Online kids’ application Kidzui launches safe search service
Following the acquisitions of Club Penguin for $700 million, there’s been a surge of interest in children’s gaming and social networking sites. Kidzui wants to cash in on the same craze, but rather than pulling kids into a portal of its own, it filters the internet for acceptable content.
Kidzui sells a subscription-based browser that actively filters content for kids ages 3-12 (or older, if you want to keep them in the dark). With the subscription running about $100 per year, for a license parents could renew for nine yeas, the company is obviously hoping to rake the money in.
Similar filtering software like CyberPatrol and Safe Eyes has been around for years, but Kidzui also adds on some social networking features — for example, kids can have friends and share content with others. The site offers parents some granular control over what their children see, allowing them to remove categories like news or specific websites.
The site has so far been funded with about $8 million in two rounds, from Maveron, Emergence Capital Partners and First Round Capital.
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About the Author, Chris Morrison
Chris Morrison writes about cleantech and environmental issues for VentureBeat, with occasional forays into gaming and semantic technology. He got his start writing about tech for Business 2.0 magazine, but quickly realized new media was the ticket when that institution closed its doors in 2007. Chris has also covered public equities and regulatory issues. He originally hails from southern Virginia, graduated from Evergreen State College in Washington, and now lives in San Francisco.