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TotSpot 2.0 - Part 1: An Introduction

Michael Broukhim on September 5, 2008

We have come a long way with TotSpot in a short amount of time. All told, it’s been 8 months since Adam and I made the journey to Portugal to join the WeBreakStuff team, roll up our sleeves, and really get down to the dirty work of building a new destination and publishing site for parents.

At the time, our idea was simple: parents need and want a better way to share.

Two months later, we had our private beta out, and by June 6, exactly three months ago, we launched our beta site to the public. Since then, we have been overwhelmed by the tremendous engagement we’ve seen and feedback we’ve received from you, our users. All told, nearly 400 of you have gone out of your way to drop us a line, suggest a feature, a new first, tell us about a bug, or just share a kind word. Thank you for that.

We’re now looking to take an evolutionary step forward with TotSpot. We want to build TotSpot 2.0, and we want your input in doing it.

In the coming weeks, we’re going to make several blog posts about under the banner of TotSpot 2.0, sharing our ideas and yours on a vision for the future of TotSpot.

For this first introductory post, feel free to share your biggest, boldest, most wide-open ideas about what you’d like to see in TotSpot 2.0.

On Monday, we’ll continue the series with a post entitled “Evolving the Kid-Parent Identity.” We look forward to your thoughts!

–

Update: we will be continuing this series soon; a little later than expected..thanks for all your thoughts so far!

Janice

I love using the Totspot pages for my three daughters. Would it be possible to have another page set for them just as sisters that can be shared? I wasn’t sure if thet was possible now.

Thank you creating this site. I know that my friends and family love reading the journal entries and seeing the photos that I post.

Thanks again,
Janice

sal

Hello,
I love this. Two major things, though:
1. When we invite our adult friends to view our son’s site, they get really confused by all the steps they have to take to join. One friend wrote, “It says that it is just for parents!” So if you could remove the first step where they have to pick if they’re a parent or not, that would be great.
2. As a parent, I would love to know WHEN people are logging on to see the site. Right now, I only know they were there if they comment on a photo or journal.

thank you!!! keep up the great work. I Love how easy it is to post photos and journals.

Angi

The only suggestions I can think in addition to those added above are
1. an easier/faster way to rotate photos when uploaded
2. a button to ‘reverse order’ the photos added since they are uploaded in such a way that the newer photos are at the top. There are some times when I would want the older photos first, and a ‘reverse order’ button would be amazing
3. In ‘firsts’ have a spot to add your own. There is already this available in the ‘favourites’. I think it would be benificial to have this in the firsts too.

This is a great site!

Jennifer

I would love to see a way to build your own scrapbook online. I now have all of my son’s photos and journal entries online but it would be great if there was a way to put that all together so that I could print/order one big scrapbook. That way I don’t feel like I’m doubling my efforts. Maybe if you partnered with mpix? They have great functionality for creating photo albums and such.

I LOVE totspot - It’s become an addiction for me. And my family (who all lives far away) appreciates being updated on my 9 month old son.

Thank you!

Carrie

My husband and I are always talking about new ideas and inventions. This whole idea for an online baby/child scrapbook was one idea I thought of a few months back, having family all around the world. So, you can imagine how cool it was to find your site shortly after this. You have done an incredible job of presenting and organizing the data. I appreciate that you wrote back when I was working a few things out in the beginning too. The only thing that I would like to do, that I don’t seem to be able to, is rearrange the order of the actual photo sets. Maybe I am just missing something? Mostly I just wanted to say thank you for making this site available to us all. Jennifer is right, it is highly addictive! I have a question about the future also, is this something that will be available to our children when they grow up, as technology grows? Is it possible to save this for them in some way? I guess that’s probably hard to say, unless a printable booklet could be created (for a fee) when you feel you have recorded enough? Anyways, I’ll stop rambling now. Thanks guys! :)

Carrie

Now you’ve got me thinking (uh oh)…an animated gif of about 3 photos for the profile pic? A slide show option for the photo sets?

Tammy

How about a way to add your own “firsts”? My daughter is older but her
relatives still like to see her pictures and updates. The “firsts” that are
listed don’t apply to her.

Jamie

I love your site, unfortunately it is a pain for some of the people that want to view my son’s page without signing up for the site. Maybe there could be a way for you to be a “guest” to gain entrance to the site so that family and friends don’t have to be required to sign up if they don’t want to and still be able to view it.

megan

would love if friends didnt have to join or sign up twice when you have more than one child. would love a link to SNAPFISH!
i love this site and hope that someday i can print every single thing i have written for each child so that it can be their own little baby book or huge journal!
you are doing a great job! your customer service when i had issues was awesome! thank you!

Kara

I would love if there was some way to print the various stages, to keep an actual physical scrapbook as well. That way, every month or year you could print out the updated favorites or journal entries and store it in an actual album as well.

David

I’d like to be able to add custom ‘firsts’ the same way I can add custom favorites. Also, if I edit a favorite, a history should be maintained.

His favorite toy is _______
His favorite toy used to be __________.

Michelle

I moved from babysites.com over to totspot and I love it. I suppose I moved to start because of the large fees that babysites requires, but I realized that not only to you have the same features as babysites, but you have so many more. I’m so impressed with it.
The main issues I’ve had are with the same things Angi posted about - trying to organize a photo album. My photos uploaded in reverse order and it was very painful to reorganize. At the very least, a way to select multiple photos at once and move the group would be great. Reverse order would also help.
My mom complains that in order to view the entire photo, she has to scroll down a bit, and then scroll again to click “next.” A slideshow option would be really key.
Sal mentioned wanting to know when others looked at the site without commenting, but don’t you already have that benefit? I love that “recently viewed” feature.

Melanie

I love TotSpot! it’s great. i agree with some of the same things as posted

- automatically be linked to baby number 2 page, if you signed up for baby #1

- a possible guest entry password/easier sign up option

- slideshows — or widget input, like from slide.com (you have heard me mention this before!)

- a scrapbook or archive/export to file option, possibly using PDF formats.

Keep up the good work, i look forward to all the new ideas to come to life!

Melanie

Joelle

This is a great site - love using it and sharing with family. My only issue has been after I have invited friends, I can only see my pending invites when I go through the process of inviting another friend. I always click on the box to save my contacts, etc., but it never does and I have to go through the same process of getting contacts from my email provider every time. Maybe I am missing something.
Thanks again for such a cool site!

Joelle

A friend also had a request to be able to change their “image” to match more closely their resemblance.

Stephen

Thanks for the site - totspot has allowed family members to keep up to date with the pregnancy. OK, here’s some suggestions:

1. An archive for “the wall”
2. Possible links throughout a pregnancy and after - related to the age of the child. These could be informative or commercial (or both) and might help finance the site… however they’d have to be pretty unintrusive or else the appeal of totspot will wane.

thanks again

Michelle

I am pregnant again! can I have the option to add a child without creating a new account please :-)

michaelbroukhim

Thanks so much for all the great suggestions (please keep them coming!); many of these features are already planned for, and we’ll be announcing those plans in the coming weeks as part of this series.

A few quick responses:

@Michelle - Congratulations! You can add new child (or expected one) to an existing account: http://getsatisfaction.com/totspot/topics/adding_a_child_to_an_existing_account

@Joelle - While you can’t change the ‘default’ avatar (’custom avatars’ is something we’re considering building), your friend can change the image to a picture of him/herself - and we definitely recommend they do!
http://getsatisfaction.com/totspot/topics/change_my_avatar_picture

also, you should be able to see all your ‘pending invites’ by going to Friends -> Invite List — (let me know if that works out for you!)

@Jamie & @Melanie - we now give you the option to make your profile ‘public’ and then set a password to protect it; that way, anyone who knows the password can see your latest updates (but they won’t be able to add comments, or explore old photos, etc.) — go to ‘Preferences’ and adjust your privacy settings to try it out…would love to know what you think!

Thoughts on many of the other suggestions coming in the rest of this series…we hope you keep contributing to the discussion!

shefali

Hi guys, just wanted to let you know that I live in India and have started using your website for my two daughters. Its a wonderful thing to be able to post their pics for relatives and friends to see. Thanks for that.

Just one thing though, I feel the pages can be more fun with additions like games, puzzles that our kids get to do and post. Or even play quiz or IQ games…on the lines of a skimmed facebook:) My elder daughter knows I have a page for her but is not very keen about it as there’s nothing for her to do there.

Sulcalibur

RSS feeds would be great :D

Judy

This is a great site! Please keep up the good work!

My 2 cents:

1. customize page layout - e.g. My Photos. Be able to move the photo sets on top of the recently added photos. Some of my visitors missed all the photo sets b/c they didn’t scroll down enough.

2. add our own friend types e.g. godmother, etc.

3. My firsts - personalized categories. I find that there aren’t any “firsts” for newborns.

Thanks!!

Jenni

I love your site! It has been a great way for the grandparents who live far away to see my son’s progress. Things I’d really enjoy:

1. A way to order a CD or a scrapbook from the site.
2. A way to invite guests to view the site, where they could type in the url to my site directly, and input a password I’ve created and provided to them. It was very confusing for the grandparents when they had to create an account.
3. A way for guests to order and print pictures or scrapbooks/bragbooks for themselves.

Coleen

What about if the height is 22.5 inches. How does one input half inches?

Jim

My wife and I are huge fans of the site and grateful for your efforts. Our families are spread out across the U.S. and obviously Totspot helps bridge the gaps without us having to mess around with Wordpress, a web host, etc. Thanks for a great app.

How would I improve Totspot? 1) Allow linking to Picasa, Flickr web album subdirectories rather than just the top level. 2)Give account holders a way to admin sub user accounts. We too have technically challenged relatives registering incorrectly. Perhaps giving master account holders some simple admin controls over invitees account might help? 3)Give contributors more control over the content they post in case they make an error, etc. 4) Way to add an Amazon Wish List button to the tot’s site.

Thanks again.

Matt

I’d like to see some new themes and backgrounds. We’ve used the custom background option with some files we found online but it would be nice to have some more TotSpot options to choose from.

Michelle

While I understand the “twitter” like feature I think it would be a good idea to separate it from “profile updates”. When you update items here, then your friends get a message saying that the child updated the profile, this is confusing. It would be better if this feature could be handled a bit differently and people could subscribe to it separately (as far as e-mails or RSS feeds are concerned)

Ok some pie in the sky pieces…
Host video so that you could not only produce book type scrapbooks but also video scrapbooks (turn the pictures into slide shows). I realize that this is asking a lot since transmitting the video over the web sort of means that you’ve got to degrade the quality and that isn’t the quality that most folks are going to want for a keepsake. But in a perfect world being able to build that through this site would be the next logical step.

A side note: if you want to drum up more business, get some screenshots or demos to show people who aren’t signed up for the site. I’ve spoken with people who seem interested, but when they can’t see what they would be signing up for they give up.

This is a great site, exactly the idea I was looking for to keep in touch with family and friends scattered all over the country.
Please keep it growing!
Thanks!

Jill

I love this site! I had been in search of a site that I could create for my child to share stories, photos, etc. with family and friends. Thank you for doing this and creating a safe and fun environment to share this information with loved ones.

For the most part, the site is great and pretty easy to use. After using the application quite a bit–here are my suggestions/ideas.

- I’d love to see the photo section easier to use in terms of uploading photos, rearranging the photos, displaying the photos such as a slide show and having the capability of choosing which photos appear on the profile page instead of currently defaulting to the most recent photos uploaded.

- I find the weight and height section of this application a bit difficult and hard to figure out how to input more than one weight and height information. I’d like to this section be more user friendly. I know for the first year your child goes into the pediatrician at the following stages so, maybe it could be set up like this.
- birth
- 2 weeks
- 8 weeks
- 12 weeks
- 18 weeks
- 6 months
- 8 months
- 10 months
- 12 months
- 2 year
- and so on

- Possibly the “firsts” section could be where the basics are listed but then it could be organized by age and then have the opportunity to add your own

- It would be great if the time line would organize the information by dates instead of posting the most recent one first because as I keep updating Henry’s information I’ve been putting things from the past. It would be great if the time line information could be displayed differently rather than just a list.

- I too would love the idea if the photo section was tied with either kodak, snapfish, wink flash, etc. so that I could have all of this in one area and wouldn’t have to upload photos to more than one place or more than once.

- It would be nice if there was more to add about pregnancy i.e. doctor’s visits where you can add weight, names you’re considering where you can maybe put a poll on the names so that family and friends could vote and maybe have this section organized by the milestones of pregnancy (8 wks, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 37, 38, 39 and 40.

I know that my list is long, please know that I overall “LOVE” this site. I have enjoyed sharing this with family and friends. Especially getting friends of mine into it. Again, thank you for doing this and asking for your users thoughts and suggestions.

Kimberly

- automatically be linked to baby number 2 page, if you signed up for baby #1

- a possible guest entry password/easier sign up option (we’re finding family/friends not utilizing our totspot pages because it’s such a pain to signup/log on)

-”Firsts” need to be customizable….if your jewish “Baby’s First Christmas” isn’t going to apply!!

Mike

Love the site! Here’s my thoughts:

• More inclusiveness for adopted children. customizable firsts would be a good initial step, but many firsts we unfortunately missed but would still like to document. Some obvious additions for adopted children would be first time i saw your picture, first time I held you, first time you came home, etc. Also birthdays are not the only important anniversaries in families of adoption, the day of adoption is usually just as important an event to recognize.

• The option to sign up as a parent. I used my email to sign my daughter up, but i’d also like to be listed as family and friends.

• The ability to crop profile photo.

• Option to use the nickname as the heading.

Thanks!

Danielle

I love the site. I use it all the time. Just one thing. I would love to be able to purchase the information on the site in a book of some sort. I would love a hard copy of my sons childhood for him to share with future generations.
Danielle

Nicole

Overall, I love the site. I would like the option to order a scrapbook. Also, I would like to record medical information like when each tooth comes in and nutrition information like which foods were liked and disliked. I really like having everything in one place. Kidmondo (http://kidmondo.com/) does a good job with these two things, but TotSpot rocks when it comes to everything else.

Thanks for a providing top notch program to the public!

Nicole

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TotSpot is a place to create a private page about your kids and share it with friends and family. It's an online scrapbook and website for babies, kids, and their parents. Sign up now!

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