We bet all the mothers out there enjoyed their Mother's Day. While some mothers don't mind sharing all their gifts and photos with their children on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, they may not want to share their children's other intimate moments with the entire Internet. And don't worry, we haven't forgot about you, dad. This applies to you, too.
Wouldn't it be great to share special moments from your child's life with other family members in one centralized and safe location? Maybe you just want to share intimate moments like a photo from your first sonogram with only your close family, or maybe you are a parent that loves how creative your child is, and is looking for a place to store visuals of specific memories or things that may be lost, forgotten, thrown away or destroyed.
Keepy is an app that provides a safe and interactive platform for families to tell and share the story of their children's lives. On Keepy, parents can save and share all their Mother's and Father's Day memories, along with everyday mementos from your child in one timeline. This gives them the opportunity to look back and see how much their child has grown.
"We are trying to create a place where we can see the best memories of our lives in an unique timeline," founder and CEO Offir Gutelzon said when we interviewed him.
Gutelzon, an entrepreneur who sold PicScout, the world's largest index of fingerprinted images, to Getty Images back in 2011, came up with the idea for Keepy after attempting to consolidate his children's things when moving.
Here's how it works: Parents upload what is known as a "keepie," a photo of a child's artwork, schoolwork, trophies or a video, on the platform. Since the platform is invite-only, parents can share these keepies only with their close relatives, like grandparents, aunts and uncles, via the app on a smartphone or tablet. It also works through email or a desktop version.
"Because with Keepy you only share with people you invite to follow... you just feel more comfortable," Gutelzon says. "You don't think twice about where it's going."
And the app is not just for parents and their children; it's also multigenerational. Users can comment on the uploaded content, allowing grandma to hear her grandchild describe his science project, or have grandpa say congratulations for a good report card.
"What we are hearing more and more from parents, is that as much as they really appreciate their kids and their artwork and the photos, the most valuable thing is actually capturing grandma, which is text, or voice or video (and of course the video is the most interesting part of it)," says Gutelzon.
"We are building it an a way where parents and grandparents can be connected together. And it's an interesting scenario because if you think just two, three years ago, it wasn't even possible because kids were using Nintendo, parents would use the laptop, and grandparents maybe a cell phone. And today, because we are all using this new technology like tablets or iPhones, it's actually possible."
The app is available to download for free, and users can save 15 keepies per month. If you run out of keepies, you can either wait until the next month or update to the monthly ($5.99) or annual ($39.00) subscriptions. Comments on photos and using video are unlimited for all users. Keepies can also be shared on other social media sites and stored onto DropBox.
Family members who don't have the app receive updates via email, with the option to view the keepie on the desktop version for free. "[The website] is giving access to those who don't feel comfortable with smartphones like grandma and grandpa."
On the desktop version, users also have the option of sharing their keepies publicly with the online community.
According to a survey of over 250 parents of kids under 10-years-old conducted by Harris Poll in May of 2014 (which was commissioned by Keepy), 75 percent of parents reported saving photos and videos of their children in multiple locations, 52 percent reported they have not done anything with the tons of photos/videos they have of their children to preserve them for the future, and 44 percent reported they sometimes have trouble locating photos and videos of their children because they can't remember where the files are saved. Keepy may just be the solution to all these problems.
Keepy provides two main benefits to parents. These include "the ability to declutter and organize without the need to think of it as tough work," and the "ability to capture the feelings and emotions from the rest of the family in the same place, and collecting all the family together," Gutelzon says.
Users can also give personalized presents, like a photo book or personalized mug, by easily turning keepies into a gift in the app's store, just in time for Father's Day.
With 600,000 family members using the app, Keepy is one of the pre-installed apps on Samsung's Galaxy S6. These Samsung users who choose to download the app get six months of unlimited keepies for free.
Keepy is available to download in both the Google Play for Android and Apple's App Store.
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