Posted byWhat’s the best way to digitally share news about your kid with family members? We have a few privacy concerns (primarily about keeping our work lives and private lives separate). Should we start an “old-fashioned” blog? Email updates? Flickr with privacy settings? Facebook friend lists? Tumblr for photo updates? There are so many choices!
I don’t want to confuse older relatives who may not understand how certain websites work (and who also don’t have unnecessary online accounts), but I also don’t want to kid-bomb my non-family member friends. — Elizabeth
Let’s help! How do you guys share info about your kids without bombarding your non-relative friends online?
We have a Shutterfly share page that is only sent to family and a few close friends. From there they are able to save, print and or buy the pictures…also I have it password protected. It works well for us.
Similar to the Sara above, we have a photobucket account that everyone can post pictures of baby on or save copies for themself. Seemes to work for the old and young alike. The older folks get email updates from us when we’ve updated the album, and the younger folk have the ability to upload from their mobile device.
when you make a post on facebook you can create a list of people who can or can’t see the post. Right next to the “share” button theres a lock. You click it and go down to custom then you can specifically show certian people or hide it from certian people, just type in the name and save. You can then change it from that setting to the other ones whenever you want all of your friends to see.
I do this for a few cousins and relatives who don’t really know when to keep their opinions to themselves.
I was going to suggest this exact thing!
Secondary to that, my Facebook defaults to Friends Only; I like it like that. Also, you can share locked photos with anyone via public link at the bottom, i.e. http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.991551920011.2481771.17022527&l=3aebc29f45
I think it works for relatives who don’t do the Facebook thing, without leaving the photos open.
This is why I think facebook caught on so well, it gives you so many options as far as privacy. I only have family on my account so I don’t have to worry as much, but its very customizable.
You can also make and save a list of people, and lock your posts so just that list can see (or not see) them — that way if you have a large group of people you regularly want to update, you don’t have to put in all their names every time.
We set up a posterous group – http://posterous.com/
It’s a private group and whenever we post something it’s sent to everyone’s email in the group. It’s really easy to add photos and videos. My partner’s grandmother (who’s 90) told us that now she “turns on her computer and checks her email everyday”.
we use flickr+livejournal
there are HUGE amounts of things i won’t post about/share on facebook (friends with too many random people/acquaintances that i’m happy to keep in touch with but don’t need a play by play on our day to day). we moved to another city about a year ago and decided to start a blog so our grandmas/parents/aunts/uncles/close friends could keep up on our daily stuff. it’s worked great for us.
we use flickr and post to a blog with a password. so far so good!
I post stuff on Facebook, which I’ve dialed the privacy settings to the most stringent possible. I have a small Friend list of relatives and people I actually know. If they don’t care to see updates on my son, I guess they can hide or de-friend me.
As for “the older generation” my parents are the oldest generation on my side, and they’re both on Facebook. My husband has one set of grandparents still alive, and they are kept apprised of (one of) their great-grandson by my Father-in-Law, who is also on Facebook.
yeah my husband’s grandma and granddad are on facebook. So are my step-dad’s parents who are up there in age. His grandma always leaves comments on her family’s posts.
Also the Hide feature. If they don’t want to read it, they can just hide all of your posts. Ive done this to a few people myself.
If you use Tumblr, you can make an additional blog simply for baby related posts & pics, and slap a password on that bad boy. Give said password to mom, dad, sister, Uncle Fred, whoever. Bam! Easy updates. All the family needs is a link to go to. Grandma Esther can bookmark it & check it everyday.
This is what we do too!
Except that I didn’t use Tumblr beforehand, so I created a dummy account as my main (because for some reason you can’t put a password on the main one) & then made a secondary one for baby pics. My family love it!
I upload to facebook using albums that are viewable to “friends only”. I also deleted any aquaintances who I didn’t feel comfortable having stalker-book my daughter’s baby pictures (randoms, people who went to my highschool but who I wasn’t actually friends with, ex boyfriends etc.), but this is totally unnessecary if you take the time to edit the specific people allowed to see your album.
Facebook works best for us because a lot of the people who love our daughter live far away, complain if they don’t see photos with some regularity, and check facebook on a regular basis already.
I use facebook and make use of friends lists. If you add all your family members to one list, you can make anything, like a note, status update, or photo album, viewable to just that one list in the privacy settings (in custom, type in the name of the list and it should pop up in the drop down list of people).
This also works great for photos of you and your college buddies that you only want you and your college buddies to be able to see.
Then, as has been mentioned, there’s the public link at the bottom to email to your non-facebooking family members.