Everloop: The social network for kids from JD Lasica on Vimeo.
Got kids? Then you’ll want to know about a social network that does a solid job of providing a social experience for children and tweens that’s safe, secure — and not totally lame.
I first met Everloop CEO Hilary DeCesare at the Stanford Summit last year, and caught up with her a short while back at the Silicon Valley Innovation Summit, the third name for the perenniel event put on by the AlwaysOn Network at Stanford University.
Everloop fills an important gap in social networking, giving kids up to age 13 a secure online environment where they can interact and communicate with their friends and peers. As the site says: Sorry, no grown-ups allowed (except for site moderators).
Everloop helps kids, at school or at home, learn and play in “a safe, secure social loop,” Hilary says. It’s evolved into a digital learning platform that allows children to explore their curiosity in the areas of gaming, sports, entertainment and other areas, she says. And as more tweens now use mobile phones, the site offers EverText as the kids’ answer to Twitter.
“The kids aren’t actually learning at school how to be safe online,” DeCesare says. “But the kids are going on social networks, and they’re using their mobile phones to access the Internet.” Parents, she says, can use a parental dashboard on Everloop that gives them insight into what their kids are actually doing.
DeCesare, a mom to 13-year-old twins and a tween, developed Everloop to give kids under 13 age-appropriate content and the sophisticated social networking tools they want while providing online privacy protection technologies.
A leader in the areas of children and technology, Hilary was invited to last March’s White House Conference on Bullying Prevention. She has been recognized as one of AlwaysOn’s “Top 25 Women in Tech to Watch” for 2010 and 2011, and she encourages girls and young women to find a mentor to help them learn about “the hard-knock life of being an entrepreneur.”