Back at the beginning of the year I had an idea called Babybook. It was the spawn of not being able to find a good digital baby book for my newborn son. At the time I thought it was a 15 year plan to cannibalize Facebook users. (fascinating if you ask me) but as time and life with a newborn went on the idea sat.

Facebook Timeline realized the idea. The future is going to be a very interesting place.

Here is a transcript of the conversation I had with a friend…..

FEBRUARY 1, 2011 11:13 AM

11:13:20 AM Chad Vavra: Facebook app called babybook. Literally a digital version of a baby book. First haircut, first dump, etc… but as children grow so does it. It becomes the timeline of your life, started by your parents and eventually finished by you

11:14:10 AM Chad Vavra: best part is that when you are 13 you get the option to export everything and come over to the Babybook website

11:14:16 AM SH: i like it. i would extend it to

11:14:22 AM SH: oh, i was going to say, a full web site

11:14:23 AM Chad Vavra: it canabalizes facebook subscriptions

11:14:36 AM Chad Vavra: it’s a 15 year plan to overthrow facebook

11:14:44 AM SH: i was thinking a full site, but one that integrates really well into fb

11:14:47 AM SH: that’s very interesting

11:14:56 AM Chad Vavra: yeah. that is basically what it is

11:15:13 AM SH: and it would be great to tie into all the custom publishing where you can print your book when it’s “don” or at any point

11:15:21 AM Chad Vavra: yep.

11:15:26 AM Chad Vavra: story of your life

11:15:30 AM Chad Vavra: vol. 1

11:15:32 AM Chad Vavra: vol. 2

11:15:33 AM Chad Vavra: etc

11:16:00 AM SH: not sure about whether kids would want to take over their book. i see this as mainly towards the parents. thoughts?

11:16:33 AM Chad Vavra: I think the idea is that the book kind of takes over them

11:16:44 AM Chad Vavra: they just enter what they enter

11:16:48 AM Chad Vavra: the book aggregates it

11:17:03 AM Chad Vavra: they don’t really take over anything… it just is there

11:17:29 AM SH: so what’s getting the kids to really take part in it? (just playing a friendly devil’s advocate here)

11:17:37 AM SH: from the parent’s point of view, i think it’s gold

11:18:06 AM Chad Vavra: so what happens is that until the kids are 13 they technically can’t have a facebook account

11:18:40 AM Chad Vavra: so parents start a facebook acount for their infants and post updates to it

11:18:58 AM Chad Vavra: they sign up for the app and the app aggregates those posts into events

11:19:11 AM SH: i like that

11:19:14 AM Chad Vavra: it can query for input, but mostly it’s invisible

11:19:28 AM SH: you’d have to be very tight on security

11:19:31 AM Chad Vavra: eventually the kid becomes 13 and takes over the account

11:19:46 AM Chad Vavra: and just naturally the book evolves

11:19:55 AM Chad Vavra: the kids post updates and the book listens

11:20:22 AM Chad Vavra: the better the visualizations of events, the more people will participate

11:20:24 AM SH: okay, i see now, as you said, the kid doesn’t take over anything. the app just keeps grabbing content

11:20:32 AM Chad Vavra: yeah

11:21:11 AM Chad Vavra: and if the kid opens their own account later on, the book sees that posts stopped on the one account and it sends out a query allowing a new account to be linked to it

11:21:30 AM Chad Vavra: I wonder though, what if a person wants to delete their account

11:21:50 AM Chad Vavra: can the book keep the info it stored or does it have to delete that too

11:22:23 AM SH: hmm, i would say the data would always be stored, or backed up, one way or another

11:22:39 AM SH: i don’t know if there are any legalities on cancelled services

11:22:58 AM Chad Vavra: yeah. that can be figured out later though

11:23:03 AM SH: right.