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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, 2024August 12, 2024

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, 2024August 12, 2024

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.

Break the Barriers to Family Social Networking

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.

What is a Private Social Network?

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 Provides a Safe Private Social Network for Family

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.

A Family-Focused Social Network

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.

An Alternative to Ad-Based Social Media Networks

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, 2024August 12, 2024

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.

Five Steps to Recording and Saving Priceless Family Stories

Here are a few helpful tips, strategies, and resources to help get you get started.

Step One

The first step in recording a family history is to think about what you want to get out of conversations with relatives, and the goals of your project. Ask yourself the following questions:

Is there a particular era or event you’d like to cover?
Are there family secrets you’d like to dig into a bit more?
What would interest your children or other family members?
How much do you already know that can help get interviewee talking?
What additional research can you do to better understand the areas you’d like explore?

Step Two

Figure out the logistics. This means deciding who to interview, when, where, and how. If you can’t be together in person, use a video conferencing program like zoom, which many people of all generations have come to learn through the pandemic.

Remember that not everyone will be comfortable talking in front of a camera or even a smartphone, remote or not, so you might have to be flexible and just the microphone, perhaps switching to video later as your family member relaxes and opens up. Some people may do better with just a voice recording using a recording device to tape an oral history.

If your family member is a bit nervous or shy about being recorded, consider recording a couple of people together, such as grandparents, aunts and uncles, mothers and daughters. It could provide a beautiful, cherished recording, and help those being interviewed reminisce and tell a fuller story.

Step Three

Once you’ve set up a convenient time, prepare the scene. Here are some quick tips to ensure you have the right location:

Ensure the spot is quiet—away from a busy road, no TV blaring in the background, or dogs barking.
If possible, record indoors to avoid wind noise and environmental distractions.
Try to use an interesting or cozy background, such as a bookshelf or hearth.
Encourage the subject to sit in a comfortable chair and wear comfortable clothes so they feel more relaxed.
If you’re videoing, ensure your interviewees are in the light and take advantage of the natural lighting in the room. You don’t need studio lighting—if necessary, an affordable ring light can help.
Position the microphone between you and the person you’re interviewing so that both voices are captured and you know which questions are being answered.

Step Four

Prepare your interview questions well in advance and group them by theme or by year. Chances are your subject isn’t used to being interviewed and Q&A is certainly not part of your normal interactions, so it’s a good idea to have a few gentle warm up questions ready. Here are some great starter questions to help break the ice:

What was one of the silliest things you ever did?
What were your parents like?
Has your life turned out differently than you thought it would, and if so, how?
Tell me about the house/town you grew up in?
What sorts of things did you do with your friends, before you were married?
How did you and grandma/grandpa/Mom/Dad meet?
Tell me about the biggest challenge you’ve faced in life, and how you overcome it?

Once you feel that you’re in the flow, you can move onto any specific questions on the topics you’d like to cover. Most of your questions should be open-ended, meaning they give the interviewee chance to expand on their answer, for instance:

Tell me about …
What was it like when …?
What happened when …?
How did you overcome …?
How did that happen?
What were you thinking then?

But have a few close-ended interview questions ready too, as they can help make the interview feel less one-sided and offer a change of pace. Close-ended questions are designed for yes/no or short targeted answers:

Did you like that?
Was it hot that day?
Who gave you that?
What did he say next?

Although the answer may be very short, these questions can also trigger memories and some of the answers might surprise you and lead to follow on topics.

Also don’t be surprised if a family member takes you down a totally different path than expected and your questions aren’t in the right order or relevant for the topic. You can always circle back round later and keep some very generic questions at hand, in case the detour topic turns out to be more exciting. Generic questions include:

How did that make you feel?
What did you do next?
Who else saw/heard/experienced the same thing?
Is there anything else you can remember about that?
What did your mother/father/brother/sister do?

If you’re planning on asking about events that might be difficult or uncomfortable for the family member to discuss, take it slowly, and give them the option not to answer. At the same time, don’t try to fill any awkward silences. The interviewee may be accessing tough memories or thinking about people they hadn’t thought about in a long while. Let the silence rest until they’re ready. It could be worth it.

Step Five

Once you’ve completed the recording, you’re ready to think about any edits to make or other special effects to add. There are many easy-to-use apps and software packages that let you crop and enhance videos, add soundtracks, photos, captions, and other effects. These can make your videos more interesting and a great way to use other types of content. Many of these apps don’t require special training and often members of the younger generation are already well versed in using them.

In many cases, you’ll want to store the raw footage or use it later on for future family history projects. Obtaining a transcription for a written version of the story is also easy, and affordable if not free online. A transcript makes it easy to turn memories and experiences into a memoir or part of another project.

Also, begin to pull together photos, documents, and other materials that support and expand on the stories you’re telling. Digitize old home movies, tapes, and photographs so that they don’t fade or degrade over time.

Collect, Store, and Share with Kinscape

Once you’ve captured the recording, videos, photos, and any other documents, Kinscape offers excellent features to make it easy to collect, share, and store these precious memories. Not only do the features in Kinscape include rich social networking capabilities, but you remain 100% in control of your content, and it’s kept totally private, Kinscape’s ad-free platform means you have no fear of seeing ads or click bait related to Great Uncle Henry’s whisky drinking or Aunt Sarah’s fifth divorce.

Here’s a quick glance at some of the features you can use for your family story projects:

Communities: Kinscape lets you build a community or communities specifically for sharing your content with your family, while enabling you to participate or create other communities for different aspects of your life. Creating a community is simple and is the perfect place to share photos, videos, stories, and much more, safely and without fear of prying eyes.

Stories: The story feature in Kinscape is ideal for collaborating with family members on building stories and sharing precious memories. Stories can be arranged by chapter and be as long or short as needed. You can upload pictures, videos, voice recordings, and other family documents. Again, you own and control every aspect of the story, including who and when other family members can see it and contribute.

Private message: Have a quick question to see who knows anything about long-lost Uncle Ted, or keen to touch base with your niece who’s helping edit the video? Simply use our messaging feature to contact family members in your community.

Private vault: This is a key feature designed to help you safely store these vital stories and keep them safe for generations to come. Everything stored in your private value is kept private, but easy to access at all times.

Importance of Family Stories

Our time with loved ones is precious and while we can’t always be together, we can still share in and enjoy our experiences and family tales. Capturing them for future generations is a wonderful gift, building a lasting legacy and keeping your family history safe.

Randi Haran | March 9, 2024August 12, 2024

It’s no surprise that people are looking for alternatives to Facebook, Instagram, and other “freemium” social media tools to connect with family and friends, network with others, and build online communities.

Distracting third-party ads, behavior tracking, and sharing personal data are all well-documented risks and drawbacks of these apps. Not to mention fake news and possible addiction issues, which you might have seen in The Social Dilemma documentary.

Ad-Free Privacy

Kinscape takes a totally different approach to ensuring your privacy, with a secure, safe social networking space where you completely control your data, only connect with people you know and trust, and handpick who sees your content in your private online groups.

Our philosophy is based on a deep respect for your privacy and security. As social media users ourselves, we know how it feels to be stalked on the internet by targeted ads. The ad-tech industry is huge, raking in billions of dollars every year—all based on selling your data as often and to as many companies as possible. So, it’s small wonder that they’re trying to track your every move.

The rationale for freemium people-profiling is often something like, well you don’t get something for free. And they’re right. But Kinscape gives you a lot for a very little—and all without the intrusive ads, tracked data, and compromised privacy.

Powerful Social Networking Features

Kinscape gives you rich social networking features, 100% control of your content, and the reassurance that your content is always safe from prying eyes. Here are a few of the fun features that help you stay in touch with family and friends, share precious memories, and invite others to celebrate in your stories:

Build Communities: In real life, most of us belong to several different communities where we interact every day—family, close friends, the book club, children’s schools, the soccer team, the list is endless. Kinscape lets you build private online groups, or communities, for each of these different aspects of your life, controlling who overlaps where (in case cousin Susan is also in your yoga group) and what they see. In Kinscape, building a community is simple, and once you’ve established your private online group, you can share photos, videos, recipes, ideas, documents, and much more. And as Community Admin, you stay in control of who can see the content, who can comment, and who can share.

Create Stories: Unlike many other social networking platforms, Kinscape lets you create stories that are as long or as short as you like, add pictures, videos, or voice footage, share or keep private, and collaborate with others. Creating a Story in Kinscape is easy and like Communities, you can create as many as you want. The beauty of Kinscape is that you can share each Story with anyone from your contact list, so you may choose to invite cousin Sam to collaborate on your genealogy Story before publishing to your entire family, or start your memoir and keep it under wraps until you’re ready. Again, you own and control every aspect of your content.

Private Message: Our messenger feature lets you stay in touch, ask a quick question, or reach out to your contacts any time, making it easy to contact your communities and connections in a totally private and secure setting.

Private Vault: One of Kinscape’s unique features is its private Vault where you can safely store your online content, whether you post it on the platform or not. Kinscape will automatically store content from your communities here, but you also have the option to upload other precious moments, documents, videos, voice files, and more. Content in your vault is yours to keep safe and private, but readily accessible at all times.

Again, these are just some of the major features Kinscape offers to help you connect, stay connected, and celebrate your precious moments safely, in private, and without the distraction of multiple ads eerily targeting you for something you already bought last week, or something the algorithm decided you should be buying.

Getting Started is Free

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 communities, upgrading is quick and easy.

Be sure to watch our short videos as a quick introduction to Kinscape and some of its features, and to help you get started. We’re excited about the future of private online networks and thrilled to have built a strong platform that people can trust to respect them as people—not potential ad revenue.

Additional Tips

As social media afficionados ourselves, we also understand that many of you will probably want to continue to use the traditional platforms while you build out your communities and connections in Kinscape. Here are a few safety and privacy tips to consider while networking and interacting on platforms that are open to targeted ads, behavior tracking, and other kinds of lurking:

Understand all the site features, including any privacy settings that are available. In many cases, these may be able to help you control who will see your posts and messages, or at least identify any privacy weaknesses. Kinscape has privacy built into every feature and gives you full control of your privacy every step of the way.

Adjust your privacy settings to avoid using default settings that might be designed to permit sharing your information. Default settings are those that were originally there when you first created the account. In Kinscape, all settings are defaulted to maximize privacy, so you get to choose when and who you share your information with every step.

Minimize the personal information you use to create the account and never provide sensitive information such as social security number, bank account, workplace, or schools as that information could be used to serve ads or scam you. The basic information that you need to create a Kinscape account is always kept strictly confidential and secure.

If you don’t want all your friends to see when you’re online, offline, or the last time you were online, hide your status. Note that in some cases, this may prevent you from seeing your friends’ online activity, too. Only you let your friends, family, and other connections know when you’re available on Kinscape.

Verify your friend requests before you accept. Be sure you really know them and understand why they want to connect. If you think you’re already friends, send them a quick note outside the platform to check in case their account has been hacked. Kinscape uses email verification to confirm friendship requests and only shows members who have consented.

Do not share your location. Many social media apps use this function to serve you ads and let you know about nearby people and events. Turning off this feature in the app keeps your location private. In Kinscape, only you let your friends, family, and other connections know your location.

Carefully consider what photos you post. Photos can reveal a lot of information about you, including places you like to frequent, family members, your home, and your hobbies. All this makes you a strong target for cybercriminals and might even put your loved ones at risk. When you post photos in Kinscape, you choose who sees them.

Avoid clicking on clickbait, such as surveys and celebrity gossip, as these are often third-party apps trying to capture your private information for nefarious purposes. Kinscape does not allow these kinds of clickbait and ads on its platform. Period.

Read the terms and conditions before blindly accepting them. In particular, note what kind of information you are agreeing to share when you sign up as this information can be valuable, and check if your content is completely deleted from the company’s servers without having to delete your entire account. While reading the legal print can be tedious, some of the terms and conditions may exceed your comfort level, so be sure your permission choices are right for you. We believe in being completely transparent and respecting your privacy in everything we do. Our simple terms and policies are clear and especially crafted with your privacy and security top of mind.

Social media has become a daily routine for many people, and can be an enriching, fun, and entertaining pleasure. Many people love sharing their daily lives and keeping up to date with friends and loved ones. At Kinscape, we believe that protecting your privacy leads to a more rewarding and richer experience. We’re confident you will too.

Create an account with Kinscape now see for yourself.

Peter Cunningham | February 4, 2024August 12, 2024

Kinscape has been a dream of mine for many years. I was into the internet and web space in the early 1990s, and my company worked for many online technology vendors through their incredible development. However, I always believed that a person’s electronic DNA and life was theirs and not ‘owned’ by anyone else.

That is Kinscape’s core ethos.

Kinscape provides a secure, safe, and private place for families, groups, and communities to connect, communicate and share what is important to them. For the whole of human existence we have used stories, songs, and other information packets to entertain, inform, educate, communicate and band together. Kinscape enables us to do all of that without ads, behavior tracking, or click bait.

We are making Kinscape easy and inexpensive to use so that everyone around the world can share their special moments and participate in private online groups. We will add multiple language capabilities very soon.

We used the name ‘Kinscape’ to reflect our purpose: ‘kin’ refers to our family, friends, acquaintances, workers, fellow members, or to whatever group we belong, while ‘scape’ is the topography or layout of the electronic space the group occupies.

Kinscape addresses our current needs to share information and store precious memories, but it also provides a historic dimension: in 100 years, your descendants/ and followers will be able to see and hear you, as well as know what was important to you.

Through Kinscape you can leave a secure electronic legacy and document future history.

Try it – you’ll like it!

Cheers!

Peter Cunningham