

FamilyLeaf (YC W12) Brings Your Kin Together In Its Own Private Social Network - wesleyzhao
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/26/familyleaf-brings-your-kin-together-in-its-own-private-social-network/

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mgkimsal
I spoke with some people at ning early on (2006? 2007?) and had suggested that
they offer a version catering to families. That was met with some lukewarm
reception, but I'd thought 'social networks for families going to be big!'.

And people keep trying. One aspect that seems to _never_ get brought up is
divorced families. Many may not want people on one side of the family or the
other to be seeing certain pics or talking to others. Having statuses read by
person X mentioning person Y may not be the best thing to do.

So... introduce privacy controls? It's confusing enough for most people just
to enforce a couple of rules. Trying to codify the weird world of divorce
families' feelings in to a web interface will be problematic. Sure, people can
just 'get over it' and 'grow up', or they can be told to, but it's not always
so easy.

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ajaymehta
Hey - cofounder here :)

So, my parents are divorced. And both re-married. I totally agree that it's
weird to share photos of me and my half-brother from my mom's side with the
entire family on my dad's side.

And right now, it's really easy to separate them on FamilyLeaf. You just
create "a new family" for your distinct branches. I have my mom's, dad's, and
stepdad's families all actively sharing - but most importantly, they're
separate.

Divorced and fragmented families are deep in our DNA. Our solution right now
is to have separate family groups that can share members, but we're open to
thinking about different ways to fix this. It's something that's very
important to me.

But it sounds like you've thought about this a bit. Please drop me a line at
ajay[at]familyleaf[dot]com if you get a chance. Would love to discuss it!

~~~
dabent
I've recently notice that Facebook has settled into a way for me to
communicate with my family, much more so than my friends or acquaintances, so
something like FamilyLeaf makes a lot of sense to me. However, I use Facebook
to talk with my family, because they (and everyone) all joined Facebook.

How are you overcoming the chicken/egg problem - getting families to join when
I'm imagining that most families already just use a subset of Facebook for
similar items?

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ajaymehta
That's a good question. Facebook does work in some families for sharing, but
it's limited. Here's what we've discovered:

Young people like Wesley and I that recently left the nest use Facebook solely
for connecting with friends. We may post pictures of us at parties, or other
stuff we wouldn't want our parents to see. So we put them on specific
restricted lists, or we self-filter everything we put on Facebook.

People like my mom really don't care about Facebook-ing. She only has an
account to connect with me and other family members. She doesn't want friends
on -- she uses it only for family.

There's a core disconnect there. If I don't feel comfortable adding my mom as
a "friend", and she only got Facebook to add me in the first place, there's a
problem. With FamilyLeaf, we're earnestly proposing that these are totally
different kinds of connections. There are different feelings, filters, and
motivations associated with sharing with family. And that requires its own
network.

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hkarthik
I dig the idea. Facebook has definitely broken down from me with trying to
selectively share certain statuses and photos across friends and family of
different backgrounds. With two small kids we love to share photos with our
family members overseas, but censoring everything else we say for relevancy is
a challenge. Circles were a good idea, but still too much work IMO.

Looking forward to watching this develop further!

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ajaymehta
Perfect! It's been surprising how intuitive it is to people that Facebook
doesn't work for families. It's an unspoken truth - younger people use it to
connect with their friends, and many older people are on it strictly for
family. It's a core disconnect that Facebook has done a terrible job of
bridging.

Let us know when you get a chance to try out the site and share with your
global family! My grandparents all the way in Mumbai just sent in some photos
this morning. They would have never been able to do that on Facebook - nor
would I have accepted their friend request :)

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joelhaus
> "We want to bring in older generations"

As my father ages, he seems to get more interested in our family history and
often sends mass emails about new connections he finds on ancestry.com.

I've always thought that the data from ancestry.com would be a great way to
seed a new social network. It would attract a motivated, older crowd and they
would add profiles for the younger generations too. Previously looked into
this and genealogical data actually has a standardized format called
GEDCOM[1]. It might be a useful way for users to quickly populate their pages
on FamilyLeaf.

Will send this over to him, but most of his data is in GEDCOM format... either
way, good luck!

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM>

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ajaymehta
Hey, wow, that is a brilliant idea. Honestly we haven't thought about that at
all -- ancestry.com is of course a giant, but we always viewed it as a bit
divorced (no pun intended) from what we're up to with FamilyLeaf.

I'd love your feedback (and your dad's!) on our site. My dad -- largely
computer-illiterate -- is actually sharing with us via email by emailing
photos to send@familyleaf.com. They automatically aggregate in our online
album.

It'd be great to chat about your research on this family space. Shoot me an
email? ajayumehta[at]gmail

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edwinnathaniel
I had a brief stint working on this particular area in the past (was my first
Rails job as well!):

<http://web.archive.org/web/20080217022937/http://kinzin.com/>

Didn't make it, pivoted a few times. Not sure what the status right now.
Unsure what the challenges were since I didn't get involve much in the
business/marketing aspect of it.

Hope you guys get a better shot and be successful in this space.

~~~
ajaymehta
Hey - thanks for the comment. Kinzin looks really interesting... I'd actually
love to hear more about it and your experience working to bring families
closer together online. Think you could drop me an email/tweet?

~~~
edwinnathaniel
Unfortunately I don't have much to share, and it is not because I don't want
to, because I worked as a part-time Jr. Dev (still at school) back then not
knowing anything much other than what I had to do. That and I worked there
pre-beta where things were simple and straightforward: let's ship a very
simple private network for family to share things.

This was back in early 2007 where everything (share things, social network,
social media, online privacy, etc) were still relatively new and gaining
steam.

From the very little figment of my memory, all I remember was that Kinzin was
trying to create a social private network for family and were trying to
monetize a feature that can turn pictures to photo albums to be shared with
family members. The rest were still up in the air.

The marketing had probably focused on getting users to use the site first and
probably did not explore as far as you mentioned: how to bring families closer
online, which I think it could be the biggest value that the FamilyLeaf could
offer [for now :), I'm sure there will be more in the future].

But hey, timing is important and who knows it is on your side now (^_^).

Like you, my family is thousands miles away, I see value on sites like
FamilyLeaf/Kinzin. Not sure if I would use it once I'm back home though.

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nchuhoai
On that note, does someone know of any good statistics that show how well
"niche" social networks fare in the light of the growth of the general purpose
monster Facebook? I like very specific-purposed social networks, but I was
wondering what the general traction of those networks is, or even what the
average number of social networks per user is. I assume we techies are on
many, but I feel like the general public barely goes beyond Facebook.

~~~
ajaymehta
Hey - thanks for the feedback. I think that you'd only need to take a look at
something like LinkedIn to see that when a website taps into a different set
of purpose and emotions, there's clearly a need for separation from other
networks.

It's pretty clear (ask anyone <25) that Facebook doesn't work for families.
And as loved ones move away and get on with the rest of their busy lives
(catalogued with products like FB, LI, and now Path/Tumblr/etc), their family
is left in the dust. They try to call and email, but it's not meaningful.
Older relatives keep scraps of paper or address books with everyone's
information - crossed-out phone numbers, outdated addresses to send christmas
cards.

We noticed this huge gap in our personal lives after leaving for college a
year or two ago. And we hope that FamilyLeaf will find the solution. Family is
paramount.

~~~
Drbble
Linkedin in my thoughts big before Facebook, and it is really more of a job
board than a networking system.

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mrxd
The Corleone family in the demo account is cute, but it's not the greatest way
of demoing what it would look like for a real family to use it. It's also a
dramatic shift in tone from the logo, which is more friendly, approachable and
peaceful.

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ajaymehta
Definitely a good point. It was a little last-minute :)

Can you think of any other known/notable families you'd like to see on there?
I thought one with stock photos might be a little impersonal. But maybe that's
the right call.

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untog
Kardashians.

I wrote this as a joke then realised that it would probably actually work.
Well, maybe once you've moved out of the sphere of tech early adopters. Keep
it on ice for now.. then, hell, get them to invest. Just tell them Ashton
Kutcher is doing it.

~~~
wesleyzhao
Haha this is hilarious. Also love the idea of using the British Royal
Family... though... I hope to be knighted one day.

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lowglow
Awesome work! Let's get together when you're up in SF. :D Congrats!

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wesleyzhao
let's do it11!

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andygcook
This is just like the original idea for Github, which was actually a social
network for families called FamSpam.

~~~
ajaymehta
That's a good point. One of our batchmates actually sent that to us a few
weeks after we started working on FamilyLeaf -- I had no idea. Would be really
interesting to talk to them about it.

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shawiz
Congrats!

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byalice
congrats guys!

~~~
ajaymehta
Thank you Alice! (Our front page design and logo were done by Alice. She's
terrific.)

