First came the Internet browser, with a new approach to parental controls. Then came Zui.com, an Internet search engine for kids that has grown to serve more than 2 million youthful users a month in less than nine months. Today, San Diego-based Zui.com is introducing “Facetube,” a new feature of Zui.com that operates like a social network for pre-teens.
The kid-friendly Internet startup, which was founded in 2008 as KidZui, has been gaining momentum—and a much bigger audience for its pre-screened content—since the introduction of Zui.com last August. Things have been going so well, in fact, that founding CEO Cliff Boro decided in January to re-brand the Web company Zui.com.
“The growth has been higher than we projected,” says Boro, noting that Internet traffic to Zui.com exceeded more than 2 million unique visitors last month.
One key factor in that growth has been MattyB, a nine-year-old rapper whose soaring popularity (and a celebrity rap for Zui.com) has Boro predicting he will be the next Justin Bieber. Curious? MattyB’s video plug for Zui.com is here.
Boro says, “It also turns out that it’s a lot easier to get kids on the Web if their parents don’t have to download software.” He’s referring to the KidZui browser, an add-on for the Firefox Web browser that allows children to explore websites, watch videos, and play
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.
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