[dabent]

I've recently notice that Facebook has settled into a way for me to communicate with my family, much more so than my friends or acquaintances, so something like FamilyLeaf makes a lot of sense to me. However, I use Facebook to talk with my family, because they (and everyone) all joined Facebook.

How are you overcoming the chicken/egg problem - getting families to join when I'm imagining that most families already just use a subset of Facebook for similar items?

[ajaymehta]

That's a good question. Facebook does work in some families for sharing, but it's limited. Here's what we've discovered:

Young people like Wesley and I that recently left the nest use Facebook solely for connecting with friends. We may post pictures of us at parties, or other stuff we wouldn't want our parents to see. So we put them on specific restricted lists, or we self-filter everything we put on Facebook.

People like my mom really don't care about Facebook-ing. She only has an account to connect with me and other family members. She doesn't want friends on -- she uses it only for family.

There's a core disconnect there. If I don't feel comfortable adding my mom as a "friend", and she only got Facebook to add me in the first place, there's a problem. With FamilyLeaf, we're earnestly proposing that these are totally different kinds of connections. There are different feelings, filters, and motivations associated with sharing with family. And that requires its own network.