Tweekaboo Allows Parents To Record And Share Family Memories Privately

I know there’s a lot of parents out there that have no problem sharing precious moment of their kids on Facebook, and that’s fine for them.  But I am not one of those parents.  I prefer to share photos and moments of my children with just a few close family friends through email or text.  Turns out, I am not alone.  The majority of parents prefer a private place to share their family moments without the noise and multiple eyes on Facebook.  That’s what Tweekaboo aims to do.

The iOS app, which was released in September, is a private social network that allows parents to create a life journal of their child through photos, video and snippets of memories.  The app was created by Eugene Murphy, who thought of the idea after his youngest daughter was born.

“It’s a life changing event, and you see the world in a whole different place,” Murphy said. “Life tends to move in fast forward, so every day when you look at your kids they go from being babies to toddlers: they’re walking, they’re running, they’re talking – they move along so fast.”

Murphy wanted a way to capture all those memories in one place.  He realized that parents were already capturing photos and video and sharing them with other family members, but he knew there was a better way to organize and preserve them.

“What I realized is that every day moms and dads message each other, probably not on Facebook, they do it on iMessage, and they share a little story, and when they pass that stream of content, then it’s the real story of your child’s life,” Murphy said.

Tweekaboo allows users to logon through the Facebook platform or create their own user ID.  From there, users can can tap the top right corner to add a moment with a picture and a couple sentences of what was happening during that moment.  The app also automatically organizes your photos and videos into a chronological timeline of your child’s life. What’s different about this app, compared with other private family channels, is that you can upload pictures from your camera roll.

“What we’re finding is that 90% of our content is being taken from the camera roll,” Murphy said.  “You will never be faster than the iPhone application, you just flick up the screen on the iPhone and snap the moment.  So there is a camera within Tweekaboo, but most of the content has already been taken and on the camera roll.”

The app is very user-friendly.  If you tap the top left corner, you can access and create your profile, family profile, children’s profiles and albums.  You can create individual profiles for each family member (or “Bump” if the child isn’t born yet) by adding a photo, birthday (or due date), and their gender.

After you create a moment, you have the option add it to an album, share it friends or family, or share it on Facebook.  You have the ability to create your own network of friends and family by inviting individuals to be part of your network directly from your iPhone address book or Facebook.  All of your data is searchable and backed up to the Tweekaboo cloud.

Tweekaboo is already gaining some traction internationally, particularly in Southeast Asia.  Murphy said they have users in 120 countries with a large presence in China and the Philippines.

“With globalization, families are moving farther and farther, so family units are immigrating,” Murphy said.  “So wherever there’s fragmentation of families, Tweekaboo is a way that families can get closer together online, and one of our core values is connecting families, connecting people.”

The company plans to release an Android and Windows version in the second half of the year.  Tweekaboo is also actively talking to photo companies in an effort to allow users to print hard copies of their online journal for baby books and greeting cards (because really, who has time to fill those baby books up?)