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  • Former OfferPal CEO George Garrick Joins SocialShield

    Leena Rao

    Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

    Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

    SocialShield, a startup that helps parents monitor their kids’ online behavior without violating kids’ privacy, is announcing a new CEO today, George Garrick.

    Garrick, who was an investor in SocialShield, is a seasoned technology exec that was most recently the CEO of Offerpal (which is now TapJoy) as well as Mochi Media. Garrick was also previously the CEO of Jingle Networks, Wine.com, PlaceWare (which was acquired by Microsoft), FlyCast Communications, Information Resources and A.C. Nielsen.

    Founded by Noah Kindler and Arad Rostampour, SocialShield gives parents high level visibility into what kids are doing online and on social networks, and who they’re interacting with online and via mobile phones. SocialShield, which requires that both parents and children opt-in to the service, monitors kids’ picture sharing, social gaming and other social activity on networks that kids use the most (currently Facebook, Myspace and Twitter). Rather than giving parents access to kids’ accounts or copies of their online communications, Social Shield sends parents alerts when activity indicates potential danger.

    The startup, which raised $10 million in funding and inked a licensing deal with AOL, was also recently invited to The White House to participate in a Presidential Summit on CyberBullying.

    Company: SocialShield
    Website: socialshield.com
    Launch Date: September 2009
    Funding: $10M

    SocialShield offers patent-pending tools that give parents a 360° view of their kids’ social networking activities. SocialShield offers live support, a cyberbullying promise, and active reputation management assistance.

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