Posted: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 11:10 pm

The McCurry family at their Brentwood home.

Brentwood couple develop family-friendly option
By KIRI LANICE WALTON
For Brentwood Home Page
The McCurry family of Brentwood has developed a novel social networking idea: a social networking site that reflects how people actually live. Instead of farms and mafias or trying to impress people from high school, NeighborDog.com focuses on communities and real-life activities.

“It’s built around the way they live their lives and the activities they are involved in,” said Paul McCurry.

Key Points of NeighborDog.com: family oriented, kids under 13 can safely register personalized privacy settings, users owns their posted information built-in photo and video editors more reflective of real life

In the last two weeks, he and his wife, Andrea, completed the final steps of their own social networking site. It took two years from idea to launch. The idea started after they were unable to find an appropriate place to upload videos of their family trip out West to share with family and friends.

Legally, children under 13 cannot create Facebook accounts, and additionally, the McCurrys are uncomfortable with the privacy issues Facebook has. They didn’t want their private family footage to be exposed to the world on YouTube, either.

“The social networking thing is not going away,” Andrea said.

So the McCurrys, with the understanding that online social networking is now a part of life, decided to create their ideal social networking site themselves.

The concept was to allow children and families to interact in an environment that is similar to their actual neighborhoods and communities, with familiar faces and familiar purposes.

It’s family-oriented, and the McCurrys intend for it to stay that way. After doing their research, they could not find a social networking site for children under 13 that was free or was more than online gaming. NeighborDog would be unique in that children can also legally use the site free of charge.

They also wanted substantial privacy settings to keep their children and posted information safe. NeighborDog allows users to create “neighborhoods,” which can either be public, private or completely hidden.

The “neighborhoods” are ideal for little league teams, Boy or Girl Scouts or neighborhood watch associations. They allow “neighbors” to discuss important issues, make announcements and share photos, videos and “stuff that they do in real life,” Paul said.

 “It’s a way to meet your neighbors,” Paul said, adding that the site could also become a way to ask to borrow a tool or to announce an upcoming yard sale.

“Your neighbors and friends online are very similar to your neighbors in real life,” Paul said.

Because the site is still very new, the couple tells people to be patient and understand that the site will work best once more people learn about it and others are involved in various “neighborhoods.”

Because people cannot see others’ activities or groups of friends, they may leave the site, Paul said.

However, the McCurrys advise inviting others to the site to grow “neighborhoods” and groups.

Facebook creators may soon wish NeighborDog would throw them a bone.

The McCurrys also created a tutorial to teach children using NeighborDog (as well as other sites) about social networking and the impact it can have on their lives.

 “Kids don’t know the permanent digital footprint they’re leaving,” Paul said.

Andrea agreed. “They don’t understand that as soon as you put it on there, it’s on there for life.”

The default privacy settings for NeighborDog are completely private, and once a user’s profile has been deleted, all his or her information is deleted as well.

This differs from Facebook, which owns the rights to everything users post on its site, including user profiles even after they are deleted.

Additionally, users can select which friends see what information they share on NeighborDog.

The site can also serve as a place to securely store photos and videos online.

After initially launching the site in May, they have seen that children especially really enjoy posting and editing video content. NeighborDog is the only social networking site right now that has built-in editing tools for both video and photos. No need for Final Cut Pro or Photoshop here.

While in the future they hope to develop a way to incorporate beneficial, family-oriented ads or coupons that would be helpful to certain neighborhoods, they are not concentrating on that aspect right now.

“We just really wanted to redefine social networking all together,” said Andrea.