I began working on Jellies—a safe, curated environment for kids to watch videos— for my own family back in 2016 after continued issues with alternatives. My kids were constantly exposed to inappropriate ads, bombarded by consumerism, and children with bad behavior. As a parent who builds app for a living, I knew my team and I could do better.
Fast forward to 2017, and the more troubling issues with kids videos were revealed by the NY Times and many others. The Jellies approach of 100% editorial (human) driven content automatically solved this problem. What we’re still after, however, are the more subtle aspects from our original vision. So you’ll never find toy unboxings, “child stars,” or even hear words like “stupid” or “dumb” on Jellies.
If you pay attention to tech news, then you might have heard that YouTube Kids is trying to move closer to two of Jellies' approaches: human curation and categorizing content. Their approach on “curation,” however, is to whitelist channels after screening just a few videos. In Jellies, we whitelist each and every video. Their collections are much broader (e.g., “Games” or “Learning”) versus our topics that go deep on specific subjects like “Forklifts” or “Women in History.” There’s much more that separates Jellies, however, including our dedicated Parents Mode and kidSAFE seal approval. Take a look:
http://jelliesapp.com/alternativ...
We are on Product Hunt today to announce the release of our timer feature that launched this week on iOS and Android. Now parents can set a timer in Parents Mode in 15-minute increments up to 60 minutes in total. When the timer expires in Kids Mode, a parent can either quickly extend the time in similar increments right from there…or the child is done until next time.
Families around the world deserve an alternative from a company like Jellies that’s completely member supported. We hope you’ll consider taking a look. Feel free to ask me anything.
- Ken, Chief Jelly
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