Private sharing for families
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Bram Kanstein (@bramk)

Kindaba🎈 - Simple private sharing for families

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At Kindaba, we’re building a space where you can keep all family communication in one place. Our features are designed to include the whole family. As more of our lives are lived online, and we raise children in this digital age, we want a safe space for them to interact with their private family network.

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Robert Gelb
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!
John Robertson
@gelb looks like a great product. Although why use Kindaba v's Whatsapp?
Robert Gelb
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 :)
Lama Al Rajih
@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.
Robert Gelb
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. 🎈
Fred Rivett
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 🚀
Will Wright
Maker
@fredrivett Thanks for the kind words Fred! 🎈😄
Toria Johnson

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.

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

I don't like social media. I do have family that want to share pictures of babies and travels and new outfits for a wedding or some other such things. These things in my opinion are not for public consumption they are for the small group of people I consider family. Kindaba lets me share what I need without getting annoyed by people seeing these things. Kindaba brings a little class and discretion to the over the top over exposed world of facebook/snapchat/instagram.

Pros:

Private sharing, easy UI for people of all ages

Cons:

A little buggy but every bug I've reported has been dealt with really quickly

Neil Parikh
Casper Nap Pillow
Been looking for something like this forever. Excited to check it out.
Robert Gelb
Heysummit
Maker
@neilparikh Thanks so much Neil!! Let us know what you think ☺️
Steven Hascher

Having a place to share with family and friends in a controlled social network gets rid of that constant worry about what you are sharing with your inner circles and one of the primary reasons I like Kindaba. I can choose who I share things with, without being tracked or targeted by ads. I see this as a great option for families and parents who want to share photos or experiences with their extended family members, but don't want their child's photos on Facebook, Instagram, etc.

Pros:

Provides the ability to maintain privacy within your own social network without sacrificing useful and necessary features.

Cons:

Features are currently at their beginning stages, but shows high potential as more users join.

Dawn Hollis

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.

Will Wright
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! 😸
Amy Chin

Excited for the potential! I love dabbling in social media platforms so I'm excited to see this network grow. I think there are some really great features that new parents will find attractive and that the application itself would be easy enough to navigate for even the least tech savvy grandparents. I've seen a lot of photo sharing platforms that are designed with privacy in mind, but none as beautiful or simple as Kindaba.

Pros:

Really lovely interface, love the idea of privacy and family oriented function

Cons:

I'm not finding use super intuitive, my family is firmly ~not~ made of early adopters

Gordon Casey

I love this, we've got two kids and hack all sorts of routes in order to get the experience we want out of the options that currently exist. Kindaba is what we Actually want.

Pros:

Amazing team, committed to building this in all the right ways

Cons:

Meh... still on the journey but that's totally okay with me

Will Wright
Maker
Thanks for the kind words @gordonwcasey! As a father to 2 young boys, I share your exact same pain point — and that is our main driver in building a much better solution than what's currently out there. 🙏
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