

FamilyLeaf (YC W12), The Social Network For You And Your Kin, Adds 4 Advisors - wesleyzhao
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/07/familyleaf-the-yc-backed-social-network-for-you-and-your-kin-adds-4-advisors-and-a-snapchat-like-feature-for-sharing/

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typicalrunt
I would like it more if this were not a free service. By making it a free
service, that means we (the users) are the product being sold. I'm guessing
people moved away from Facebook because of the constant encroaching of user
privacy so that Facebook can monetize each user.

Instead of making it free, if each family member paid $10/year for a
FamilyLeaf account, that would (hopefully) allow the company to put forward a
policy where users never need to worry about their privacy being violated for
the sake of money _.

_ I'm not saying that FamilyLeaf is doing this, but the need to monetize a
free service drives companies to do strange things.

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wesleyzhao
Thanks for giving us a shot! We definitely are not going to sell out our users
and have other plans to monetize and move the company forward. We plan on
providing value-added services for families such as helping families plan
vacations, buy gifts for each other, order cards/pictures, etc. We've already
been doing a few experiments with some of our families and things are going
well!

In addition to that, we'll never charge any of our current users for what we
are already offering them though in the future we may have additional features
or plans that could be subscription based.

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acgourley
I think you should call that out on your site with a "Is it actually free?" or
"How do we make money?" section.

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ajaymehta
Thanks for the suggestion. We do have an answer on our FAQ page:
<https://familyleaf.com/faq> but it might be a little too hidden.

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freehunter
Just an FYI, your layout seems broken [1] on the FAQ page. I'm on Windows XP,
Firefox 14.0.1.

[1] <http://i.imgur.com/4gGz2.png>

\--edit: I just tested it on Firefox 17 and I'm seeing the same thing.

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ajaymehta
Uh oh - thanks for the bug report. Looks like it works in Chrome and Safari
but not Firefox. Will get on that soon, appreciate it.

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danielpal
Been using FamilyLeaf for a couple of months and it's been great. All the
family loves it and it's very "private" something we missed from Facebook.

