If you’re planning a date night to celebrate Valentine’s Day, one of the essentials in preparing is booking a babysitter. But with the holiday falling on a Saturday night this year, it’s bound to be tougher than usual to nail down child care. Not to worry, because UrbanSitter has you covered.
UrbanSitter is an online and mobile service for parents and sitters to connect through people they know by harnessing the power of social media. Using graphs like Facebook and LinkedIn to help parents find sitters through friends means that trust is built in. Parents can see which sitters their friends have hired and liked. And, because time is a prized possession to most parents, they can efficiently book a sitter online in minutes.
I first wrote about UrbanSitter a couple of years ago, and you can read the post about our experience using the service. But here’s the rundown on how it works: UrbanSitter leverages members’ social graphs to surface babysitters to whom they have a real-world connection through people they trust, and then offers profile info and a video clip coupled with valuable marketplace data about each sitter’s performance (reviews from parents who’ve booked her/him, number of repeat families, how quickly they respond to booking requests, special skills, etc). UrbanSitter also facilitates the booking in real-time (ala OpenTable) and the payment (ala Uber). Parents can opt for subscriptions or a pay-as-you-go fee. There is also a subscription offering for sitters.
To learn more and sign up with UrbanSitter, visit the website.
Now go plan that date night!
Giveaway: TEN KidFriendly DC readers can win $50 in credit to use toward babysitting with UrbanSitter! Simply leave a comment below telling me your favorite date night restaurant in the area. To be eligible, you must be a new UrbanSitter customer (go here to sign up for a FREE account) and you must like KidFriendly DC on Facebook. Since you’ll want to get your Valentine’s Day sitter booked soon, this giveaway will only run until 3pm tomorrow, Tuesday, February 10 (but credit can be used through March 31, 2015). All winners will be notified shortly thereafter. Good luck!
