Notabli challenges 23Snaps and Everyme with its private social networking app for parents

Notabli isn’t the first iOS app to offer a private social network for parents – we’ve already seen 23Snaps and Everyme do just that – but its blend of sensible design, advanced photo-editing features and one-way child invitations helps it stand abreast with the competition.

The idea behind Notabli is to create a very safe, memorable place where parents can easily capture, save and share their kids’ best moments. With all of the content stored in one place, apps such as Notabli make it incredibly easy to keep track of those all-important milestones, such as their first steps, words or holiday abroad.

Perhaps more importantly, it also means that the content isn’t available to the wider public – thereby avoiding the potential backlash of comments on Facebook, but also the prying eyes of strangers.

How it works

Creating a profile for your child is quick and painless (I don’t have a child though, so excuse my cuddly placeholder in the screenshots). Simply add a name, a cover photo and their date of birth, followed by the email address of the other parent and you’re all set.

Content can then be uploaded and viewed in a stream format not too dissimilar to Instagram. There are five mediums to choose from; photos, videos, audio, quotes and text. Most of them work as you would expect, allowing you to either capture a moment there and then, or upload a file stored locally.

The photo functionality really stands out though. Once you’ve chosen the image, an editor powered by Aviary allows you to do all sorts of useful tweaks, such as cropping, applying vintage filters and changing the saturation or contrast.

The analogue camera effects are for the most part overdone, but that aside the tools on offer here are fantastic, rivalling dedicated photo-editing apps such as Photoshop Express and iPhoto.

Before you finish posting a photo or clip to Notabli, you can also choose to add a caption, date, location and “milestone” tag. There’s also auto-sharing for Facebook and Twitter, although doing this sort of defeats the purpose of the app.

In the feed itself, scrolling through content is natural and responsive. The inclusion of ‘hearts’ and comments will be natural to any Instagram user, finishing off an experience that is pretty much flawless. Each child also has its own profile page, and it’s easy to keep track of who can see your content via the “manage family and friends” button.

Verdict

Notabli is a robust app that ticks off pretty much every feature needed in a private social network. It doesn’t go much further than its rivals, such as 23Snaps and Everyme, but perhaps that’ll be enough to start building a user base of happy parents.

One place where the app does truly innovate, however, is in the way that it handles invites and child privacy. Only the user who created the child’s account can give permission for other people to see or interact with the timeline. This one-way system gives the parent(s) total control over who can see their content at any one time – for example, you could invite a teacher to follow one child’s moments, but not another. There’s a lot of flexibility here, which is incredibly useful for those who care about their data and privacy.

➤ Notabli | iOS

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Image Credit: tammra/Flickr