I have several blogs. I am an avid Flickr user. But family and friends deserve a more personal glimpse into the lives of my boys, so I happily agreed to try out Kinzin via the Parent Bloggers Network.
The site touts itself as a "free private family website," but I found it to be more of a combination of Flickr and Twitter or Facebook than a place to have comprehensive information about the children. For example, "Favourites" (yes, the British spelling) only allows four lines, as does "Wish List." The "status updates" only take about seven entries, and once they are gone, they are gone. I would have wanted a bit more space for user-driven content and an archive of the status updates. While having a huge page of status updates isn't practical, a "back" button with previous updates would be appreciated. "In the now" is literally current, but I like to have a history, too.
Kinzin does have a Facebook application, but since I signed up via the web, my information there does not update to my Facebook account. I noticed that another PBN blogger had the same concern. I certainly would have loved to link my Facebook account in some way so that some of my kids' statuses would show up there. There could be a designation: "okay to post to FB" or not, so that the privacy could be controlled; even so, I know who my FB friends are, and they are the same people who would get a kick out of my kids' status updates. Yet I don't think my FB friends would necessarily take the time to log into Kinzin to see if I had updated statuses or photographs there.
Grandparents, however, would go to a specific website to see their grandchildren. But, since there is not (to my knowledge) a way to indicate that anything has been updated, I fear that unless I am really good at updating statuses and adding photos, even the grandparents may tire of checking the website.
At the moment, I have my cellphone set up to update Twitter, which then also updates Facebook. I wish I could do something similar for my kids' statuses, since then the page at Kinzin would be very up-to-date and accurate, and much more fun for friends and family.
The "Photo Book" feature of Kinzin is smart. There are definitely events that show geographically significant information about my kids, or other personal details that I wouldn't want in a Flickr photoset. Or, I may want to highlight only a few "best" photos on Flickr, whereas I could put up a whole unedited book on Kinzin for the grandparents who don't mind seeing a gazillion photos of the same kid differing only on a slight angle or pose.
That said, it is very easy to upload photos from Flickr to Kinzin. This means that for those friends and family who do not know about my blog or my Flickr account, I could post those photographs on Kinzin without pointing them towards my public blog per se. It is easy to grab the photos; the title and descriptive information from Flickr uploads to Kinzin, but I can edit the title or description myself so that I can add more detail for those viewing these photos by invitation only.
The real draw in my opinion is that Kinzin will send out 10, 20, 30, or 40 photos per month to recipients you chose. For 10 photos, the monthly cost is $2.99. Add $0.72 to Canada, and $1.33 to Worldwide for each set of 10 photos. Every third recipient is free. This means that both sets of grandparents, plus a godmother, aunt, or close friend can get 10 glossy photos per month of your family for just $6/month.
This way, even if the people invited to view the website forget to do so, they will still receive 10 (or more) photos of the kids. If I wish, these photos can have captions on them.
Unfortunately, I haven't yet received my photos. In an amusing twist of irony, as the Kinzin staff wished the PBN bloggers to receive their photos quickly, the human attention led to "human error," so one set of grandparents and I received photographs of someone else's kids. (The other set of grandparents has yet to receive any photos, of my kids or not.) The photos are high-quality Fuji-Film and were packaged attractively. The captions were done nicely and didn't distract from the photo itself. I had chosen no captions, thinking this option would be preferable, but now that I have seen what the captions look like, I may try that route next month!
I am impressed with the attention of the Kinzin staff once it was clear that there had been a goof regarding my photos. I wonder if another PBN blogger has the pics of my kids? I expect the correct photos to arrive within the next week. As this is a new site and the delivery of photo packs is a brand-new feature, it makes sense that there have been some glitches. With that in mind, I will do a follow-up post once my next batch of photos arrives.
My advice? Check out Kinzin, read about the features, experiment a little bit, but don't necessarily do the photo packs just yet. I would suggest trying the Facebook application since I think it might be more useful for the way that many of us bloggers approach social media; I wish I had known that the web interface and Facebook interface were not interchangeable before I selected the web.
(However, the truth is that the grandparents would be more familiar with the web, and they are probably the target audience here. I should just keep putting my kids in my Facebook statuses and keep "family" separate from "friends" in that way.)
Kinzin is a good idea and is on the right track. I'll check back later once the site has had more time to iron out some of the kinks!
