This is Bipper!

The discussions about Bipper as a monitoring service which has found its way to social and traditional media in the past two weeks, has undoubtedly been interesting and educational. People ask themselves and others:

• what is monitoring and to what extent should parents have control over their children's use of mobile?  
• Should parents actually have control over anything? Talk about boundaries, says some someone, but trust that they are followed!  
• Don’t children have a right to privacy without any interference?

These are questions that engage everyone from bloggers to journalists to twitters, but also readers who prefers to sit back and observe. Typically, you find that those who strongly oppose something get involved in debates. I receive on a daily basis email and inquiries from parents who say "Finally! We've been waiting for this."

Bipper - the world's worst monitoring solution

many of the articles about Bipper have been focused on that we give parents the opportunity to monitor their kids. If this is true, I have probably developed the worst monitoring service in the world. Simply because the purpose has never been to monitor anyone, but to give parents a tool for setting limits for their kids’ cell phone.

Various forms of web-filters has been on the market for a long time, but solutions that give parents the opportunity to involve themselves actively in their kid's mobile world (without peeking in the mobile phone’s history) has not been available.

It's not easy being a mom and dad today. . .

in a world where boundaries are being erased. This is why I believe having the opportunity to actually define the limits or boundaries is important. At least I felt a need for something when my girl (and oldest kid) started school a few years back. For me it was not a question of her having a mobile or not a mobile, but between not a mobile or a limited mobile. I felt it was wrong to give my young daughter an “open” mobile like adults had, but found no alternatives. The solution was simply to develop what I and most parents around me wanted. And tracking of kids on a map is definitely not part of that!

So what is Bipper?

Bipper is a safety solution for children’s mobile phones. Simply told, it is a service that let's parents set limits for how children can operate their mobiles. Not too different from what we as parents do in most other areas in life, we set boundaries and limits in relation to where our children are allowed to go, when they have to go to bed, how many friends they can have over, what to eat and so on. Guidelines - and a steady expansion of the boundaries as we got older - was a part of our own childhood, and should probably be part of our own children's upbringing. It's just that creating digital boundaries is not that easy ... They are to a small degree verifiable (as opposed to most other borders and boundaries we set are).

This is how Bipper can help - we give parents the opportunity to define some of these digital boundaries in relation to the mobile phone. With Bipper, parents, preferably those with elementary school children, can define how the child can use the mobile phone through a personal administration page on the Web:

• WHO the kids can communicate with
• WHEN during the day the mobile phone can be used
• HOW MUCH mobile phone can be used per week

It is possible to set different limits for friends than for the immediate family!

In addition to BipperLimits (which the service elements above are part of) Bipper offer a SAFETY ALARM (BipperSafety) which can easily be activated by the child if something were to happen. Up to five people the parents have chosen are then called, and the mobile phone does not stop ringing even if the child hangs up the phone. All "safety contacts' will also receive a text message with a message that the alarm is triggered and a link to a map that shows the area where the child is.

Bipper also includes a LOCALIZATION SERVICE. Parents can locate the position of their kids mobile phone a maximum of 20 times per month and a maximum of three times per day. This can for example be useful if you are concerned if you can’t find your kid or if you can’t find the phone (I have used this myself a few times ....). Safety and security are key words. Not monitoring.

If concerned parents take advantage of the feature, it will not be without your child's knowledge. He or she will receive a text message for every search. Monitoring has traditionally been associated with the one being monitored being unaware of it and has not given the consent for it. This is why it’s wrong to call such a “innocent” service like Bipper for a "monitoring service". If anyone would like to monitor the movements of their children - or anyone else for that matter – Bipper is definitely not the solution for them!

Is localization something new?

No, definitely not! However, some journalists drive to “sensationalize” stories can easily create the impression that location services for mobile phones is a new phenomenon. This is not correct. Location services for mobile phones have been around for about ten years, and Bipper is not even the first to offer this in Norway. The first positioning service here was introduced as far back as 2002. What distinguishes Bipper from the others is that our functionalities are more limited.

• With Bipper you are not able to locate so much you want  
• It is not possible to hide the location of the person being positioned  
• Nor is it possible to build large networks of people who can locate the others

It's exploding!

Used correctly, localization is a super service that is designed to provide better security for both adults and children. Research - both nationally and internationally - also shows that many parents want to be able to locate their children.

The location services I found on the market were typically quite extreme - or surveillance if you want to call it that. It didn’t take many hours of research before it became very clear that the location services was going to explode internationally. It was in 2008, and halfway through 2010 we see that Facebook will soon implement localization in their service, a service used by 60% of Norway's population. Another sign that the market for localization services has exploded!

  

But why offer localization at all?

In the midst of a jungle of localization services - both those who already exist and those that will come - I wanted to offer a simple positioning product that was especially developed just for the rare moments parents are unsafe and need to locate their child. If such a product was not released, I was concerned that these tracking and surveillance solutions would get a foothold also in Norway. I also had the need to locate at times when I’ve been looking for my kids, however I did not want those solutions.

In a digital age where the venues are many and often confusing, parents have a greater need than ever to set safe limits for their children. Within the framework you typically allow some leeway. Bipper wants to assist here!