Kadoo Launches Site for Managing, Storing, and Selectively Sharing Digital Content

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 09/18/08

Kadoo has launched a site where users can manage, store, and selectively share their digital content from one place. The service was created by executives from Blackboard, which produces products and services for the education market.

Although the site is targeted to consumers, it could also be used by teachers and students who wish to make videos, photos, bookmarks, tags, and other digital content across multiple sites available to others.

Kadoo provides a single interface to manage Web applications such as e-mail and contacts as well as for social networking functions such as tagging and sharing. The site provides 10 GB of storage for digital content. All of a Kadoo user's digital content is sharable and available to each of Kadoo's other applications.

The service's Share Mail application, a type of e-mail integrated with Kadoo, enables the sharing of large files typically too large to send as e-mail attachments.

The service enables users to share broadly if they want, and also to share selectively, with just the people they designate. The selective sharing controls extend beyond content to also include site experience, look, and feel. For instance, a user's work-related contacts may see a professional profile on Kadoo, while family members see a different profile. The Kadoo user controls who sees what.

Kadoo content can be shared with other Kadoo members, with people outside the community, members of Facebook, the Blackboard educational community, and other networks.

"There is a trend toward providing social media users greater convenience, utility and control," said Chris Shipley, executive producer of the DEMOfall 08 conference, where the service was launched. "Kadoo is at the leading edge of this movement and has the potential to change the way consumers think about their online persona."

Kadoo founder and CTO, Daniel Cane, is also the co-founder of the Blackboard technology platform. CEO Christopher Etesse is a former senior executive of Blackboard. Kadoo integrates into Blackboard; many students will see it as a tab on the same Web page they visit to check on homework assignments and receive notes from teachers. The company said the service will be available to the users of Blackboard shortly.

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About the author: Dian Schaffhauser is a writer who covers technology and business for a number of publications. Contact her at dian@dischaffhauser.com.

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