Eight-year-old Annelise wanted to chat with her friends, so she asked her dad for permission. But Andrew Schiebler found no chatting apps for children her age. So they teamed up to make one.
Marimba Chat aims to “give elementary school kids a safe place to chat with their friends and family,” Schiebler said in a press release.
The Bethesda, Md.-based app verifies new accounts with parents’ government-issued IDs and has built-in filters for profanity, plus geolocation and security alerts.
Once signed up, parents can control the amount of time their child spends on the app, monitor the chats from their own phone, and block invitations and connections from people they don’t trust.
The free app is compliant with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, meaning that it can be legally used by children under 13.
For Schiebler, it is also about teaching children digital etiquette before it’s too late.
“We help parents teach kids about online interaction like appropriate language, how to treat their friends, and what to do if they feel threatened,” he said. “These life skills are just as critical in the digital arena as they are on the school playground.”
Check out this intro video featuring Annelise:
(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3”; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
Marimba – Our Story, by Annelise
My 8-year-old daughter Annelise wanted to chat with her friends and we couldn’t find a safe solution that didn’t require us to lie about her age. We built this together as a daddy-daughter project. This video tells our story in Annelise's words. Learn more at http://marimbachat.com.
Posted by Marimba on Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Before you go...
Please consider supporting Technical.ly to keep our independent journalism strong. Unlike most business-focused media outlets, we don’t have a paywall. Instead, we count on your personal and organizational support.
3 ways to support our work:- Contribute to the Journalism Fund. Charitable giving ensures our information remains free and accessible for residents to discover workforce programs and entrepreneurship pathways. This includes philanthropic grants and individual tax-deductible donations from readers like you.
- Use our Preferred Partners. Our directory of vetted providers offers high-quality recommendations for services our readers need, and each referral supports our journalism.
- Use our services. If you need entrepreneurs and tech leaders to buy your services, are seeking technologists to hire or want more professionals to know about your ecosystem, Technical.ly has the biggest and most engaged audience in the mid-Atlantic. We help companies tell their stories and answer big questions to meet and serve our community.
Join our growing Slack community
Join 5,000 tech professionals and entrepreneurs in our community Slack today!