23snaps: Private Photo Sharing for Families

Called a “Facebook for families” by TechCrunch, 23snaps is a free app that lets you share your most precious memories privately with the people who matter the most. Not your online friends, not your co-workers, and definitely not strangers – but your family members and close friends. Based in London, 23snaps is a private photo-sharing app created by parents, for parents. It provides a completely safe and secure way to record the special moments in your life and share them with your loved ones, wherever they are in the world. The startup was founded in early 2012 by Ivailo Jordanov and Yury Tereschenko. With their wives both pregnant, they wanted their families to be a part of their children's lives even if they lived far away. Privacy was one of Jordanov and Tereschenko's top priorities – they needed a simple yet beautiful way to store and share photos, videos, and updates with just their families and closest friends.

The mission of 23snaps is to make it “incredibly easy” to create digital photo albums and help families feel closer to each other. Available on Android, iOS, Windows, and the web, 23snaps is accessible via smartphone, tablet, and computer. You can even invite not-so-techie family members to receive updates by email. And if you'd like to have physical copies of your digital memories, you can order photo books from 23snaps as well.

Recently, 23snaps added a “stories” feature that lets you combine photos, videos, and text in a single update. This was added after the startup noticed that 20 percent of posts contained multiple photos and 40 percent had detailed descriptions.

With over 500,000 users in almost 180 countries, 23snaps has been featured in The Guardian, BBC, CNET, The Marilyn Denis Show, The Next Web, and more. The company is named after the 23 pairs of human chromosomes.