Idea is solid. Execution is wanting.
I like the idea of Kiddoodle as a curated child-centered alternative to things like YouTube and Netflix. I finally went ahead and created an account for Kidoodle with the express purpose of filtering the content my kids see. My wife and I personally find all the “let’s play” Roblox and Minecraft streamers on the service to be annoying and fundamentally non-enriching as content for our children. So, naturally, I thought I would be able to hide that content category within the “Parents Room”. To by surprise, the only way you can block specific content is by MANUALLY TOGGLING EACH SHOW by scrolling through their ENTIRE LIBRARY of shows. Kiddoodle has been around since 2012. You mean to tell me they haven’t implemented category filtering? Content tags? Your only option is to log in on the website and use the title search field and hope all the content your looking for has “Roblox” or “Streamer” or whatever and block them one by one. NOT on the app mind you… on the app you can’t search in the Parent Room, just scroll through a seemingly endless list and toggle individual shows on and off before you go cross-eyed. (A very inconsistent user experience, btw). Naturally, this does not inspire confidence as you now have to constantly, and manually, check through the library to add any new shows that pop up onto the list. You can’t even block by creator (streamer) because they often have multiple show names. You have to block each one as you find them in a game of whack a mole. And you have no way of easily finding specific categories of content other then watching every single show (or guessing based on their thumbnails). There is no description on what each show IS (or, you know, TAGS with things like: animation, live action, let’s play, educational, etc) so your scrolling through this list with no context to work with on what these shows actually are. Or you can just give up and delete the app completely (which is a much easier way to block all that content by the way). Kiddoodle, if your reading: you are a streaming platform. Category and tag filtering of your content should be table stakes. I’ll bet money you have lots of that data on your back end to help gather ad targeting for your advertisers. How about putting the power of data filtering the the hands of parents? Anyway, by the time Kiddoodle figures that out my kids will have outgrown their content, so I might as well just delete it and save the effort.
