For those TLDR’ers out there, those 140-character people, we at LetterMe think:
The original inspiration for a new messaging platform didn’t start from conversations with “millennials”. It didn’t start from conversations with fellow college students, or social media obsessed high school students either. It actually started from conversations with three guys in their 70s.
They shared with me a nostalgia for when people handwrote letters to one another. Reminding me, that we once could recognize who was writing to us from their handwriting alone. Almost as if, between the lines, we were sharing a unique and identifiable part of ourselves with one another. I came away with the question - will this really authentic and personal form of communication simply disappear forever?
The big rub of course is that instant messaging is so easy. Writing out letters by hand takes time, and effort. So we’ve attempted to find a 21st century compromise. Keep the messaging platform aspect, but instead ask users to create a handwritten font. LetterMe users can still type out rapid-fire messages to one another, but now each letter has a trace of individuality. You are the only person sending out those words.
We were further inspired by our initial testers’ excitement – they really enjoyed the extra space for creativity and personalization! Emojis felt like a natural next step. They are as much a part of our text-based communication as words themselves. In fact, Oxford Dictionary named the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji 😂 its 2015 word of the year. If people use words that aren’t in the dictionary all the time, we think people would want to have their own emojis as well.
And that’s where, we think LetterMe can go beyond just providing a more personal conversation and into giving people a bit more freedom to express themselves. Finally, I can share my own double-chin emoji with my closest friends.
Thanks for the support so far, and stay tuned for more updates to come!
