high).
For women like me who are frustrated with many bad fashion buys and hard to find loves, it makes me want to be part of this community. It makes me think they are really feel and get my demographic. I think iVilliage is great but its not for Gen Y or those close to the Gen Y, “mediavores” and “techievores” like me…
Here is my style below.. wouldn’t it be great to have my style profile as a widget I can share and show off at places on the web? ***Ha, they do I just needed to click on a little text link under the style copy…would have been a good idea to make it a big icon for me to click on…???
Glam Space is their blog profile network, which is currently going through an upgrade to incorporate Video (although personally, I would not have put that message in the intro on the UI) for Glam Space member homepages I would have placed friends up higher on the right. I also believe the social component to the site needs to be more noticeable on the homepage to get members interacting more and that there is a community happening. But, hey they know what they are doing!
With 30 million in funding they have been around for 4 years. It shows what can be achieved with an injection of a lot of money, a clear strategy and strong focus on innovative advertising and revenue models.
Sorry husbands, more shopping on the web for the ladies in the family. For those moms that have put their fashion style in the washing ‘too-hard’ basket, throw away your target mom tees (me – lol) and jump in and re-start your style, get onto Glam.com for some self-esteem strokin!!!
Vibe Capital launches Refurber DIYpedia
Refurber is the latest advice-opedia social network, by Vibe Capital that launched Minti and is a place for passionate renovators and home improvement DIYers to publish their own DIY advice to the world, as well as connecting into a dynamic social peer to peer network.
Existing home improvement enthusiasts already blogging on the web can increase their readership by claiming (mirroring) their existing blog on their ‘Refurber‘ homepage, which also comes with a lounge for just your Refurber friends to post messages and stop by. As you publish more articles you gain a growing reputation within the ‘Refurber‘ community and your articles found by external DIY enthusiasts on the web are able to see how the article has rated in the community, are more likely to read the content and contact you directly…as well as being able to engage with you and their DIY peers in the ‘Refurber‘ community.
This ease of access to advice and the author of that advice may save some DIY newbies a lot of money. Who knows how far the potential for DIY collaboration could go…
I am a co-founder of Vibe Capital and founder of Minti and am happy to see that we have brought out ‘Refurber‘ which in the subsequent releases will become more customized around the passion for home improvement and be distinct from Minti which is focused on the passion of parenting. Refurber is in beta, although already receiving web search traffic from member authored DIY articles.
See Techcrunch post on Refurber.
Tags: techcrunch, refurber, minti, vibecapital, rachelcook, family20, web20, DIY, homeimprovement, DIYpedia, advice-opedia, socialnetworking
Particls – News alerts for mom and dad (LIVE in Public BETA)
The news feed made simple. Particls is now available for use. They have just come out of private beta and available for all those to try. Founder Chris Saad has done a great job of simplifying how RSS content is distributed to your desktop.
Give it a whirl it won’t disappoint. Download Particls…
Tags: ChrisSaad, particls, rss, content, richmedia, family2.0
Family 2.0 – its warming up, TheMotherHood, Newbaby, KidConfidence
What started as a hobby has morphed into a requirement that I at least look into Family 2.0 space everyday! I have many sites I am struggling to keep up with. I am getting there, and the site need to be polished, same look and feel just with more widgets, an advertising by the sites I profile on, only :0)
Latest quick updates…
Has their splash page up! Sign up for The Motherhood
I like this, it is currently seeding and displaying the latest blog posts in the ‘mother hood’…I love it, what a cool idea. Go Cooper, I am behind your creed all the way!
I know it’ll make me blog more, just to see my post on The Motherhood homepage.
Thanks to the very cool Nik Cubrilovic from Omnidrive/Techcrunch for shooting me info on Newbaby… Newbaby will be powered by Reality Digital, adding rich media to the site, enhancing the member experience with expert and member loaded videos and all the strappings of a social network. View the release here…
I like it…my little one is getting into all things digital and not matter how I try, he is exposed to digital media and he is learning pretty impressive stuff for a nearly three year old. Parents need to be in the ‘know’ of what video games are appropriate and junk food ad free. I am sure we will hear more about these guys if not here around the place….What is Kidconfidence?
“We help non-gamer parents find the right video games for their children – games that are both fun and have learning value.” Kidconfidence
Tags: themotherhood, newbaby, kidconfidence, family2.0
