[Mythriel]

I am writing specs and starting the development soon on an application that involves parents, kids and merchants. Basically it is a money management social network for kids, where parents can give allowances monthly to kids and their kids can spend the money on the app market where merchants add their stuff for kids. There aren't many web apps for kids out there and this one will have both a social part and a shopping part.
What do you guys think. For those who have kids, would you use this app?Make them accounts and give allowances and monitor what they are buying and what they are doing online.
Please give some feedback because it is very important for me at this point, Thx.

[MikeChipshop]

Doesn't sound bad at all. You'll need to make sure what's on offer is worth it though. The idea is sound though.

[Mythriel]

I have some modules allready done , but I need to refactor some code and will change frameworks, built it with Zend, switching to CI because it is faster...so I am not in a bad shape, I do not have design and that will be a problem to find a designer who can design a nice UI for kids. But let me give more details about the app:
- Parents can set limits for kids to spend, and also can restrict them for buying without approval
- Kids can have saving goals , where they define a goal and a product to save for and how much do they want to save per week or month. When they reach the goal they will get the product.
- Also gamification concepts are involved, including badges, trophies for doing certain things

Anyway, I asked like 15 parents with kids age 5-12 and most of them said that they would not use this app for their kids.

[Ste Hughes]

Why does a 5 year old need apps in their life?

[RobbieD90]

Ste Hughes, on 28 January 2012 - 09:30 PM, said:

Why does a 5 year old need apps in their life?

If thats the case why do five year old kids need a mobile or why do they need a PS3 or a laptop?

Overall the app sounds like a good idea. The one thing I will say though are the sought of kids with the mobiles and laptops gonna have the parents that actually care about the sought of thing your app provides?

[zed]

and you wonder why the country is a mess?!

[MikeChipshop]

Do I think 5 year olds should be in a position to be using apps? No, but they do, so it would be silly to not capatilize on this if you can.

[nfc212]

Sounds a spiffing idea.

Now get on and get it up and running as I can assure you someone somewhere has read this thread and is plagiarizing your idea as you are reading this.

[porkchops]

Mythriel, on 28 January 2012 - 07:50 PM, said:

Anyway, I asked like 15 parents with kids age 5-12 and most of them said that they would not use this app for their kids.

You should probably get some more input (larger sample size) but that might be an indicator that a paid market just isn't there.

You could also try marketing directly to the children... make them want to use your app so badly that the parents are forced to buy it. Not that I condone parents giving into child terrorism but I have a feeling you could pull that off nowadays.

[Mythriel]

The marketing model is not to the children or to the parents, but to the merchants...because it is all about sales nowdays and profit... toys companies would love to have their products on a marketplace where children have money to buy them directly without the need for parents to actually do it. Also there will be kids wishlists and letters to santa with what they want, imagine I give those stats to the merchants with most wanted products for X-mas, they will have + ROI for sure.
Thank you all for the feedback, I am working on this app, development part is no problem, the real problem is I am just a programmer and I do not know to market the app even if I would finish it today. Good marketing and a good designer to do an awsome UI for the app are the things that I need to find before finishing development for beta version.
Anyway, I do want the kids to really learn how to spend their money and not just make merchants tons of profit out of this app and I am considering of making lessons and all kind of stuff for them regarding money management. They will for sure get cool badges if they pass all the lessons.
Also other features will be donating some money to charities where kids get really cool badges and points and maybe discounts for doing that and also group savings for a present. What that means is 2 kids can save toghether for someone's birthday present.

I allready found 2 similar apps on the web http://bankaroo.com/home and http://guluck.com/home.action , not that good tho.

Also, what do you guys think of a feature save for college? where we make a secure savings account for a kid who wants to save for college. And he sets limits to that account(e.g. 25% of the allowance goes to that account).

This post has been edited by Mythriel: 29 January 2012 - 09:35 PM

[Georgew]

I have been having a look, but can't remember its name or find it again. I thought there was legislation stating you had to be 13 years old to sign up for [stuff] online. Whatever stuff is I also can't remember, but forums like this fell into that category.

[Spitfire]

Georgew, on 29 January 2012 - 11:11 PM, said:

I have been having a look, but can't remember its name or find it again. I thought there was legislation stating you had to be 13 years old to sign up for [stuff] online. Whatever stuff is I also can't remember, but forums like this fell into that category.

COPPA - http://en.wikipedia...._Protection_Act

This post has been edited by Spitfire: 29 January 2012 - 11:35 PM

[Mythriel]

Spitfire, on 29 January 2012 - 11:34 PM, said:

COPPA - http://en.wikipedia...._Protection_Act

Parents sign up and make accounts for kids and also kids can make a request of signing up but until they get approved by a parent they can not join and use the application.