Totspot.com Is Launching A Social Network For Babies

If you hang out on Facebook you'll know how much we moms love updating each other about our children.  Its fun to share photos taken of your little pumpkins at their 3rd birthday party isn't it?  Seems Totspot.com ( in beta but launching soon) is going to introduce a more powerful tool to brag, post and scrapebook about our children online. 

We already have dogster.com and catster.com as social networking sites for pets, so really, it was only a matter of time....   But it does raise some interesting questions for me as I shared with a Toronto Star reporter.   Will this site provide a veil for parents to further compete about their "uber-child"? Could published milestones for walking and talking encourage that competitive parent to push, just so they can post it? 

I hope time strapped parents don't obsess and spend valuable time designing their child's home page instead of playing house with them, thinking that counts as parenting time.   

But mostly I hope that parents will heed the same advice that I give my children: "remember its public".  Some day your child will grow up and read what you have written about them.  If it's notes of adoration, that is one thing, but some bloggers seem to find great enjoyment and cathartic relief in giving the daily accounts of the trails and tribulations of parenting their youngsters.  "Will this little monster ever let me sleep?"  "I am tired of having my nipples chewed on - why won't she take the bottle!!!"  Hmmm.....   I wonder how I would feel about myself and my mother if I read daily accounts like this about my childhood?  Worth thinking on...

Comments

[Amy]

Yeah, this is an interesting point. The thing people don't seem to realize about the Internet is that not only is it public, but it lasts for ever. If I try hard enough I can find embarrassing posts I made to Usenet back when I was a frosh. (I don't try very hard.)

I have blogged about both my kids and I try, when I'm complaining about how HARD it is to be a mom, to make sure I'm writing about my experience versus their behaviour. I hate it when bloggers write about their kids as if the kids are ruining their lives -- your children will read this one day, count on it! I hope when my kids read their baby blogs the worst thing they will find is some embarrassing oversharing. (Like the time Delphine pooped out an 'e' after eating some newspaper.)

[Michael Broukhim]

Alyson & Amy -- I think you both raise some very interesting and valuable points. Questions about privacy, safety, and content-ownership have been our paramount concern ever since starting TotSpot.

I do want to highlight one very important thing with respect to some of the issues you're raising, and that's our commitment to 'DataPortability'...we think one of the things that distinguishes TotSpot from some of the generic publishing / social networking sites out there is our firm belief that users who create/publish content own the content themselves. That means, if for whatever reason, a user ever wants to take anything down / away from TotSpot, they will be able to.

http://blog.totspot.com/2008/03/16/the-3-totspot-promises/

We also make sure that unless the user explicitly requests otherwise, their pages are entirely private (only for them and the people they specifically invite) and are not searchable by Google or anyone else.

Basically...I just want to put out there that we definitely hear the concerns, and we're doing everything in our power to address them thoughtfully.

As for your point on 'notes of adoration' -- couldn't agree more...we hope parents use TotSpot to share & catalog the happy points of parenting.

[Alyson Schafer]

Hey Michael - thanks for dropping by and adding that important distinction. I know my children love looking at their baby books and the box of memorabilia I have from their early years. On line tools is where the internet really rocks in my opinion. I hope parents use this for good purposes. The next generation really will see privacy issues very differently anyways. Glad you took that into consideration though. Best of Luck!