Monday, June 2, 2008
Last updated: Monday June 2, 2008, EDT 6:09 PM
BY EVELYN SHIH
STAFF WRITER
Left: Famzam.com.
Chris Schwartz’s child isn’t due until September.
But girl or boy, Virgo or Libra, the littlest Schwartz has already been the subject of adoration in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Texas and New Zealand.
Schwartz has been posting sonograms on his personal page at Famzam.com, a new family-friendly networking site founded by Anthony Lamme of Oakland. Like many Generation-X parents, the 35-year-old Schwartz has incorporated the Internet in his parenting — even before his child is born.
“I like to think we have the youngest social networking child in the world, at five months before birth,” said Schwartz, a Linden native.
For Gen-X parents in North Jersey, it’s no longer enough to use resources on the Internet passively. Several thirty- and fortysomethings have used their Web savvy to create sites that are a new space for their generation, apart from that of the dominant youth culture.
Partly, they are being forced to actively engage with Web culture because their children are (or will be) in the cyber world as early as 2 or 3 years of age. But mostly, the Internet is starting to become a new frontier for Gen-Xers who want to claim niches for themselves.
“I was in my early 30s when MySpace and the other sites became popular,” said Lamme, 35. “But I only want to communicate with people I know. I have absolutely no interest in going out and meeting strangers.”
What’s more, teens and twentysomethings consider older people encroaching on “their” space “creepy,” he added.
The former Wall Street trader decided to team up with Indian Hills High School classmate Mark Murphy and create a social connection site that made it easy to share things such as recipes, pictures and videos — and difficult for potential stalkers to ply their trade.
The site is intended as a way to connect far-flung family members. Lamme’s mother-in-law, Betsy McIntyre, lives in North Carolina and sees his twin daughters, Ashley and Haley, only twice a year in person. But with Lamme’s video blog, “she gets to see them grow up online,” he said. Lamme hopes to reach the boomer generation and beyond with his twist on social networking.
There is a strong demand for safe socializing spaces online — especially for children under age 10 — because of the rapidly changing rules of cyberspace, says Lauren Trudeau of Franklin Lakes. Networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are in easy reach of any finger big enough to click a mouse, and children are becoming socialized online earlier and earlier.
In order to protect and monitor her two children, Trudeau founded Yokidsyo.com, a parent-monitored e-mail and instant-message portal for kids. Eighteen months ago, at ages 7 and 8, Mark and Cassandra Trudeau were “a lot more advanced than we thought they would be,” said Trudeau.
“They wanted e-mail, they wanted instant messaging,” she explained. “They were headed toward Facebook and MySpace, which I felt was inappropriate for their age.”
Schwartz has been posting sonograms on his personal page at Famzam.com, a new family-friendly networking site founded by Anthony Lamme of Oakland. Like many Generation-X parents, the 35-year-old Schwartz has incorporated the Internet in his parenting — even before his child is born.
“I like to think we have the youngest social networking child in the world, at five months before birth,” said Schwartz, a Linden native.
For Gen-X parents in North Jersey, it’s no longer enough to use resources on the Internet passively. Several thirty- and fortysomethings have used their Web savvy to create sites that are a new space for their generation, apart from that of the dominant youth culture.
Partly, they are being forced to actively engage with Web culture because their children are (or will be) in the cyber world as early as 2 or 3 years of age. But mostly, the Internet is starting to become a new frontier for Gen-Xers who want to claim niches for themselves.
“I was in my early 30s when MySpace and the other sites became popular,” said Lamme, 35. “But I only want to communicate with people I know. I have absolutely no interest in going out and meeting strangers.”
What’s more, teens and twentysomethings consider older people encroaching on “their” space “creepy,” he added.
The former Wall Street trader decided to team up with Indian Hills High School classmate Mark Murphy and create a social connection site that made it easy to share things such as recipes, pictures and videos — and difficult for potential stalkers to ply their trade.
The site is intended as a way to connect far-flung family members. Lamme’s mother-in-law, Betsy McIntyre, lives in North Carolina and sees his twin daughters, Ashley and Haley, only twice a year in person. But with Lamme’s video blog, “she gets to see them grow up online,” he said. Lamme hopes to reach the boomer generation and beyond with his twist on social networking.
There is a strong demand for safe socializing spaces online — especially for children under age 10 — because of the rapidly changing rules of cyberspace, says Lauren Trudeau of Franklin Lakes. Networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are in easy reach of any finger big enough to click a mouse, and children are becoming socialized online earlier and earlier.
In order to protect and monitor her two children, Trudeau founded Yokidsyo.com, a parent-monitored e-mail and instant-message portal for kids. Eighteen months ago, at ages 7 and 8, Mark and Cassandra Trudeau were “a lot more advanced than we thought they would be,” said Trudeau.
“They wanted e-mail, they wanted instant messaging,” she explained. “They were headed toward Facebook and MySpace, which I felt was inappropriate for their age.”
Left: image courtesy of the Wired blog.
Trudeau and her husband, then in their mid-30s, felt compelled to create Yokidsyo as a private forum for their own kids and their friends. News of the site spread quickly by word of mouth, and today membership is at 25,000, mostly consisting of Bergen County children and their parents, according to Trudeau.
“Children that are my kids’ baby sitters, who are 15 and 16 — when they were younger, all this stuff wasn’t out there,” said Trudeau.
Yokidsyo, administered by Trudeau and a group of six local parents, is a way to keep kids from growing up too fast. But one Hoboken couple, Jonathan and Jennifer Rich, are trying to help kids grow more quickly — in their frontal lobes.
Jennifer Rich, a former public school teacher and reading specialist, writes all the content for children’s book review site Ethansbookshelf.com. Parents can find appropriate books by age and topic in the ever-growing database of reviews. The site is named after the couple’s 18-month-old son, Ethan.
“We’re lucky, because [Jennifer] knows good books,” said Jonathan Rich, 32. “But if you’re a young parent, and you don’t know what to get for your child, [other book sites] don’t give much guidance.”
Now staying at home with Ethan, Jennifer Rich, 30, makes use of her expertise and her son’s nap time to write about children’s fiction classics and new books that are sent to her for review. The Riches dreamed up the site after realizing how often she was asked by friends for book recommendations on an informal basis.
For all of these Web entrepreneurs, the end game is to be a better parent — and to help others do the same.
Copyright ©2008 North Jersey Media Group
“Children that are my kids’ baby sitters, who are 15 and 16 — when they were younger, all this stuff wasn’t out there,” said Trudeau.
Yokidsyo, administered by Trudeau and a group of six local parents, is a way to keep kids from growing up too fast. But one Hoboken couple, Jonathan and Jennifer Rich, are trying to help kids grow more quickly — in their frontal lobes.
Jennifer Rich, a former public school teacher and reading specialist, writes all the content for children’s book review site Ethansbookshelf.com. Parents can find appropriate books by age and topic in the ever-growing database of reviews. The site is named after the couple’s 18-month-old son, Ethan.
“We’re lucky, because [Jennifer] knows good books,” said Jonathan Rich, 32. “But if you’re a young parent, and you don’t know what to get for your child, [other book sites] don’t give much guidance.”
Now staying at home with Ethan, Jennifer Rich, 30, makes use of her expertise and her son’s nap time to write about children’s fiction classics and new books that are sent to her for review. The Riches dreamed up the site after realizing how often she was asked by friends for book recommendations on an informal basis.
For all of these Web entrepreneurs, the end game is to be a better parent — and to help others do the same.
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