Archive for the 'Community' Category

Kinzin chosen as a finalist for “Excellence in Social Media Applications”

Published by
Michael (23%) Fergusson
June 9, 2008 in About Kinzin, Awards, Blog, Community, Family, Kinzin, Media, Private Family Photo Sharing and Team. 0 Comments

Kinzin has been chosen as one of the three finalists for a Canadian New Media Award: “Excellence in Social Media Applications”! I’m thrilled that the selection committee has chosen Kinzin, and proud to be mentioned together with the other finalists. The team here at Kinzin is working hard to produce fun and safe social networking environments for parents and families, and it’s great to get them some well-deserved recognition.

Also, a big thanks needs to go out to our customers, who have put us among the fastest-growing community sites anywhere. Everything we do, we do for you. :-)

More Reviews for Kinzin

Published by
Michael (23%) Fergusson
May 13, 2008 in About Kinzin, Application, Blog, Community, Design, Developer, Everything photo, Facebook, Family, Kinzin, Private Family Photo Sharing, Review, Team, Technology and These Are My Kids. 0 Comments

Wow - a whole series of reviews have come out in the wake of Kinzin’s new photo finishing subscriptions. Here’s a small sampling:

Three Kid Circus says:

For the delivery service alone, Kinzin is going to make me look like a rock star. But the online hub for interested family and friends is really cool, too - and keeps all those (photos from my) “Mommy Weekends” safely segregated.

Pumpkin Products chimes in with:

Kinzin allows you to upload pictures and stories to your page. You can create memory books, journals, family newsletters, and even more, all on Kinzin! But my favorite feature of all, by far, and the one that has initiated a truce of sorts with the grandparents, is that you can sign up for an additional service that mails your best 10 photos from every month to the address/es of your choice(…) No one has anymore excuses for why they don’t have pictures of your children featured prominently on their mantle. Plus, it’ll help out those non-computer literate members of your families (we all have ‘em). Zero effort from you, and voila! You’ve kept everyone up to date!

Modern Mama Marvels loves that the invitation process doesn’t require your relatives to go through a cumbersome sign-up process:

It’s an easy, private photo sharing site that even my most technologically-dumb family members can navigate. I was easily able to share our account with them and they were easily able to (…) view the pictures that we uploaded.

Ebony Mommy surprised her Mom with the Kinzin prints:

I chose a surprise tactic in the actual sending of my pictures just to get my family’s first reaction to receiving the images. Each grandmother was thrilled to get pics of their grandsons- one was so excited she called me immediately gleeful in the surprise of these recent pictures. She stated that while she enjoys getting pictures online having the real tangible photographs is something she really treasures. Getting through the protective layers of wrapping to get the special pictures of her boys made the moment even more exciting. Her strong hint that this is the perfect gift idea for families who live apart from grandchildren and loved ones definitely let’s me know we’ll be using Kinzin again…

It’s wonderful to get some positive feedback. We were a little nervous having the reviewers be the first people in to use the new print functionality, but it seems to have worked just as designed (thanks to the best development team ANYWHERE - I love working with these guys).

Crazy MomCat reviews Kinzin

Published by
Michael (23%) Fergusson
May 2, 2008 in Blog, Community, Facebook, Family, Family activities, Kinzin, Privacy, Private Family Photo Sharing, Review, These Are My Kids, Uncategorized and Vancouver. 0 Comments

Crazy MomCat has posted a review of Kinzin today. She starts out by describing her ongoing concerns about privacy, her frustration with existing photo sharing sites that make privacy hard and bombard your visitors with ads for photo finishing services. Then:

“…I think I’ve finally found a solution to all of this. Kinzin is a new site dedicated to protecting your privacy while letting you show family and friends what is new with you and your family.”

That’s great stuff. She loves the new photo “print and mail” service as well, which she uses to keep her Father-in-law up to date with the latest photos of the kids. Thanks, Crazy MomCat. Everything we do, we do for you! :-)

Private Family Photo Sharing: Connecting All Your Generations With A New, Refreshing Feel

Published by
Megan Cole
April 16, 2008 in About Kinzin, Between the generations, Community, Family, Kinzin, Privacy and Private Family Photo Sharing. 0 Comments

kinzinKinzin is transforming how families share the most important little people in their lives with the latest launch of Kinzin.com.

Privacy and security online is important to many of us, especially to parents. Kinzin understands this better than anyone and has created an online space for you to share your kids’ photos safely and as private as you deem: you control who gets to see your content. Inviting people to your social network, or rather, subscribing any of your friends or family members into your space, is one of the features that puts Kinzin ahead of other photo-sharing networks.

kinzinThere is another quality that is probably the most exciting new feature in this launch: social networks in the mail! For Grandma, who doesn’t have a computer or doesn’t know the first thing about social networks or “online communities”, is now able to be a part of your life online. In just a few clicks (and a truly unbelievable low cost), your family members can receive prints of your top 10 images each month, chosen by you, VIA THE MAIL! All of those headaches or concerns over certain family member’s dial-up, download times and those phone calls we all inevitably receive, “How do I login again?” are out the window. There’s something to be said about “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. Kinzin has created a really easy way for anyone you choose to receive the cutest, up-to-date images of your kids through the postal service. I’ve given up trying to teach some of the folks in my parent’s generation (and up) how to enter a URL or surf and search. Sign me up for monthly prints!!

There are some other really neat features that help to create that perfect snapshot in time of your kids. You can add status messages, photo titles and descriptions and the family can comment on photos as well. All of these features are available for each and every image so that every memory can easily be captured and each moment can be put into precise context, not just uploaded as part of an album in a bank of photos.

We all need special tools to be able to share the kinds of private information and experiences about our kids - Kinzin provides this for you in the most perfect package - whether you use Facebook, Flickr, or like Grandma, good ol’ fashioned mail!

Check out Kinzin.com

CBC Television Interview With Kinzin’s Michael Fergusson

Published by
Megan Cole
March 3, 2008 in Application, CBC, Community, Facebook, Kinzin, Michael Fergusson and Vancouver. 0 Comments

A few weeks back, Michael Fergusson was interviewed in a 6 o’clock Vancouver news piece on the MySpace security breach. Watch the clip here, from the comforts of your own computer screen:

From “Launch” to “Garage”, techy event speaking.

Published by
Megan Cole
January 28, 2008 in Application, Community, Facebook, Facebook Garage, Kinzin, Technology, These Are My Kids and Vancouver. 0 Comments

Kinzin "These Are My Kids" at Launch Party VancouverThe Kinzin team spent the better part of their Friday evening at Launch Party Vancouver 03, showing off the application These Are My Kids. If you haven’t read or heard what this latest app is all about, please read more here.

It was a fantastic evening, to say the least. Michael, Frank, Julie and Paul held court all night to the many new fans wanting to find out more, take a look at the interface and have a spin for themselves. We are extremely grateful for the interest and enthusiasm for These Are My Kids from those of you who attended, and we very much appreciate the time that each person gave to learn more about it. It is an incredibly rewarding feeling to have such a great tech community come to such an event and to support the work that is being produced. It was inspiring and exciting.

A quick, but very necessary thank-you to the organizers of LPV: Maura, Danny, Dimitri; and to the sponsors as well: Sun Microsystems, Strutta, Techvibes, Layer7, QC Docs and Growthworks. This event is a treat. Looking forward to the next.

And onto the next…

Monday night, Michael Fergusson will be at the Vancouver Facebook Garage Event at the Vancouver Film School. There may just be a little room left on the event page, so add your name and come check out Vancouver’s newest and hottest Facebook applications. There are amazing things happening in this city, and this event shows off the best of what’s being developed for Facebook, and beyond…

And if you can’t make it out, just follow along on Miss 604’s live blogging rendition, and watch the night unfold before your very own monitor-watching, live-streaming eyes. :)

Why I Love “Are You Normal?”

Published by
mirandabon
November 25, 2007 in Application, Are You Normal? and Community. 0 Comments

Kinzin Team

1. It’s fun to expose yourself , and others! - I can’t believe how much I have learned about my coworkers and friends from the questions! Really! There is so much discussion in areas I wouldn’t normally feel very comfortable going into unless I had the shield of Mt. Computer.

2. There’s a good amount of us in that little app - I think there are some sumptuous hints at who the creators really are.

3. Everyone pitches in. There are so many people volunteering content every day, and it’s really, really good! We’re making a fun community of question askers, and that is special and valuable.

4. I love that no one wants to be normal. The worst thing to me when I was a kid was how often people would tell me I wasn’t normal. I hated being weird. Now everyone wants to be weird with me.

5. It is a popular app, which is fun and makes me feel special.

6. I love the team magic!

More mainstream media attention for “Are You Normal?”

Published by
Michael (23%) Fergusson
November 2, 2007 in 24 Hours Newspaper, About Kinzin, Application, Are You Normal?, Community, Facebook, Kinzin, Media, Social Networks, Statistics, Vancouver and Writers. 0 Comments

Whew. What a week!

Last week, 24 Hours Newspaper published a story about Kinzin’s Facebook plugin Are You Normal? in their print and online magazine (photo on the left, by Rob Kruyt, that accompanied the article). In the article, I’m quoted as saying that we’ve reached 90,000 people around the world. Thanks to the power of the network effect, as of this writing we’ve already passed 245,000 (from 184 countries!) and still going strong.

The point of this post is not to toot our own horn (at least, not only to do that :-), but to mention for your interest that the next set of survey questions we publish will be written in part by our user base. We’ve had questions submitted from Finland, Spain, Greece, Australia, and the UK so far. I’m very excited about this in particular. As with many things, when we’re talking about what’s “normal”, what we choose to measure is often as interesting as the results.

I’ll keep you posted as things progress…

Front Page News: Our Facebook App In “24 Hours Vancouver”

Published by
Megan Cole
October 23, 2007 in 24 Hours Newspaper, Are You Normal?, Community, Facebook, Media, Technology and Vancouver. 0 Comments

Are You Normal? front page of 24 HoursAsking the question Are You Normal? is front page material today on Vancouver’s 24 Hours daily. Writer Darcy Makwana caught up with Kinzin’s Michael Fergusson for all the skinny on our Facebook application, “Are You Normal?” that hits 100, 000 users today.

Read the full article here.

Paul Prescod, the application lead developer will be giving a demo and will present the technical aspects of the app at Vancouver’s first Facebook Garage event, tonight at 5:30 - it’s first come, first serve at the door, so get there early to find a seat!

AYN?’s Paul Prescod At Vancouver’s First Facebook Developer Garage

Published by
Megan Cole
October 23, 2007 in Are You Normal?, Community, Facebook, Facebook Garage, Technology and Vancouver. 0 Comments

Vancouver Facebook Garage 2007Tonight in Vancouver, Kinzin’s Paul Prescod will be giving a demo on our new Facebook application “Are You Normal?” and will be speaking about the technology and implementation of the application.
Gerald Bauer, one of the organizers of the event, wrote a post on the developers group site, introducing the app.
If you haven’t already done so, sign up on , the wiki and/or the Facebook event page.

Word is that the night is very over-booked, so it being an ad-hoc event, get there early enough to get in!

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