Online link keeps photos, journals just in family

DENVER – For anyone who has struggled with whether or not to write one of those much-maligned holiday, year-in-review letters, there’s a new alternative.

Launched June 8, Familycollective.com is a Web site that helps users stay in touch with family and friends through digital photo albums and an online journal.

Family Collective is owned and operated by Denver-based Havoc Interactive, an interactive marketing studio founded by Chris Miller.

Miller was inspired to build the site by experiences with his own family.

“My family is spread across the U.S., and I wanted to keep in touch with my cousins, aunts and uncles, and parents on a more consistent basis to see what is going on in their lives,´ said Miller, chief executive officer of Family Collective and Havoc Interactive.

Unlike other online meeting places, such as the popular myspace.com, only the people you invite can view your profile at Family Collective. “Family Collective is a private area meant to connect you with the people you already know,” Miller explained.

The site features a very simple set of features, which is Miller’s intention. He wanted to design the site so people who were not tech savvy could easily use it. It’s one way he differentiates himself from the competition, and it also makes the site useful to a wide audience, he said.

Its simplicity is one reason Betsy Morgan was attracted to Family Collective. Morgan, who had been introduced to Family Collective through a friend’s page, chose to start using it herself when her family moved from Aurora to Downington, Penn., after living in Colorado for 33 years.

“I got on the site, clicked a few buttons and had my own Web site,´ said Morgan, who would not describe herself as tech savvy. “It doesn’t feel like a service. I feel that it is a site personalized for my own family.”

And because she is able to link easily to the pages of her family and friends, Morgan said it actually becomes an extended family site with everyone having their own branches.

To begin, users set up a profile. They can then use the site’s bulk photo uploader to upload an entire folder of photos in succession. For journaling, the site features an HTML editor that is similar to Microsoft Word. When finished, users can send an invitation to family and friends to view the site. As family and friends add their own pages, users can view links to those pages on their profile page.

All of the site’s services are currently free. Because the site was set up through Havoc Interactive, Miller said the thing he invested in it was sweat equity.

Miller’s goal for Family Collective is to make it suited to the end user and then determine what will be the appropriate revenue strategy.

It’s a lesson he learned from his first Web site, Adventure Planner, an online travel planning and sharing site. Miller said he put too much focus on how to make money with the site too soon, rather than making it a good tool to use.

Miller said he is exploring a number of different opportunities including advertising, strategic partnerships with related companies such as online photo processors and offering premium site services for a fee.

Although he is hesitant to rule out anything, Miller is not fond of the idea of advertising as he feels it clutters the site and would detract from the simple interface he is going for. On the other hand, partnering with an online photo processor would make his site that much more useful to his users.

Miller also might consider adding a premium membership depending on the space needs of his users. The site is so new Miller has not yet set capacities.

“We’re wide open right now,” he said. “We want to get some averages of what people are uploading and will make a determination of what to do later.”

As for what services to add, Miller is relying on the feedback from the site’s users. The goal is to make it useful for its members, but not to clutter up the site with a bunch of features.

One change that will be coming soon is the addition of an address book feature, so users can store e-mail addresses as part of their profile rather than copying and pasting them in each time they want to send updates to friends and family.

According to Miller, Family Collective currently has a few hundred users, and their age is trending at about 35 years old. He has done limited advertising for the site and said it has grown mainly by users inviting their friends and family to join.

“We’re doing a bootstrapping scenario right now with marketing and seeing how virally it will expand,” Miller said. “The eventual goal is if this thing starts to show promise and has some legs, we will spin it off and make it its own company.”

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