Circle of Moms » New Features

All About Child Space

lisebee — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:43:20 +0000

We’ve recently made some huge strides in building out a fast-growing area of Circle of Moms called Child Space.

Last summer we noticed that moms were enthusiastically using a very skeletal, early version of this. So we watched for patterns, and in early September began adding features and functionality that seemed to follow from these patterns. By early November we were seeing a new Child Space update every 3 seconds. Clearly this is resonating.

To check it out, just go to the “Me & My Family” tab in your Circle of Moms profile. And here are the highlights:

Indispensable
Child Space is a fast, easy way to capture special moments and record those little, in-the-moment details that otherwise slip away: milestones, funny quotes, pictures, kid comics, height and weight info.

Social
Moms are not just recording memories for posterity, they’re sharing them with friends and family. You can create a circle of fans for each of your children by inviting friends and family members, both inside and outside Circle of Moms. Your child’s fans are notified whenever you post an update about them (“First tooth finally poked through today!”). And you can create a short, memorable URL for each child’s space, which friends and family can bookmark.

Private
Moms want to share info about their kids online, but they want to be in charge of who sees what. Child Space gives you full control: there are granular privacy settings for a child’s space on Circle of Moms, and you can use Facebook’s privacy controls to control whether Child Space updates appear on your Facebook wall.

Streamlined
Moms are busy. This is a genius way to manage your family’s online life.Child Space is easily integrated with your accounts on Facebook and Twitter, as well as your blog. And you can make updates right from Facebook

Coming soon: print features (create a baby book and other memorabilia), a newsletter publishing tool, more social microblogging features, and mobile access.

We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions for ways to keep growing and improving Child Space; please let us know what you think

What Do Moms Really Want?

lisebee — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:57:39 +0000

We’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to improve exchanges on Circle of Moms. While the vast majority of our moms are helpful and supportive, we do see (and we get complaints about) unpleasant spats. Unless there’s a clear violation of our Community Guidelines, we like to let each community determine for itself what kind of behaviors are acceptable and encouraged. This does not mean we want communities to drum out unpopular contributors; rather we want to empower every community to stay on a productive track to begin with.

With this in mind, we’re wondering how you and your community members would feel about having more control over the kind of feedback you get when you post. We could build in a menu of options, and you could check off what you’d like to get back from other moms from a list that might include: support, stories of similar experiences, inspiration, ideas, recommendations (solutions, products, plans of action), resources (books, experts, websites, etc.), debate…or honest, no holds barred feedback.

Thoughts on this idea? If there’s support for it, we’ll implement it!

Recognizing our Active Users!

circleofmoms — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:23:18 +0000

One of the comments that we get most frequently from our users is “I love the responses that I get from other Circle of Moms users. How do I know which users are the experts and provide the most trustworthy feedback, though?” This is a great question and we’ve taken it to heart. Today, we released a couple of features that we think will help our users answer this question: user stats and badges! We’re very excited about these new features and are eager to get your feedback on them.

User Stats

This feature is exactly what you’d expect it to be: users can see how frequently people contribute to the Circle of Moms community. Right now we have five items that we measure: conversation posts, conversations started, questions answered, firsts and wall posts.

Circle of Moms Profile with User Statistics

This makes it very easy to see who is active and who is just passing by.

Badges

Badges are a great way for us to reward and recognize our most passionate users. They are a fun and easy way for us to let you know who stands out in the Circle of Moms community and why!

SmartyPants – For moms that have helped other mothers in the past and proven themselves to be wise by giving valuable responses to conversations and questions, we have the SmartyPants badge. These moms are very helpful. If you come across one, feel free to reach out to her with your question; she has helped others in the past, and will most likely help you, too!

Social Butterfly – For moms that are warm and welcoming to the other members of the Circle of Moms community, we have the Social Butterfly badge. One of the aspects of Circle of Moms that we love most is that the community is warm and provides constructive and caring feedback to other moms. The social butterflies create the friendly atmosphere that makes this all possible. Thank you!

Administrator – We have over 2,000 user-created communities and it was the community administrators that made this possible. These women take the initiative to create a community in which moms can share advice, recommendations and empathy. They keep the level of activity in Circle of Moms high and we love them for it.

Mom-trepreneur – We have a deep amount of respect for moms that run their own business and want to support them however we can. The Mom-trepreneur badge identifies those moms who are also businesswomen and have registered their business with Circle of Moms. Once you do this, we will promote your business to the Circle of Moms community and help drive traffic to your site. If you are interested in registering your business, please go to http://www.circleofmoms.com/ad_create.php.

We hope you enjoy these new features. Please let us know what you think of them in the comments!

Advice on Parenting and What Gifts to Buy

circleofmoms — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 23:41:47 +0000

We want Circle of Moms to be a community that moms use to make their lives easier. After reaching out to lots of moms tofind out what they wanted from a community, we found that two of the most common responses were:

“I have this situation with my family and I am not sure what to do. I want to talk to other moms who have been through it themselves. Help!!”
“I want to buy and use the right products for my child and there are so many choices out there. I’m not sure what the safest and best product is to buy. Can you help?”

Of course there are many other issues that are important to moms, and we will try to build features to address them in the future, but for now we are very focused on these two challenges.

I have this situation with my family and I am not sure what to do. Help!!

You told us that when you have a question about parenting or family life, you value the opinions of other moms. So we created communities to let you connect to different groups of moms depending on the situation. Since we can’t think of every type of community you would want, we also set it up so that you are able to create communities so that you can find other moms out there who are sharing your experiences. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to ask questions, so we placed a question box on the home page.

Not only do you want to talk to other moms, though…you want to talk to the right moms. That is why we added the profile feature. Profiles let you get to know other moms, where they come from, how many children they have and what other advice they have provided to moms. This means that the replies you receive are not anonymous posts to a message board, but personal advice from other moms. You can choose which advice to listen to and which advice to ignore.

I want to buy and use the right products for my child and there are so many choices out there.

What is cool? What is safe? What do you know about ? Does it taste good (usually about baby food)? Where can I buy it?

These are some of the most commonly asked questions in Circle of Moms. We want to enable you to help one another.

With the holidays approaching, these questions focus more and more on the right gifts for kids. So we thought that a good place to start was Christmas and Chanukkah gifts. What do moms think is the right gift? What’s good for a toddler or for a pre-teen?? I’m thinking of getting something and I want to know what other moms have to say about it.

This is only the beginning, though. Please let us know how we can improve this!

Our Question to You

Does Circle of Moms help you address these challenges? What else do you want to see in the product?