Blog - Page 2 of 3 - Kinscape Communities and Education

Randi Haran | June 7, 2024September 1, 2024

With back-to-school time almost in the rearview mirror and kids settling into their new classes, there’s no better time to start thinking about what kind of student record management system is best for helping you keep digital records of your children’s educational history.

In this online digital age, you’d be justified in asking why this is necessary. After all, most schools, school districts, and universities have some form of online student information system (SIS) or online learning management system (LMS) that parents and students can access.

The reality is that while these systems can help manage parent-teacher-student communications, keep track of grades and test data, alert to homework due dates, and provide curricula information, most fall far short of an effective document management system for long-term record storage.

Also, many SISs only work as well as the enthusiasm of the teacher or education institution keeping them updated. In the end, most schools only save attendance records and final transcripts once the student leaves.

As your child’s educational journey continues, much of the information NOT captured in SISs, such as reading lists, community service hours and awards, etc. can be valuable in creating successful scholarship, private school, or college applications.

Homeschool, transient or Military families benefit by having their students’ educational history with them at all times. However, for any parent who simply wants to build their own record management system for their student’s physical documents and digital records, below are some of the most important things to know.

Benefits of digitizing student records

With the growth of affordable online storage, easy-to-use scanner technology, and the right file management system, keeping well-organized records and documents throughout your child’s educational story no longer feels like a hunting expedition through the Amazonian jungle.

Kinscape Education offers an easy-to-use, centralized, online location for storing, sharing, and organizing all of your digital student records, including:

Transcripts and Diplomas
Reading Lists
IEP plans
Awards
Teacher commendations
Sports History
Art and Music
etc.

The list is endless—if you can digitize it, you can store it on Kinscape. And it doesn’t have to be just for further educational purposes. If you love the drawing your child made of you in first grade or want to save a recording from a music recital, add it to your child’s account! Kinscape Education provides an ideal content management system that you can categorize and organize to align with your unique student.

Digitizing student records and other materials takes all the data and information related to your child’s education out of a basement or storage facility and makes it readily accessible whenever you, your student, or anyone else you want to give it to needs it.

You no longer have to hunt down the physical diploma stashed in a box you know is in the attic or try to download transcripts from school IT systems that have crashed and no one is available to help.

Of course, you can still keep the original physical documents in a safe place in the attic or other storage facility, but with Kinscape, you have easy online access to every important document in just a few clicks—saving time and lowering anxiety levels.

Storing and organizing your student’s academic story also gives your child peace of mind that their hard work and achievements are safely recorded. Plus, knowing that together you’re building for their future helps give them the confidence to take a leadership role in their education.

With a Kinscape Education account, flexible settings allow you to give your student access, edit, upload, and download permissions, as well as the ability to co-organize content throughout their academic journey. It’s a beautiful way to help them invest in their future.

How to digitize student records

While there is no one-size-fits-all-all formula for organizing your student’s journey in Kinscape, we recommended an approach that works well for many families. If you prefer a different method, the beauty of Kinscape is that it’s easy to set up in a way that works best for you.

Here’s our guide to organizing your student’s records:

Step One: Open a Kinscape Education account

All you need is an email address and a credit card to get started on a basic plan that provides one Student Account, up to 500 MB of storage, and free access to any number of Members who you invite.

Step Two: Create a profile for your student

Name your student, add a description, and upload a photo!

Step Three: Set up educational Stories

Document your student’s educational journey by using our system of Stories and Chapters. Enrich your writing with captions, photos, videos, and audio files.

For instance:

Preschool
Elementary school
High School
University and Post-grad

You can also set up separate stories for specific needs, such as education-related Medical, Scholarships, College Applications, etc.

Step Four: Start Chapters for grade levels

Once you’ve set up your Stories, you’re ready to start creating Chapters for each grade level within the story. Start with your child’s current grade and add a new Chapter for the next grade each year.

Step Five: Scan and upload your documents

Throughout the school year, scan and upload documents to your child’s grade Chapter. Kinscape Education makes it easy to keep the files organized and in the right places. You can upload digital files, such as photographs, video, and voice files, from your smartphone, computer, or other device.

Step Six: Set roles and permissions

With Kinscape Education, you decide who can access your child’s school records and when. Permissions can be changed at any time. This means you can share the chapter with your child’s teacher or teachers for that grade, invite them to collaborate, and then turn off their permissions once your child moves on to the next grade.

Step Seven: Sit back and enjoy the school years

They’ll fly by before you know it, but you’ll have peace of mind that your child’s educational data and content are safe, secure, and readily available. Wherever your child’s education takes them, the information stored on Kinscape Education will help them soar.

Randi Haran | May 28, 2024August 12, 2024

Before the cloud became a thing, storing and sharing photos and other files was a very manual and analog experience. Who hasn’t got an attic filled with old photo albums and banker boxes of dusty printouts?

Like storage, sharing was a labor-intensive and awkward experience involving complicated file transfer protocol applications (if you could figure them out and be sure they were secure), duplicating files onto CDs or DVDs (remember them?) and physically handing them over, maintaining a collection of USB drives, or attaching files to emails and hoping the file size wasn’t too large—even resorting to multiple emails if necessary.

Today, there are many cloud-based online storage services that let you store, access, and share your files in real time. Popular features include file sharing, collaboration tools, various levels of free, paid, and premium plans, synchronization across devices, and the peace of mind that your photos, videos, files, and so on, are safe—potentially forever.

What is Dropbox?

Officially launched in 2008, Dropbox is a file hosting service that lets users store, share, and access files organized in folders across multiple devices. With more than 700 million users, Dropbox has seen significant growth since its launch, although it faces increasing competition as the market space becomes crowded with newcomers.

It’s also had its share of public concerns over privacy and security—particularly because like several other file hosting services, it lacks end-to-end encryption, also known in the security world as zero-knowledge.

Currently, Dropbox offers a free plan with up to 2GB of file storage, in addition to numerous paid plans for individuals, friends and family, teams, and businesses—each with monthly charges based on storage space and number of users.

What to look for in a Dropbox alternative

If you’re looking for an alternative to Dropbox, there are several things to consider, in addition to plan costs. Here are some of the things to think about:

How often are you going to upload or download files?
How easy is it to transfer files from one device to another?
How much storage do you need?
Who else are you likely to share your files with and how tech savvy are they?
How secure is the cloud storage solution?
Does it use encryption and password protection?
Do you need other kinds of collaboration tools as well.

When it comes to your most valuable and precious documents, it’s always worth looking around to find an easy-to-use, affordable, and secure solution, whether it’s for work or home. And while extra bells and whistles may sound attractive, be sure to examine the features, tools, and add-ons very carefully. You may end up paying a premium for something that’s difficult to navigate and that you never use.

What is the best alternative to Dropbox?

While there are many file-sharing options available today, Kinscape stands out for its versatility, affordability, and security. Privacy and safety are at the very foundation of every feature and capability, and Kinscape understands the importance of your photos, videos, and other documents. We know how to keep them secure yet accessible.

Kinscape offers a number of benefits together with features that make file sharing easy, including:

Your own private vault: Kinscape provides a private Vault where you can safely store your files for safe keeping or for sharing. Kinscape automatically stores the content you upload into your communities here, but you also have the option to upload other precious digital items, such as PDFs, videos, voice files, and more. Your content remains accessible at all times, but safe and private, until you’re ready to share.

Easy-to-create communities for sharing files: Communities in Kinscape can be as small or as large as you like, and you can have as many as you like—keeping them all distinct so you only share what you choose with who you choose—family, friends, club members, work colleagues, and so on. Or you can simply keep them safe till if and when you’re ready to share them.

100% control of your data: In Kinscape you control everything about your data and only you can share if, when, how, to whom, and where you choose.

Access from desktop and mobile without losing features: The Kinscape experience can be enjoyed on your mobile device or on your laptop or computer. The experience is the same—no different and confusing views or limited features. Kinscape is easy to use and quick to access as possible, and you don’t have to learn multiple apps to access, upload, or download your files.

Free Dropbox alternative

While Kinscape offers the basic file-sharing features you’d expect from a cloud-based document-sharing solution, it also provides other networking features that help people stay connected, share precious moments with loved ones, and keep memories and treasured moments safe. These features include:

Ad-free social networking
No targeting or newsfeed manipulation
Members have 100% ownership and control of data
Quick mobile and desktop access
Easy-to-create communities and groups of specific contacts
Private chat function
Collaboration tools for storytelling and information sharing
Safe, private, photo, video, voice, and document storage

Rather than simply offering file storage and sharing as yet another Dropbox competitor with similar security limitations and hard-to-use features, we designed Kinscape, a new and exciting kind of subscription-based social media network.

Not only is privacy and data security at the heart of everything about Kinscape, but we took the kinds of features people were already enjoying and improved them.
To make Kinscape an easy decision, our pricing plan offers three subscription levels. If you’re looking for up to 500 MB of storage and the option to create one online community, Kinscape is completely free. See our pricing details here for additional plan options.

Randi Haran | May 28, 2024August 12, 2024

In today’s age of smartphone and digital cameras, sharing photos is something many of us do almost every day—capturing precious moments and saving visual memories as much and as often as we like. No more sending away for processing and waiting only to discover they were out of focus or someone was blinking.

There are even a multitude of easy-to-use editing and AI tools available to enhance your digital gems and make them more fun to share with friends and family—all at an ever-increasing resolution that would have made grandma’s wrinkles blush.

In fact, it’s tempting to say the sky’s the limit on how many digital photos we can take with our devices, but is it? While it’s easier than ever before to share our photos with family members, post them on social media platforms, and choose only the ones we want to print out, storing photos and videos can present a number of headaches—especially when it comes to security, photo management, and pricing.

What is Google Photos?

Among the plethora of cloud-based photo storage solutions available today, Google Photos is a photo storage service developed by Google and launched in May 2015. It’s part of Google’s suite of services and shares its 15 gigabytes of free storage space with those other account-based services.

Although not available in all countries due to privacy issues, Google Photos uses machine learning to automatically analyze all the photos you upload. It then sorts them into categories: people, places, and things to make search easier and can recognize faces, landmarks, and topics, such as food, birthdays, and so on.

Today, more than 28 billion photos and videos are uploaded to Google Photos every week, but as you might expect, many people have privacy concerns due to the facial recognition technology and Google’s government relationships, and critics point to issues such as original photo data missing and original quality not available for download. For instance, free unlimited storage is no longer available for high-quality photos uploaded due to increasing demands for storage.

What to look for in a Google Photos alternative

Photos and videos are not just data in a computer or ink on a piece of paper, but treasured guardians of memories, moments, and things in life that meant something. They may be deeply personal, inspirational, or artistic, but whatever they mean, losing them can be a heartbreaking experience.

If you’re a professional photographer, losing your photos can mean losing your livelihood or at the very least, your reputation. And even if you’re simply an amateur, taking a long-haul, professional approach to photo storage can save you a lot of upset.

That’s why if you’re looking for an alternative to Google Photos, it’s important to consider the following:

If you use a memory card in your camera, how often should you upload your photos to avoid a full card, and how easy is it to transfer to a cloud storage solution. Many devices now allow you to upload over BlueTooth or WiFi, saving time and effort.

If you’re considering using external hard drives for your photos, you might want to think again. External hard drives can be fragile and susceptible to theft, spills, viruses, and physical damage.

Cloud storage services are simple to use, don’t need cables, and photos can be accessed from any device. However, most don’t offer unlimited free storage without some kind of caveat, so it’s important to shop around and find the right plan that suits your storage needs best.

Other alternatives to Google Photos include burning CDs and DVDs or sending them to your email server. However, both of these solutions are clunky, time-consuming, and CDs and DVDs are also prone to scratches and other damage that can destroy the data on them.

What is the best alternative to Google Photos?

If you’re looking for a dependable alternative to Google Photos from a company that understands the value and importance of every photo you capture, Kinscape offers a sound balance of versatility, affordability, security, and privacy.

We’re not going to run your photos through the latest AI and machine learning technologies for facial recognition or anything else. Privacy and safety are at the very foundation of every feature and capability, and Kinscape gives you 100% control over who sees what and when, and how your photos and videos are organized.

Kinscape offers a number of benefits together with features that make photo sorting, storing, and sharing easy, including:

Your own private vault: Kinscape provides a private Vault where you can safely store your photos for safe keeping or for sharing. Boxes in the Vault serve as folders, so you can organize your pictures and videos in the way that suits you best.

All your photos remain accessible at all times, but safe and private, until you’re ready to share.

Communities for sharing photos and videos: Kinscape lets you create Communities for sharing your photos and videos, or you can just keep them safely stored there for your own peace of mind. Communities can be as small or as large as you like, and you can have as many as you like—keeping them all distinct so you only share what you choose with who you choose—family, friends, club members, work colleagues, and so on.

Upload and store other digital content together: Kinscape gives you the option to upload other precious digital items, such as PDFs and voice files that you can build into a Story and share with your Communities or simply store in your Vault.

100% control of your data: In Kinscape you share if, when, how, to whom, and where you choose. Your photos and videos belong solely to you and our platform is here to serve you rather than your data serving us.

Access from desktop and mobile without losing features: The Kinscape experience can be enjoyed on your mobile device or on your laptop or computer. The experience is the same—no different and confusing views or limited features. Kinscape is easy to use and quick to access, and you don’t have to learn multiple apps to access, upload, or download your photos.

Free Google Photos alternative

While Kinscape offers the basic cloud-based photo-storage features you’d expect from this kind of social media platform, it also provides other networking features that help people stay connected, share precious moments with loved ones, and keep memories and treasured moments safe.

Our basic plan is free and offers you a chance to experience and explore the Kinscape social media platform and its useful features, including:

Ad-free social networking
No targeting or newsfeed manipulation
Members have 100% ownership and control of data
Quick mobile and desktop access
Easy-to-create communities and groups of specific contacts
Private chat function
Collaboration tools for storytelling and information sharing
Safe, private, photo, video, voice, and document storage

Rather than simply offering photo storage as yet another competitor with similar limitations, we designed Kinscape to be a new and exciting kind of subscription-based social media network. Not only is privacy and data security at the heart of everything about Kinscape, but we took the kinds of features people were already enjoying and improved them.
If you’re looking for more photo storage without compromising on photo quality, original data, and privacy concerns, Kinscape offers additional tiers of our subscription pricing plan to suit your needs.

Randi Haran | April 26, 2024August 12, 2024

Love it or hate it, the social media platform Instagram certainly has seen its share of critics over the past few months. From concerns over data protection to dissatisfaction with feature updates, social network fans and influencers are constantly on the lookout for more engaging alternatives. So what are the options when it comes to photo-sharing platforms, and why are some features an immediate hit and others an embarrassing flop?

What is Instagram?

First, let’s take a brief look at Instagram’s history. With its origins in Silicon Valley, Instagram was launched in October 2010 as a photo and video-sharing social media application. Within two months, it had over a million users, and by the time Meta, the owner of Facebook, acquired Instagram in 2012, it was worth over $1 billion.

Clearly, social media fans love sharing photos and videos, especially when a picture says a thousand words—or more—and can attract instant attention from other fans, photographers, and friends without necessarily having to come up with a clever intro or snappy introduction, story or verbal explanation. People love the ease of snap and share from a smartphone and Instagram also offers features such as editing tools, filters, and video carousels.

But Instagram has also been the portfolio for professional and amateur photographers alike, people keen to show off their ability to take the perfect picture, display their art, attract followers and fans, and take pride in their work.

Although the Instagram app focuses primarily on sharing uploaded photos and short videos from mobile devices, a desktop version is available includes many of the mobile app features, and is often the preferred photo sharing platform for these more serious and professional photographers who want to use high-end editing applications before sharing their work.

What to look for in an Instagram alternative

So why would you want to look for an alternative to Instagram? There’s been a lot of online complaints about the number and type of ads that both Instagram and Facebook have been showing on the platform. Accounts that are followed but rarely showing, hashtags not showing while suggested posts and sponsored ads that pay extra for massive reach, crowd feeds. The result is a diluted and inferior user experience, and no longer a simple photo-sharing platform, which is what attracted so many users to Instagram in the first place.

Plus, many users have become frustrated with the flurry of new features that seem to be geared toward entertainment and competing with other social media networks, rather than usability and engagement in sharing photos and videos with friends and family, or showing them off for the world to enjoy.

When looking for an alternative to Instagram, it’s important to consider the features and format that attracted you to the platform in the first place. For many people, there’s nothing like having complete control over how your photos are hosted and managed. No ads, no distracting recommended posts, no distracting or complicating features—just simple sharing with the connections you choose.

You might also want to think about how you can arrange your photos. Rather than a running newsfeed, would you prefer to put them in folders so they’re clearly labeled and easy for you to sort and for others to find.

Are you comfortable with everyone commenting on your content? Being able to easily turn the comment section on or off depending on audience, may be something worth considering

Storage is also an important consideration. As an archive, many social media platforms are an unreliable form of storage, with unpredictable changes in features and timelines that are difficult—if not impossible—to navigate. Many people have photos and videos stored in different ways, such as in the cloud, on hard drives, and even within certain applications themselves, but then struggle with access and resolution issues.

What is the best alternative to Instagram?

If you’re on the lookout for a good alternative to Instagram that lets you build and connect with the communities you choose in a safe, ad-free, secure environment, then take a closer look at Kinscape.

We designed Kinscape with shareability, connection, and privacy in mind, from the ground up. We also researched the networking features that are most important to our members, including:

Ad-free, private social networking
No targeting or newsfeed manipulation
Members have 100% ownership and control of data
User-friendly access and controls
Easy-to-create communities and groups of specific contacts
Safe, private, photo, video, voice, and document storage

In addition, Kinscape gives you a lot of flexibility to share your content—whether it’s photos, videos, screenshots, memes, PDF documents, and more—all from any device in a user-friendly interface. Here are just a few of the features that we think make Kinscape the best alternative to Instagram:

No ads, no clickbait, no tracking: Since Kinscape is a subscription-based membership, we tier our pricing structure to suit your needs rather than selling your data to the highest bidder through targeted advertisements or recommended posts. Membership starts with a free option, and you can pay a small monthly or annual fee as your use of Kinscape grows, without fear of having your data exploited or sold.
100% control of your data: Every feature in Kinscape comes with an option for you to share if, when, how, to whom, and where you choose. Just you, no one else decides who to share your data with or what data to share with you. If for some reason you feel as though you’re seeing too much of someone else’s content, there’s an easy-to-adjust setting for that.
Create communities of any size: Communities in Kinscape can be as small or as large as you like, and you can have as many as you like under our membership scheme. Family, close friends, local clubs and associations, school and extra-curricular groups, work colleagues—the options are endless and designed to cater to the communities you interact with separately in your daily life, while keeping them separate for you.
Create stories and build legacies: There really is no true alternative to the story feature in Kinscape, as it gives you the flexibility to create posts that are as long or as short as you like, contain various types of media as mentioned above, and can be organized in folders or chapters in whatever way suits you best and helps you tell your story. Again, you choose who to share your story with—you can even let them collaborate in building it, and then publish if when you choose.
Stay in touch with private messages: Our messaging feature lets you stay in touch, ask a quick question, or reach out to your communities at any time in a totally private and secure setting. And you don’t have to worry that if you ask cousin Susan about her baby’s diaper rash, you’re going to start seeing ads for diaper cream in your newsfeed.
Store important data and content in your own private vault: Another popular and unique feature in Kinscape is its private Vault where you can safely store your online content. Kinscape automatically stores the content you upload into your communities here, but you also have the option to upload other precious digital items, such as photos, PDFs, videos, voice files, and more. It remains accessible at all times, but safe and private

We understand that it can be quite an undertaking to change your preferred social media site for photo sharing and building new communities, but Kinscape makes it easy. Learn more about our easy-to-use features and how Kinscape may just be the alternative you need.

Randi Haran | April 26, 2024August 12, 2024

Whether you’re a small club, a growing association, or a small company, keeping members and employees connected and informed is essential to achieving your goals. In a post-COVID world where people expect online options and businesses are reducing overhead by moving toward hybrid environments, maintaining strong, easy-to-access internal communications can be challenging.

Having a well-planned communications strategy with excellent communication and collaboration tools that encourage employee engagement and set the tone of the company culture is key to employee satisfaction, which also results in retention and growth.

What is internal communications?

Internal communications refers to the way employees or members within a club or association are kept informed about the business and matters affecting their work. For instance, if the company hires a new CEO or the club buys new equipment for members to use—it’s all the information shared by the company or organization to its members and employees about the company.

Internal communications also helps members and employees stay connected and collaborating, and provides a voice for information around mission, company goals, core values, and related policies and guidelines.

Often the role of internal communications is helping employees stay connected and keeping them current on the latest company initiatives, brand guidelines, and usage policies. A good internal comms strategy should provide a corporate voice that is distinct from individual leaders to help ensure clear communications between groups and rule enforcement.

Most importantly, good internal communications is a two-way street. There has to be a mechanism in any internal communication strategy for two-way engagement, questions, employee feedback, and ongoing conversations.

Why internal communication is so important

Any business, club, or association that wants to succeed in today’s digital economy has to ensure that all its members or employees are truly aligned on the organization’s mission and vision, and clearly understand its daily operations and procedures. Indeed, many labor laws and government regulations mandate certain trainings and policies, and these all involve the use of internal communications at some point.

Just as importantly, employees have to feel connected—part of something that they believe in and are proud of—and to do that, they must feel in the know. If they are not informed about key decisions and don’t understand why those decisions are made, the mission is more likely to fail and retention start to decrease. In short, informed employees are productive employees.

How to build an effective internal communication strategy

First and foremost, an effective communications strategy depends on understanding how to reach members and employees in ways that work for them. For instance, setting up complicated wikis or knowledgebases may not work well if the audience you’re targeting is not in a very technology-focused role, such as a receptionist or a junior soccer club member.

Still, standard internal communications methods—emails, newsletters, intranet pages—may not be enough as new communication methods shape the way we live, work, and play. In our ever-expanding digital work, people are looking for more engaging features, such as file sharing, collaboration tools, and chat functions.

As well as choosing the right tools for the people, it’s also important to consider the goals and ways to measure success. This doesn’t have to be a complex mashup of analytics, dashboards, and KPIs. Depending on your size and budget, seeing high employee or member engagement in your collaboration tools and getting direct feedback on the employee may just be enough, depending on the size and budget of your organization.

The best internal communication software

There are many kinds of internal communications software to consider when looking at the best tools for your team. These include:

Outsourced employee engagement apps: Company apps, usually developed by an outsourced third party, can seem like a good idea. However, the reality is that they often end up providing a less than ideal user experience and lack adequate platform support.
Software: Intranet software can provide a useful framework for presenting information, but many employees find them difficult to navigate or access, and employers struggle to keep information close to real time.
Platforms: Cloud-based workforce communications platforms can offer multiple communication tools in a fully integrated system.
Email: Most organizations use email though not as a real-time communication tool.
Virtual conference tools: The covid-19 pandemic saw an explosion in affordable, easy-to-use conferencing tools, which increasingly are becoming integrated into other channels, such as email.
A combination of all or some of the above.

Depending on your size, budget, and needs, Kinscape provides many cloud-based workforce communications features that help provide an excellent internal comms experience and help keep your members or employees engaged.

With Kinscape, members and employees access to a centralized resource for answers to their questions, latest company news and updates, policies and regulations, newsletters, file-sharing capabilities, and more. Content can be organized and clearly labeled so it’s easy to find, and comment fields enable feedback and other relevant notes.

Another important feature for employees is the ability to connect, network, and collaborate with other employees and leadership, which can foster loyalty, support retention, and strengthen relationships. Plus the built-in messaging features makes it easy for staff to message each other without having to hop in and out of different applications.

All of the features are easy to use on Kinscape. With minimal set up, employees can share files, promote inside events and activities, and view important information from across the organization. Furthermore, all this company-confidential information is kept safe and secure.

Online tools have become a daily routine for many people and Kinscape offers a great way for internal communication staff to ensure employees and club members feel connected, informed, and heard.

Create an account with Kinscape now and explore our communication featues. Our tiered subscription service means you can choose the plan that’s right for you straightaway, starting with a basic free sign up. As you discover the many advantages of Kinscape, upgrading is quick and easy.

Randi Haran | April 12, 2024February 14, 2025

With about 2.9 billion active monthly users, Facebook is arguably the world’s leading social media and social networking service today. But the number of subscribers regularly changes as members often come and go for many reasons, including those looking for social network and group alternatives.

Why do people leave Facebook?

So just what are the reasons for trying to find an alternative to Facebook to keep in touch with family and friends, and share precious moments? Certainly, negative press and scandals such as Cambridge Analytica, the Snowden leaks, and political manipulation have stirred criticism and fueled controversy.

But among the Facebook members we spoke with, motives are often complex and varied. A major complaint we heard over and over is that the Facebook algorithm doesn’t always show every post from friends or family, but instead shows you what it thinks is engaging content. For many, this is both frustrating and creepy.

Others expressed concerned about wasting too much time on the platform or that they worry about its echo-chamber effects and the negative psychological and health impacts from social comparison and feelings of envy. Other reasons include:

Concerns over data privacy. Again, this is a major issue as members increasingly resent being tracked and their personal data used for ad targeting.
Irrelevant and overshared posts, which often show in newsfeeds and are difficult to control.
Difficulty managing overblown networks without unfriending people and damaging relationships.
Reputation damage from old posts that are still floating out there from those raucous teenage years.
Unsustainable social obligations. For instance, having to like posts back or feeling duty bound to post a funny comment.
Distracting clickbait that just seems to come from nowhere.
Security threats from phishing scams that try to harvest information to hack your password and hijack your account.
False advertising from fake companies trying to sell you miracle products.
Disinformation, whether political, health-related, or simply malicious.
Ethical concerns as the company dominates the social media industry and whistleblowers leak stories of unethical behavior.

Facebook Group Alternative

Whatever the reason, finding an alternative to Facebook for keeping in touch, networking, and sharing important information about your life can be challenging. Many platforms target specific features and lack robustness in others. For instance, Twitter and Instagram support short posts and images, TikTok focuses on video, and Pinterest is based on image sharing.

Other alternatives, such as NextDoor and Dischord, support specific member communities with limited features. And while the list of social media options continues to grow, few have been able to incorporate all the handy features members crave without the drawbacks of a freemium business model.

Facebook Messenger Alternative

There may be many reasons why people are looking for an alternative to Facebook Messenger to connect with family. Reasons may also include privacy and data tracking concerns. Alternatives, such as Skype and WhatsApp, offer many of the features commonly used and may be suited for either business or personal use specifically. However, managing multiple messenger apps for different audiences can be burdensome and time-consuming.

Private and Secure Facebook Alternative

When we designed Kinscape, we listened to many Facebook members who were frustrated with current social media options and wanted to connect more intimately with family and friends in a safe, private environment. Turns out, many of the people we spoke with were fed up with the pervasive and exploitive advertising model, and unhappy with loss of personal data control.

From there, we listed out the networking features that were important in helping people stay connected, share precious moments with loved ones, and keep up to date. These features include:

Ad-free social networking
No targeting or newsfeed manipulation
Members have 100% ownership and control of data
User-friendly access and controls
Easy-to-create communities and groups of specific contacts
Private chat function
Collaboration tools for storytelling and information sharing
Safe, private, photo, video, voice, and document storage

Rather than simply cloning Facebook to create a mediocre alternative with similar useability issues and limitations, we designed Kinscape, a new and exciting kind of subscription-based social media network. Not only is privacy and data security at the heart of everything about Kinscape, but we took the kinds of features people were already enjoying and improved them.

Connect with Family and Friends in an Ad-Free Space

There are many flexible ways in Kinscape to share, invite members, and create content within your communities, making them a powerful alternative to Facebook groups, Pinterest boards, WhatsApp groups, and other networking apps. Here are just a few of you’ll love and want to take advantage of as you build your network:

No ads, no clickbait, no tracking: Subscription based means that rather than selling your data to the highest bidder through targeted advertisements, you pay a small monthly or annual fee and can take advantage of all of Kinscape’s features without fear of having your data exploited or sold.

100% control of your data: Every feature in Kinscape comes with an option for you to share if, when, how, to whom, and where you choose. Just you, no one else decides. And if you feel as though you’re seeing too much of someone else’s content, you can adjust that setting, too.

Create communities of any size: Communities in Kinscape can be as small or as large as you like, and you can have as many as you like, but they’re all distinct. Family, close friends, knitting circles, soccer teams, local clubs, school alumni, school records, work colleagues—the options are endless and designed to cater to the communities you interact with separately in your daily life.

Create stories and build legacies: There really is no true alternative to the story feature in Kinscape, as it gives you the flexibility to create stories that are as long or as short as you like, and use multiple types of content—photos, video, voice recording, PDFs, and more to tell your story. Again, you choose who to share your story with, whether you’d like them to collaborate in building it, and then publish if and when you’re ready. You can set the date to publish as well.

Stay in touch with private messages: Our messaging feature lets you stay in touch, ask a quick question, or reach out to your contacts any time, letting you choose whether to message a community or individuals in a totally private and secure setting. No worries that if you ask Uncle Dan about his bout of stomach flu, you’re going to start seeing ads for ant-acids in your newsfeed.

Store important data and content in your own private vault: Another popular and unique feature in Kinscape is its private Vault where you can safely store your online content. Kinscape automatically stores the content you upload into your communities here, but you also have the option to upload other precious digital items, such as PDFs, videos, voice files, and more. It remains accessible at all times, but safe and private, until you’re ready to share.

If you’re on the hunt for a good alternative to Facebook and looking to avoid newsfeed algorithms, targeted ads, data protection risks, and more, be sure to do your research and give Kinscape a tour. We’re confident you’ll find it offers many of the features you enjoy without the issues that can keep you up at night worrying.

And to make it even easier, you can get started for free straightaway, and see for yourself how flexible and fun staying in touch through social media can be.

Visit Kinscape.com and sign up now.

Peter Cunningham | March 28, 2024February 14, 2025

Social media platforms and apps have given us unprecedented opportunity to check in on loved ones, nurture family bonds, and stay in touch with family members, but they’ve also raised more than a few alarm bells. Especially for families with children and those concerned about their privacy.

The pervasiveness of social media in this digital age can be a valuable tool for building online community, networking, and sharing thoughts, ideas, and accomplishments. However, many are struggling to find the balance between using social networking to engage with family, friends, and other groups and keeping their personal lives out of the viral storm of ad algorithms, stalkers, and malicious bots.

From sharing a video of baby’s first steps or posting photos of the kids at the beach, to swapping family recipes in a group message or working together to build a family tree, people increasingly want to spend more time regularly interacting with family over social media. Yet here are just a few barriers parents and family groups face around signing up for a social networking app:

Reluctance to share significant life events to everyone on the friends list, which typically includes distant friends and colleagues.
Privacy and safety concerns, especially around sharing photos and information about children.
Overabundance of targeted ads, behavior tracking, data mining, and clickbait.
Potential for identity theft and fraud.
Political opinions that might trigger disagreements.
Inappropriate and even demeaning comments from insensitive friends.
Links to non-child friendly features, such as dating apps and obsessive games.
Messaging apps that allow contact from strangers.
Future repercussions, especially for younger family members, around old photos being accessible years later.

A private social network offers online community and social network opportunities that are completely private and safe. No sharing of data, no tracking or monitoring to sell your data to advertisers, and no uninvited stalkers or lurkers trying to sneak a view of your content. You control your content and have all the tools you need to allow only those you want into your communities, while your data remains safe and secure.

Kinscape is a private social network that does all this and more. It removes all the barriers listed above, by offering a safe, private, easy-to-use social media platform with a rich set of features designed with families in mind. Privacy and safety are at the heart of all we do and central to our design philosophy.

Kinscape makes it easy for you to build your own private online family communities without privacy concerns because you always have full control of your data and who can see it. It creates a space for you to manage your family networks, add or remove family and friends, share important events, post photos, videos, and other family documents, and keep all members in the loop on family activities.

Here’s how easy it is to sign up for Kinscape, build a family community, and start sharing:

Step One

Step Two

Start a Community. Kinscape is ideal for families, clubs, teams, and more. If you’re creating a family community, give it a name, and upload a cover photo to make it easy for other family members to recognize. You might want to consider creating family communities for different sets of family members, for instance, cousins, siblings, the wife’s side of the family, the husband’s side of the family, the generation of grandparents and great aunts and uncles. That lets you decide what information you share out to each group and avoid oversharing to those who may be less interested.

Step Three

Invite your family members. If they’re already in Kinscape and you’re connected, they’ll pop up as an option. Otherwise, simply enter their email address and we’ll shoot them an email with easy-to-follow instructions. As Admin of the family Community, you also control whether they can comment and add their own Stories to share with the group.

Step Four

Start building Stories to share with your private family community. Stories can take many forms, such as photo albums, videos, voice recordings, written chapters, and a combination of everything. They can also be as long or as short as you like, and you can decide which members of your family can contribute and comment.

Step Five

Share your Stories to your private family Community. In one easy step, you share your Story to your group to enjoy and contribute, depending on the permissions you give them.

Unlike Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and other ad-based social media platforms, Kinscape offers a completely ad-free environment with the promise that we’ll never share your data or track your behavior to profit off your desire to connect with family and friends.

Our subscription-based service gives you a simple and safe way to share those precious memories and delightful moments without worrying about social pressures and exploitative tracking.

For parents, grandparents, siblings, and cousins, Kinscape makes social media family sharing easy and fun with an alternative, protected space to share family information and photos. Think of it as a private safe haven where you can keep your family members updated on everything from daily news to major milestones.

Here are some of the features that differentiate Kinscape from Facebook, Instagram, and similar ad-based platforms:

No ads, clickbait, or data selling.
Control over who can comment and provide feedback
Option to sign up for an unlimited number of Communities for every aspect of your life.
Rich storytelling/scrapbooking features.
200 GB of storage in a private vault.
Messaging tool for individual or family contacts.

More importantly, are the many things you can do in Kinscape to help your family stay in touch, nurture the bonds and strengthen the ties you share. Here are just a few ideas:

Use the Story feature to create a photo album for a family wedding, baptism, anniversary, birthday, or other celebration and invite family members to post their own photos from the event. You can create a chapter for the formal photographers’ photos, and add more chapters either by contributor, people in the photo, or time of day. Gathering all the photos in this way makes a wonderful keepsake, and you can always download digital copies at any time to be made into prints.

Create a community for all your children’s educational needs. You can give educators, coaches, mentors, and tutors access to the community as needed, and upload important documents. Having a safe, centralized place where you can go to access certificates, store lesson plans, and so on, keeps your children’s educational life organized and ready to go.

Host a community for your local club or association. If you and your family are involved with the local chapter of a club, association, or other affiliated group, using Kinscape to post notices, keep records, safely share photos, and so on, makes perfect sense. You can also pass the admin role onto someone else when it’s time to move on.

Build a family tree within a Story and share it across the family so people can add more ancestors and something about themselves, if they choose. This tradition used to be passed down through old family bibles, but these would fade, get lost, and disappear over time. Now Kinscape makes it possible to do it electronically and store it safely for future generations to come.

Write your own memoir or story and share it when you’re ready. There are many success stories of writers going viral after self-publishing their stories. Kinscape makes it easy to write a story and then give your communities access to read it. You can also choose to allow them to provide feedback. Your family will love to read stories about your youth and experiences with past generations. And with Kinscape, your story and photographs, videos, and voice recordings, can be saved for generations to come.

At the end of the day, most people really don’t want everything they do or every photo they take to be broadcast across social media and visible to strangers, but they do want to share precious, private moments with family and the people who matter most. Kinscape lets that happen.

Randi Haran | March 21, 2024August 12, 2024

Sharing moments, celebrating important dates, keeping in touch on daily lives, and nurturing the familial bond through routine check-ins are all a natural part of the human condition, but something many people miss when families live across time zones.

By age 50, almost 95% of Americans will no longer live near where they grew up, most following jobs, education opportunities, a lower cost of living, or simply seeking a change, according to studies by the US Census Bureau and the Pew Research Center.

Yet in these studies, almost 70% of respondents ranked family high among the things they value and noted that family gives them a sense of meaning. Family weddings, new grandchildren, first days at school, sports achievements—these are all cherished milestones in life that we want to share with loved ones, even if they can’t be there at the time. And it’s not just families—long distance couples and close friends can experience the same absence of emotional connection when far away from loved ones.

Staying Connected is Easier Than Ever Before

With the advent of the internet, social media, video calls, and more affordable travel options, staying connected has become easier and more common than ever before. A few hundred years ago when our ancestors set sail to distant shores, they rarely, if ever, saw those they loved again and relied on the occasional hand-written letter to stay in touch. Today, there are many more ways to withstand the distance and maintain strong family ties.

Top Tips and Advice on Staying Connected

Even if you are lucky enough to be able to spend the holidays together, it can still be a struggle to stay close and keep up with what’s happening in each other’s lives. Here are seven top tips for staying connected as a long-distance family without missing out on the regular joys and laughter.

Use an app that allows you to share photos, videos, posts, and other content in a safe, private environment that is easy for older people to use and navigate. The more collaboration and communication features, the better.

Find an interest or hobby you have in common with other family members or friends and share it through an app that lets you keep the conversation going and celebrate your achievements together.

Create a group chat to regularly reach out and message family and friends, even with short snippets that simply let everyone know you’re thinking about them. A thoughtful note lets them feel you there in spirit and shows you care.

Keep photos around the home to remind you of your loved ones. Even in this digital age, it’s possible to download photos and get reprints done quickly and in high resolution. You can even personalize them into a book or special album.

Share family traditions and stories. Posting Grandma’s delicious pasta recipes is a great way to share her legacy and a taste of home. You might even create new fun traditions, such as whacky photo challenges and video birthday cards.

Organize monthly video calls. While many of us enjoy video calls with certain family members and friends more often than others, having a regular call where everyone knows to block the calendar that day each month, is a great way to stay in touch.

Start an online family newsletter to keep loved ones up to date on how you are all doing and invite each member of the family to contribute about their activities and adventures over the course of the year.

It’s important to remember, however, that staying in touch means more than just text messages and the occasional phone call. It requires building and maintaining relationship bonds through conversations and everyone participating in sharing—making sure each voice is heard and appreciated.

Take Time to Connect and Nurture Bonds

More importantly, staying connected with family and friends takes time and effort. It’s easy to get caught up in the day to day and then wake up one day and suddenly realize it’s been three months since you heard from anyone.

Kinscape offers everything you need to nurture and cherish bonds with family and friends, no matter where they live. Its private, secure environment offers more than just social media features and is easy for older aunts, uncles, and grandparents to use. All content is kept safe and secure, and you get to decide who sees what and when. Every time.

Communities that Come Alive

Kinscape lets you create communities, invite family members to join, and share photos, videos, and other posts in complete privacy and safety. No distracting ads to worry about, and no one’s tracking you or trying to find ways to sell your data.

With Kinscape, you can set up as many communities as you need to stay in touch with family. For instance, an in-laws community, a community just for cousins, or a community for close family friends.

Each community may have a different focus, such as family health-related matters, or local news from your hometown. The list of possibilities is endless. And Kinscape is incredibly easy to use with cool features that make uploading and sharing quick and simple.

Stories for Generations to Come

The story feature in Kinscape lets you create a story and add video, photos, even voice recordings, decide when to publish it, who to share it with, and whether to let anyone else collaborate on pulling it together.

You can also map out your family tree and use Kinscape features to organize and document our ancestors, even collaborate with other family members and researchers. For instance, the messaging feature lets you regularly check in to see how everyone is doing or ask questions about a post or story in the community.

Virtual Hugs are Good for the Soul, too

Although nothing replaces the feel of a hug and the touch of a hand in yours, staying in contact is vital for long-distance families, and there’s a lot of documented evidence that enjoying positive family relationships is important to your senses of wellbeing and health. Consider it giving your soul a virtual hug.

Therefore, we owe it to our families and to ourselves to find memorable ways of staying connected, especially since modern technology makes easier than ever before. While handwritten letters are still a delight to receive, being able to reach out and instantly connect, enjoy family photos and videos, and catch up on the latest family gossip from the comfort of your own armchair is also something worth cherishing.

Kinscape makes it easy and safe.

Randi Haran | March 17, 2024February 14, 2025

From ancient cave paintings to modern digital video and audio technology, family members have cherished sharing stories and passing down family history. Every family has stories to tell its future generations, shared narratives passed down from ancestors that can give us context, insights, and a sense of our place in the world.

What is a family story?

Family stories are a great way to capture tales about family members and ancestors, their experiences, lives, and adventures. They also help us understand the past, make sense of our lives moving forward, and give our children a foundation to grow upon. For many, the COVID pandemic demonstrated the value of capturing, collecting, and sharing precious family memories and experiences that help us nurture bonds and more deeply appreciate loved ones, especially when we can’t be together in person.

If you find yourself in the role of family-story gatekeeper, the responsibility of passing down ancestral information and legacies to younger generations may seem a little daunting at first. However, never in the history of humankind has it been so easy to record, collect, preserve, and share these stories, even if you live far away or only see each other at holidays.

Whether you’re interested in creating a family time capsule, documenting the lives of elderly relatives, building out a family tree for your children, or simply keeping records for future generations and projects, there are excellent options available for recording, documenting, storing, and sharing. And you don’t have to be a professional film maker or storyteller to produce and present your family history in delightful ways.