The Idea
Parentography is a site that connects parents looking for family friendly things to do with parents who have already done family friendly things.
You can:
- Read and review activities, restaurants, lodging, parks and playgrounds and attractions near you
- Create and view excursions for anything from an hour trip to an all-day event
- Connect with other parentographers
- Search near you or across the country
Why It’s More Than “Average”
This is a perfect example of taking something that exists already (search-able restaurant reviews and activities), improving it incrementally (better design, focused user goals).
Lots of people have kids. And those people need things to do. The makers of parentography recognized that this was a huge audience who wasn’t having their needs addressed by anything that was currently out there. And they gave them a user-experience tailored exactly to what they wanted, as well as making their site super-usable and well designed.
Basically, they took an existing idea, improved it first and did it better than everyone else for a specific audience.
Ideas don’t have to be completely different or new. Sometimes the best innovations are ones that improve what we already have.
Will It Succeed
It’s still in beta, so there’s not a lot of content on there. Plus, it looks like they’re still working out a few bugs. But, if they get it executed well and they can attract users to create good content, I have a feeling this will be a valuable resource for a lot of people.
So if you’re a parent or are thinking of doing something similar, go check them out.
How I Found Out About It
This idea was brought to my attention by the good folks over at Lifehacker.
You can also check out my post about it at my parenting blog, 365 First Time Parenting Tips.
Thank you for the flattering coverage! I think like a lot of ‘better than average’ ideas, this one grew out of our own frustrations as consumers — in this case, as consumers of travel and activity information that would suit our needs as parents.
We were as surprised as anyone that this problem hadn’t already been solved in the way we were contemplating, but there was an element of timing involved, too. Web 2.0 with all of its very inexpensive, but robust, technology was really just coming into its own and niche sites, like ours, were becoming more feasible than they were even a few years ago.
So far, the reception to the product has been good, but we have a long road ahead and, as you pointed out, still a few bugs to work out of the system.
Thanks again,
Tim
Co-Founder, Parentography
http://www.parentography.com
Left by Tim Ludwig on January 26th, 2007