FamilyLeaf (YC W12) - Your Family's Private Social Network

To Wes: Just curious, how much traffic / conversions does an article like this usually generate from a non-tech press outlet like the Atlantic?

I'm not really in the target audience for the product at all, but it looks great.<p>What really interests me is that amazing ad unit -- it's a "sponsored article from Bank of America". I actually read it, unlike a banner ad, and while if I were at all in the market for a family social network, I'd now be interested in FamilyLeaf, it ALSO made me somewhat more positive toward Bank of America.<p>This seems a whole lot more effective than running banner ads.

Looks all nice and such but the family member role at the time of the sign up, seems limiting. What if your family is small based on the available relationship in the dropdown? You wouldn't bother creating a new social network just for one or two people. If the "family incharge" (as per your FAQ) can possibly extend the family he/she creates later on, than I think it should be identified first.<p>I think ultimately, the emphasis on the private nature of all of these social networks has one single limitation issue: the building of network requires few people taking initiative of building the network (which you have identified as "family administrator"). Without such people taking initiative, these networks don't really go anywhere. And we know that not everyone takes those initiatives, especially when the site is brand new, unknown and/or not so popular.<p>Just some thoughts.

The article mentions the competition for FamilyLeaf, but does not give any inkling of a clue as to how they'll overcome the competition and really the bigger competition from Facebook. Simply saying their confident it will fill the niche doesn't give me any reason to choose it over the myriad of other services lifted.<p>I'm also not really in the target demographic, but if someone asked me why they should choose to use this service instead of Facebook, I'd be hard pressed to give them a reason.

I wonder if there would be a market out there for some kind of host-your-own system like this. Run an app on your family's central machine and register YourFamily.examplehostedapp.com. The app does the work of keeping that domain name pointed at your machine and keeping a upnp tunnel open.<p>One interesting question is backups. Encrypted snapshots to S3, maybe?

Have you ever heard about <a href="http://www.trustedfamily.net/" rel="nofollow">http://www.trustedfamily.net/</a> I think they are doing a great job offering a comparable service to rich european families.

Good luck with the launch ! This is a beautiful looking site.<p>Many many many of these types of sites have launched and died. Dont let that deter you ! This Githubs first idea. One of these will work !

I don't understand: how is this more secure? Maybe I don't understand the meaning of the word 'secure' in this context.<p>Photos and everything is still stored on a remote uncontrolled server.

Bau5