San Diego’s KidZui Raises $2M, Launches a “Google for Kids”

If there is a children’s book section in the local public library, shouldn’t part of the Internet also be reserved for kids? San Diego’s KidZui answered this question in 2008, when it launched its kid-friendly Internet browser (as an add-on to Firefox) that allowed kids to browse websites that were pre-screened and approved by a team of parents and teachers.

Today, the San Diego Internet startup says it’s launching Zui.com, a search engine for kids ranging from 3 to 12 years old. As with its browser, all that Web content has been screened and approved—and now consists of more than 5 million websites, YouTube videos, images, games, and other content.

“Up until now, it’s all been about the browser,” KidZui CEO Cliff Boro told me last night in a call from New York. “Zui.com is really a new product platform for the company that is in addition to, and not a replacement for, the browser.”

In a highly competitive market, the new search engine also represents a bid by KidZui to differentiate itself from other kid-friendly Internet rivals, such as Webkinz, Club Penguin, PBSkids, and Nickelodeon. Boro says the company also has made a higher level of parent engagement possible through a Facebook-connect integration that enables parents to see the websites, games, and other content their children are consuming through Zui.com. It makes it possible for parents to expand their kids’ interests, Boro says.

Another key feature is that KidZui designed Zui.com to work with Apple and Android-based mobile devices, “to reach more kids and also do it faster.”

With the launch of what Boro calls “a Google for kids,” KidZui also extended its Series C round to raise an additional $2 million. The latest tranche was led by San Diego-based Mission Ventures (which led the $4 million prequel in March 2010) and was joined by Maveron and Emergence Capital. Boro says the company, which now has 18 employees (up from 15 in 2010), plans to use the cash for general corporate purposes.

As a Google-like platform, Zui.com also enables the company to generate revenue from “leading family-friendly brands” that offer advertising content for the site. Advertisers get the added value of metrics that show precisely what advertising kids are clicking on.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.