Kindaba 🎈

Private sharing for families

1 follower

Private sharing for families

1 follower

Private sharing for families. You define your network. No ads. No data selling. Just those who matter most. Join the movement as we build the future of social.

Launch tags:Messaging•Parenting•Privacy

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Heysummit

Maker

Big thanks to Bram for Hunting us 🙏 and to Product Hunt for having us. We’re really excited to share Kindaba with you all today after months of work 😊 Kindaba is a private simple sharing space for your family. I’ve always wanted my family to be more connected. I’d set up shared google drive accounts, make a family Slack team, even toyed with the idea of getting everyone a google apps subscription so we could have one place to store our memories. None of it worked! My family is spread all over the world and we’re all pretty privacy conscious. A few years ago, something weird started happening: it seemed like everyone started procreating 🐣. Every few months it seemed, there was a new cousin popping up and we all were trying to find a way to stay connected. What we wanted sounded simple: We wanted our own version of Facebook that was super simple and absolutely private. We didn’t want any ads, and we wanted it to be easy enough for Caroline and Alan (my parents) to use. Kindaba was made for family, however you define yours ❤️ After about 18 months of trying everything under the sun ☀️ and asking others what they used, we realised there was a common pain point. So we set out to solve it for everyone. The result is Kindaba — we’re at the MVP stage right now and are looking for as much feedback as we can get. It doesn’t do everything we want it to do yet, and we’re working on it all the time, but are excited about how it’s gone so far, and, crucially Alan & Caroline think it’s ’not bad’. High praise indeed 😎 From baby journals, to a toddler-friendly family messenger, to private social network. We have high hopes for Kindaba, and we’re looking to you for advice and feedback. 💬 ✨ Exclusive Offer for Product Hunt Members ✨ We're offering Product Hunt members free lifetime access to Kindaba (valued at over $100/year). This is a big thank you from the whole team here at Kindaba. You are helping us shape the future of private sharing for families. We're looking forward to welcoming you and your family on board!

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8yr ago

@gelb looks like a great product. Although why use Kindaba v's Whatsapp?

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8yr ago

Heysummit

Maker

@john_robertson Great question! We LOVE WhatsApp - It's a great messenger! We reached out and asked people what was working for them, and what they'd change. We found that many of our users say WhatsApp lets them down on a few different fronts. First, some of them don't like that it's owned and meta-monitored by Facebook. Second, many tell us they find WhatsApp to be a fantastic messenger, but the moment you want to share 30 photos, it starts to let you down. Sharing certain things with certain people is often pretty hard on WhatsApp because you have to make a whole new group or double post. Kids also aren't supposed to use it, and the ability for anyone to be added to group discussions is unsettling to some as well. Finally, going back and looking at old photos on WhatsApp is sometimes very difficult as it's held on the device and treats all updates the same (too much noise). At the end of the day, WhatsApp is a fantastic messenger, but our members tell us that when you try to use it like a social network (which it's not) it doesn't work so well. We find that if WhatsApp works for you and your family, awesome! But if you're looking for something with a bit more control, and designed to preserve and sort your memories and milestones, then something like Kindaba might be another option :)

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8yr ago

@gelb @john_robertson I see that it has a bigger advantage than Whatsapp. You can share photos, etc via Whatsapp, but it quickly clogs up your phone's storage if you have it set to auto-save. It's also very easy for stuff to get lost in Whatsapp chats, especially in groupchats with 15+ people talking all the time. Kindaba has cleaner look and is kind of like the invite-only Instagram for families.

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8yr ago

Heysummit

Maker

@smithva Thanks so much Vance!! It's still early days but it would be great to get your feedback 😊 The name is a combination of 'Kin' for family and 'Indaba' meaning gathering place. 🎈

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8yr ago

Keen to know if agile or waterfall dev strategy?

Pros:

Simple and easy to use

Cons:

None as yet bugs quickly removed

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8yr ago

Kindaba 🎈

Maker

Hi there! Thanks for the question @graham_robertson — our development team uses a 2 week sprint workflow, which is mostly based on scrum with a few kanban features added in (like limits to identify bottlenecks) to customise it to our preferences. So, definitely agile and mostly scrum. 😄

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8yr ago

Really excited to see how Kindaba develops over the coming months and years - it's a really unique idea and honestly something I could see myself using with my parents-in-law (who live abroad and whom I often find myself 'saving up' stuff for long emails to - Kindaba could let me quickly and conveniently send random photos and thoughts!).

However, I would LOVE to know when the web app will be released - neither my husband nor my parents-in-law have sufficiently good tech to use the Android app. What sort of timeframe are you looking at? :) Once the web app is up I can't wait to start sharing.

Pros:

Love the concept, great mobile interface.

Cons:

App doesn't work on older versions of Android.

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8yr ago

Kindaba 🎈

Maker

Hi Dawn! Thanks for the kind comments and for using Kindaba! We are actively improving the performance of our Android application and releasing regular updates over-the-air and on the Play Store which has been increasingly enabling less-capable devices to use Kindaba too — make sure your family has the latest version from the stores. This is really important to us, and we test our updates on entry-level Android phones to ensure everyone has the best possible experience. In terms of a web-based app, this is definitely in our pipeline and something to watch out for Spring 2018 here on Product Hunt! 😸

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8yr ago

Looks great @gelb! Would give it a try! When you say private what does this mean? Are messages encrypted? What about photos?

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8yr ago

Heysummit

Maker

@galimotion Thanks so much Mathias! GREAT Questions! Privacy and security are two very important issues that aren't talked about enough! Regarding privacy, after a lot of customer research, there were clearly two areas that Kindaba needed to focus on. The first is around personal privacy - you can't be found on Kindaba even if someone knows your email address or phone number like Facebook or WhatsApp. We also have no ads and we don't sell any data. Our core users believe that there should be a private alternative to mainstream social networks that puts privacy ahead of data mining. This corporate-privacy-focus is an important distinction that we try to highlight. Regarding security - ss I'm sure you're aware, if anyone were to claim they were absolutely 100% secure and would never be at risk of a breach then they're either not being truthful or not aware of the reality. Having said that, the approach we take to security is massively important. From a security point of view, all connections are encrypted and our data is stored in GDPR compliant AWS architecture. Our authentication is processed by Auth0. Kindaba is not however a p2p messenger and data is stored centrally. This is an important trade-off. We wanted a way for you to be able to easily back up, share, and organise your photos, memories, milestones, etc without having to be dependent on all of that data being stored on your device. If complete end-to-end encryption on the device-level is what you're after, apps like Telegram and Signal are great options. We're also planning for children to be able to use Kindaba in a future release and as family safety is important to us, we need to have the technical ability to act on reports of inappropriate or dangerous material. At the end of the day, we want Kindaba to be a safe space that's private. Safety and privacy mean trusting our users to be honest and open with them about how we see that working and engaging with them throughout the whole process. I hope that helped clarify!

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8yr ago

Love the app and what it stands for. Would love to hear more from the Kindaba team about what makes this app unique for kids, and what plans there are for messaging service in the future?

Pros:

Privacy, attractive layout

Cons:

doesn't have messaging yet

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8yr ago

Heysummit

Maker

Great question!! Our Kindaba beta community are with you - clamouring for messaging. We definitely have plans for messaging and hope to have news on that front pretty soon 😉. As for a kids experience, that too is in our roadmap, requested by our users, as it's super important to us to be building something that can be used by anyone regardless of their age and savviness. To make sure we get the balance right and get the experience right, we're doing lots of research into what makes a kids experience fun, but also crucially what will make it encourage activity outside of the app (in the real world!!). We're also committed to making Kindaba compliant with directives like GDPR (young people's software), COPPA, and others around the world. We're getting great feedback about what our member families want the most from a Kids experience, and look forward to sharing more about it soon.

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8yr ago

Kindaba is still developing, but these guys are SO responsive and so keen to make this a product that really works for people and protects family privacy. Super trustworthy, and I can't wait to see where kindaba goes in the future

Pros:

extremely responsive, helpful team who prioritise your privacy

Cons:

Still working out some bugs, but these get better every day.

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8yr ago

I 😻 products that put privacy first. Rob and the team are super smart and developing a great product. Excited to see this grow in 2018 🚀

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8yr ago

Kindaba 🎈

Maker

@fredrivett Thanks for the kind words Fred! 🎈😄

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8yr ago

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