Self-publishing Service and Community for Children Launched

LEXINGTON, MA—March 25, 2008—Tikatok today announced the launch of their new online book community for children at www.Tikatok.com . Now, any child, regardless of his/her writing skills can write, illustrate and print single copies of their own stories and read and share books with other children from around the world. Tikatok.com provides a safe, creative environment with a unique, patent pending story guideline system, to unleash the imagination of all children to develop original content for stories, share and communicate books with other children, and print beautiful, professional-quality copies of their stories in hard and soft cover for friends and family.

The company was started by two successful business executives and Moms who saw that there were not books available for children that were written by children.

“I was in the children’s section of a national bookstore chain with my daughter and realized that all of the books were written and illustrated by adults,” said Sharon Kan, Co -Founder and CEO of Tikatok. “Children love to tell and read stories with other children, and it is important for them to continuously use their imagination and create things, like books, instead of just consuming products. Tikatok.com provides a great online community that is designed to spark creativity and empower any child to create books, to share original stories with their friends both online and in print. We are proud to have developed a creative environment that really helps unleash a child’s imagination and fosters story-telling, sharing and collaboration among children.”

Tikatok has designed and implemented several important features that when combined give children a truly unique experience creating real books.

StorySparks™ Story Builders - The StorySpark system, invented by Tikatok, gives children the story framework they may need to help create their books. These are optional prompts which allow children to choose characters, such as princesses or aliens, and gives them a loose plotline or framework to help guide the creative writing process. These are not fill in the blanks, but instead are suggestions or even questions, such as “What happens to the princess next?” to help stimulate the child’s own imagination and storytelling skills.

Design Studio – Drawing from its management team’s past experience with the MIT Media Lab, Tikatok incorporated intuitive Web-based design tools as part of the site’s Studio to help children easily point and click to make the story building process both simple and fun. Children can easily drag and drop text screens, write their ideas, change fonts, colors, and insert and delete pages to develop their books. They can also easily add their own original artwork by drawing their pictures and scanning and uploading them to their stories, or by mailing them into Tikatok.

Print-on-Demand Publishing – Tikatok recognizes that children are excited to see their stories made into real books and offers a unique service, through partnerships with professional printing companies, to publish and print affordable copies of children’s stories in hard or soft copy. Individual books are available for sale at Tikatok.com for around $20 and include the author’s photo and bio, making it a beautiful gift and keepsake for family and friends.

Online Community and Social Networking – Tikatok.com also provides children with a fun, safe way to communicate and share books with one another as part of the Tikatok community. Using the Friends feature, children can invite other friends through an email link to join the Tikatok network. They can also invite others to read their books and then can join and post their books to Book Clubs on the site and participate in discussion threads with one another.

About Privacy
As a children’s site, Tikatok takes privacy very seriously and has implemented numerous steps to protect the safety and privacy of Tikatok users. Parents must register a child, email communication is sent to the parent each time there is activity on their child’s book, and all identifiable information from the cover about the child is removed from the public view. Complete details on Tikatok’s privacy statement can be found at http://beta.tikatok.net/help/privacy .

About Tikatok
Tikatok is the creator of Tikatok.com, the first online book community that empowers children to use their imagination to write, illustrate and publish their own books and read other books created by children from around the world. The company’s mission is to unleash the creativity and imagination of children by giving them an environment to design and share their original creations with others online and in print. The company was founded in 2007 and is based in Lexington, MA. More information about Tikatok can be found at www.Tikatok.com .