Odadeo Blog

We’re not yet in public beta, but already we’re getting some interest from the press about the idea we’re working on.

Camille Sweeney at The New York Times interviewed us this week for an article about the new wave of parenting sites dedicated to blogging about your kids securely.

It’s called “Twittering from the Cradle” and it’s well worth a read!

A few quotes:

Nathan, 29[...] joined Odadeo, a site still in beta that allows dads to blog on behalf of baby as well as meet other fathers.

Call it convenient. Call it baby overshare. But a host of new sites, including Totspot, Odadeo, Lil’Grams and Kidmondo, now offer parents a chance to forgo the e-mail blasts of, say, their newborn’s first trip home and instead invite friends and family to join and contribute to a network geared to connecting them to the baby in their lives.

“It’s an interesting model,” said Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist for the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “Everyone can decide how much or little they want to know about a baby, which avoids the situation of receiving a few too many e-mails about someone’s wonderful child, and parents can decide how much they want to share — in minimal or maximal ways.”

And this from an author on the subject of parenting:

“We are at a very pro-parenting moment in time,” said Pamela Paul, the author of the book “Parenting, Inc.” “It’s reflected in our offline culture and on the Web. We are all screaming about it at the top of our lungs.”

And this from a legal professor:

These sites allow parents to create “attractive and compelling versions of a kid’s story,” said John Palfrey, a professor at Harvard Law School and an author of “Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives.”

But Mr. Palfrey warns that parents posting the intimate details of their children’s lives need to ask not only who has access to this content, but also who owns it. “Whether or not they realize it as such,” he said, “parents are contributing to their child’s digital dossier. And, who sees that dossier later on may be of concern.”

This last word of warning is exactly the reason we are still in private beta, rather than going public with a full version of the site. I for one don’t want intimate details of Imogen’s life to be picked up on Google without me expressly wanting to be. What happens in twenty years when she goes for a job, and they pull out her baby snaps in the interview?

So for now, we’re working hard on making Odadeo a safe, exciting place - once we’re all happy with it we’ll be pushing it out to a wider community.