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FamilyLeaf (YC W12), The Social Network For You And Your Kin, Adds 4 Advisors
- typicalrunt 14y agoI 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.
- wesleyzhao 14y agoThanks 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.
- acgourley 14y agoI think you should call that out on your site with a "Is it actually free?" or "How do we make money?" section.
- ajaymehta 14y agoThanks for the suggestion. We do have an answer on our FAQ page: https://familyleaf.com/faq https://familyleaf.com/faq but it might be a little too hidden.
- freehunter 14y agoJust 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 http://i.imgur.com/4gGz2.png --edit: I just tested it on Firefox 17 and I'm seeing the same thing.
- visualcsharp 14y agoThe first rule of business: Never say never. You guys should be careful making such promises. We've all heard it before from several other companies that were riding high on their initial success. When dollar signs start flashing--or when your company is in danger of going under because your revenue plans don't work out--you'll be faced with the choice to charge for your product, sell your data or file for bankruptcy.
- jnovek 14y agoI don't know about your family, but there's no way I would expect my parents, my sisters, their spouses and their kids to pay $10/ea for a service like this. Someone just wouldn't show up, which kind of defeats the purpose. If it was valuable enough to us, I could imagine paying a reasonable monthly rate (say, $25/mo or less) to host our entire family... but disposable income varies wildly in our (and I'm sure most) family.
- danielpal 14y agoBeen 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.