About Playgroops

There is a social network we're all a part of, whether or not we acknowledge it: It is the group of parents, whose kids are friends with our kids. This network is tricky because many times you don't really know those other parents too well and may have little in common. The resulting communication is usually poor and frequently uncomfortable. How often have you said or heard someone else say "I wish we knew you were going, we would have loved to join!". How often have you missed an opportunity to reach out because you didn't have the needed contacts handy?

As a result, our kids spend most their time with a fairly small group of peers, whose parents we know well enough to get things done.

Playgroops offers a practical approach for sharing your plans with parents you'd like to keep in the know. Think of it as a social calendar dedicated to your kids' events. Easily click to publish events on the go, allowing the relevant people to get notified at their convenience. Stop spreading voice mails and emails, and stop feeling you're being a nuisance! You shouldn't! Getting the kids together is important and it really ought to be easier!

Your Playgroops

Unlike other social networks, we don't think you should invite random people to be in your playgroop. For both practical and safety reasons, you should only connect people you trust and know well enough. We do not want to replace your in-person communication, only to facilitate it.

Privacy

We take privacy extremely seriously. We all happen to have kids of our own and we all fear data proliferation. We are using the highest security standards to safeguard your data and to assure that no one gets to see information unintended for him or her. In addition, to be more safe than sorry, we decided not to keep identifying information about you. Our working assumption is that the members in your playgroop are intimate enough to recognize you and your kids on the street and know where you live already. We don't want things like pictures and street address—we don't collect it and we don't store it. Saying "Ori and Ido are free right now" really is enough for our friends to know what they need to know.

What does Playgroops Alpha mean??

Alpha means a rough version, in the sense that more functionality will be coming very soon, and in the sense that it might suffer some bugs and be less than perfect... Getting you on is the best way for us to make it better based on your actual behavior and feedback. We plan to be agile, meaning attentive and quick in reacting. Please give it a go! And please let us know anything that comes to mind we should add, remove, or fix! You are a small but a selected group of people and we trust your judgment. Help us make it better before we venture out :-)

Questions

• • yet another social network??

  No!... =)

  The network of loosely connected families is already there, but it suffers from lousy communication. We're not creating the network; we're coming to serve it better.

• • What's the story with the Animal Code Word?

  We don't want you to accidently accept strangers into your network. When you invite a friend, he has to reach to directly and provide you a code word to complete the process. This is not as easy as adding a Facebook contact but it assures us that this is a person you really do know.

About Us

We are a small group of neighbors who like to keep our children busy and happy! Ori is behind the original idea, Doug is our designer, and Matt gets this thing to actually work... Please let us know what you think, and what we should do to improve, at ori@playgroops.com and THANKS! for trying it!