Keeping your precious memories safe in an online environment: Shai Adler, CEO and founder of Keepaboo.Martha Stewart has popularized the craft of scrapbooking, and American men and women now enjoy making scrapbooks to treasure memories of their children. Snippets of memories can include baubles, baby pictures, first words, hopes for the future, and ticket stubs which are lovingly glued into the scrapbook, which comes to life with homemade or bought stickers, glitter and funny handwritten notes.
While it’s a great keepsake to place on the living room table, or mantelpiece, there are many new possibilities for preserving and sharing memories of today’s modern baby. In November, a new Israeli company Keepaboo launched a free online scrapbooking tool, which automatically stores all the memories about your little bundle of joy — online.
Says Keepaboo’s CEO Shai Adler: “One of the founders was at a party a while ago, and he met one of his friends — a new father who was telling him how excited he was to make a book about his child.”
Realizing that there was no adequate solution online, Keepaboo was born. That was about 1.5 years ago. The company, funded by both American and Israeli investors — some with companies that have made successful exits on NASDAQ — fulfills a need that social networking sites like Myspace or Facebook can’t. “Now today there are digital cameras. One can do many things online and there is no solution to combine everything,” Adler tells ISRAEL21c.
Digital keepsakes forever
Keepaboo also solves the problem of privacy issues, a worry to parents who share photos of their kids on Facebook. Membership on Keepaboo is free, but one can only access another’s album with a password. And even with a password, users can decide what albums can be kept for a wider circle of friends and family, and what pictures, and mementos, should be reserved for a select few.
Parents need to collect digital pictures, diary entries, memorable quotes said by Baby, as well as growth data. This is plugged into a timeline, and Keepaboo integrates this info into an engaging and entertaining 3D scrapbook called a Lifebook. Custom books can also be created, and printed out as a hard copy memento.
The company’s been open to the public for a few weeks, and the response has been encouraging, says Adler who plans on making money through premium add-on features, and targeted advertising.
About 50 percent of the site’s users are American. It’s popular also among Canadians and Australians, he says. “We are starting to get user response,” Adler tells ISRAEL21c. “People are writing us thank you letters. We’ve worked really hard on it.”
Revisit funny quotes and first foods
With the ability to add memories retroactively, Keepaboo could be every child’s keepsake one day. The timeline feature allows people to flip back to a certain age to see how the child looked at two or 10, or anywhere in between. It can also store the parent’s thoughts, hopes and dreams for their child at any age.
Keepaboo was founded in early 2007. It is based in Tel Aviv and currently employs about 10 people. Adler thinks the company’s business future looks bright: “We are targeting a very powerful group: Parents who are spending money on their children,” he says.