Social media blog Sociable recently reviewed the launch of TotSpot Video. Here’s what they said:

It is an incredibly easy way for parents and families to privately share videos about their children.

Right now, most social sites do not offer video (require embedding from YouTube) and/or lack the privacy requirements parents require to feel comfortable uploading their videos. TotSpot Video solves these problems.

They’re one of the first social publishing platforms to incorporate direct video uploads (can’t do it on Twitter or Tumblr) and are, almost certainly, the first and only parent publishing site to offer video.

If you haven’t already, check out TotSpot Video by clicking video on your dashboard. Like Sociable said, it’s pretty neat.

We’ve received several emails in our inbox this week asking us the same thing: how do I share my TotSpot page without requiring people to sign up for an account?

One user writes,

I signed up for TotSpot almost a year ago, and loved it!  However, I
stopped using it immediately when I realized that there is no public
facing profile page for my child.

We haven’t done a good enough job of sharing all the different ways you can share your TotSpot profile! You can share a version of your profile publicly - either with, or without, password protection.

To do so, visit your child’s profile. Click ‘Details’ from the Update Bar, then go to your ‘Privacy’ tab (see screenshot below). If you choose ‘Completely Public,’ we’ll put a version of your profile with your latest updates up at http://childusername.totspot.com.

We recommend including a password for most users. If you do want to publish your profile without a password - we recommend you carefully consider the content you’re sharing. With password or without, sharing your TotSpot profile should be easy-peasy.

For tips on safely sharing content about your child, check out this post on the Zooloo blog (I wonder what Zooloo is?). The post also brings up some important questions about DataPortability - a movement we’re a big supporter of at TotSpot.

Let us know if there are other ways you’d like to share the content you put on TotSpot!

So, we’ll probably file this one under extreme uses of social media for your baby, but Boing Boing made a recent post about the Kickbee. Pictured below, the Kickbee automatically tweets baby movements and kicks into your twitter stream. And the New York Times thought Twittering from the Cradle was outlandish!

Besides pointing out this wild new contraption, we thought this would be a great opportunity to check in with our users about Twitter. We’ve had many requests for various forms of Twitter integrations with TotSpot - either being able to update TotSpot profiles in various ways from Twitter or being able to broadcast TotSpot updates to twitter. We’re also considering a few different possibilities for Twitter integrations for our upcoming Groups feature.

Given the meteoric rise of Twitter, and the amazing community of parents on Twitter, we definitely want to make incorporating Twitter a priority. But we want to do it smartly! So, TotSpot users, how, if at all, would you like to see us work with Twitter?

Let us know either in comments below or via email!

[via Mashable]

Also, if you haven’t yet, check out TotSpot’s Twitter account. We will be using it increasingly to make announcements about new features, service updates, and special promotions!

We’ve been pretty busy at TotSpot HQ. So busy, that we haven’t properly shared photos and news about our launch party last month! There are some more great pictures on our Facebook Fan Page (are you a fan yet?) and a wonderful write-up by Celebrity Baby Blog, but we thought it’s never too late to share some more, right here on the TotSpot blog.

Jenny McCarthy and Joely Fisher graciously hosted the event, which was presented by Little Tikes at the Treehouse Social Club in Los Angeles. The event raised over $15,000 for Generation Rescue, Jenny McCarthy’s autism research charity. Our entire Southern California user base was invited, and we’re grateful for the incredible turn out, which also included Tori Spelling, Samantha Harris, Kristy Swanson, and their adorable tots. Stay tuned for information about more TotSpot events in the future!

More photos after the break:

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Next week, we’re introducing a new beta-feature: Groups.  TotSpot Groups are designed to give you the flexibility and control necessary to build and participate in smart communities.

Groups can be private (only invited/permitted users can join) or public (anyone can participate). In addition, we’ve made the visibility of groups on TotSpot up to you - your group can visible only to members of the group, listed in the TotSpot directory exclusively, or indexable by external search engines. Everything is up to you.

What type of groups do we envision on TotSpot? In talking to you (our users), here are some suggestions - family groups, playgroups, groups built around pre-schools, common interest groups (e.g. Michigan Alums, Parents of Special Needs Children, etc.).

One group type that we’ll be creating automatically is Cohort Groups - common interest groups built around the ages of children. They’ll be Cohort Groups for Parents with Children Born in Spring ‘08, Fall ‘07, etc. Interacting with parents who have children of a similar ages can be an incredibly powerful resource and support system. Participation is these groups is obviously optional, but we think they’ll be a lot of fun and incredibly helpful.

We’re looking for group creators and moderators to help us roll out groups. If you’re interested, send us a note at hello@totspot.com.

Yesterday we added a few new features to Totspot. You may have noticed some of them, like the new profile completeness progress bars on your dashboard, the email digest options and a redesigned invite history page. And one of them introduced a bug that made it impossible to upload photos in the past 24 hours - doh! We’re really sorry!

Good news is, we fixed that bug and those of you who were unable to upload photos (or new videos) to Totspot yesterday will be able to do so now. Sorry about the inconvenience! Hope you’re enjoying Totspot as much as we love working on it for you. As always, feel free to use Get Satisfaction to send us your questions, ideas or feedback about the product!