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Ray Hernandez, Co-Founder MyBabyOurBaby

MyBabyOurBaby.com allows parents to create a fun family eBook that friends and relatives can all help to build and write.  I created an eBook for my son Ty shortly after the site launched, and I’ve enjoyed sharing photos and “firsts” with family members since then.  I had a chance to talk with co-founder Ray Hernandez last week about the background and progress of the site since it’s launch earlier this year.

What is My Baby Our Baby? MyBabyOurBaby is a couple of different things. The most important thing that MyBabyOurBaby provides is a way for parents to archive and share their photos, memories, growth charts, and “firsts” with friends and family in a completely private environment. We also provide a social scrapbooking feature. Meaning that the friends and family you invite, can also have permission (you set your own permissions for people) to add photos or stories they may have collecting dust on their cameras or hard drives. So not only are you archiving memories, but your discovering new memories of your children that your friends and family have had with them and, possibly, not shared with you.

How did the concept for the site originate? When did the site launch? Me and Beau (Lebens - the other co-founder) are both in our late 20’s. All of our friends are getting married and having kids. Well, one-by-one we were being asked to design and build a website for our friend’s kids. We just realized that more people out there would probably be interested in a service like this. So we decided to take the initiative and just launch a full blown site for everyone.  The site officially launched on February 14, 2008.  It was a nice little Valentine’s present.

Does it cost users anything to sign-up or use the site? MyBabyOurBaby is completely free. We started off as a subscription-based service, but we just felt bad. We wanted people to be able to use our site with no obligations. So we switched our service to a free model. Under the free model you are allowed to upload 20 photos a month. And every month you get a fresh new 20. If you want to upload more than that, then we do have a premium service ($39.95 a year) that gives every person connected to your child the ability to upload an unlimited amount of photos. Other than unlimited uploads every other feature is completely free.

What are some of the cool things parents can do with the site? Can they take “books” they create and turn them into hard copies? You know how grandma is always yelling “Send me photos!” Well, if you invite grandma to MyBabyOurBaby, then she will instantly receive updates the second you post anything on the site. Friends and family can also comment on any story written about the child, if they are signed up. This is great when family members live in another city, state or country.

Hardcover books, prints, dvd archives…all of these things are in the works, and they will definitely be features in the near future. If you work for a company that handles any of these features please come talk to me.

I know that the site started out as a subscription service, then changed to offer the majority of features for free. How else has the site evolved over time? Actually, all of our features are FREE. We don’t hold back any of our features and never will. The only thing we charge for is to cover our costs of large amount of uploads and archiving of everything. Other than changing to a free model, we really haven’t changed anything since the launch. We’ve just been trying to listen to our members and give them what they want.  Members can give us feedback in a forums section of the site or via e-mail.

Are you planning on adding any additional features or services in the future? What are you currently working on? I’m non-stop designing new themes/designs for you to choose from for your baby book. New features are an ever growing list that we have running. A few things we will have in the future: full hd video, importing from other photo/video sites, custom photo galleries, Facebook/MySpace apps, as well as cleaning up the design of the overall site.

You also have a blog attached to the site. How does this add value to the site/community? The blog is ever evolving. Before we launched, it was a way for people to see where were in development, but since the launch it’s become a place to share cool things I see that I hope parents might find interesting. I’m not sure where it’ll go in the future - I’m definitely open to ideas.

Any other cool things happening that you’d like to share? Well I just got married a few days ago. That’s pretty cool. So I’m a new husband and working on becoming a new dad. Hopefully soon I’ll have my own kid on MyBabyOurBaby.com.

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Ray Hernandez is Co-Founder and Creative Genius of MyBabyOurBaby.com. He is a web designer by day, and a new yet amazing husband by night. He just recently left Hawaii for Austin, Texas. He encourages people who sign-up and create an eBook for their child or family to provide him with feedback via e-mail at ray@mybabyourbaby.com or on Twitter: @raydawg88.

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Tags | ebook for kids, MyBabyOurBaby, parents resource, photo sharing, Ray Hernandez, scrapbooking for parents

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