Show HN: Friendtainer – Get reminded to meet with friends regularly | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Friendtainer – Get reminded to meet with friends regularly

friendtainer.com

42 pointsmiloszpp47 comments

Careful with this one - I think Facebook own the patents on friends - their lawyers aren't keen on non-Facebook software that involves relationships.

But seriously - it's a really good idea - make something of it before you get Zucked.

That sounds like a good one for the EFF to take on if it's true.

This should be expanded to include all kinds of touches (emails, calls, social media contact), and all levels of friends, and have it automatically update by going through your email, facebook and twitter.

You could charge $5 if you said it was for contacts, and networking. Or $20/mo if you said it was for sales.

Thanks, these are some nice ideas. However, I specifically didn't want it to be marketed as a tool for sales since then how would you differentiate it from a CRM?

The positioning of the product is a matter of how you describe it, where you advertise, and what you compare it to. With the name you have, and with the use cases, it is pretty clearly "for" friends.

However, that shouldn't prevent you from adding those other features. Especially auto-capture is key rather than logging.

You need a context to reach out to your friend, even if you got reminded. If you get nagged, and you don't have a reason to reach out, it's unlikely that you will. It should be coupled with recent news they had, or something you read recently that they might be interested in.

I would use this for my large family if it were an app that imported my contacts and automatically reset the maintenance timer when I phoned with someone for > 5 minutes.

Maybe it could have an option to also remind you when it was someone's birthday.

Author here. Thank you for some great feature ideas! Currently, it's implemented as a PWA so integrating with the phone book is not an option. However, it should be fairly easy to do with hybrid app approach. I will give it a thought.

I have never thought that this day will come and finally we need technology to remind us about meeting our friends. Its sad. On the side note nice little well executed project.

I'm personally bearish on it too because I'm a firm believer that most people aren't meant to be in your life forever.

So many people spend a lot of time trying to maintain a lot of light friendships that they get sidetracked from really meaningful ones.

They'll attend their friends' events to show their face but they're hardly there because they have 3 other events they feel they need to show their face at for 30 minutes each. Thanks so much for your meaningful attendance...

“If you accept a dinner invitation, you have a moral obligation to be amusing.” - Wallis, Duchess of Windsor (1896-1986)

If you can't be amusing - don't show up.

Apart from my personal view on the concept - this application is probably better suited for biz dev.

Author here, thank you for some interesting points.

I think it depends on one's personality. I wrote the app because I needed something like this myself. There are many friends that I love to meet but I don't because of poor time management on my side and/or bad memory. The app is meant to help in such cases.

> So many people spend a lot of time trying to maintain a lot of light friendships that they get sidetracked from really meaningful ones.

Completely agree. It's an easy trap to fall into because you need time to put these relationships in perspective.

Tangentially related:

10 Types of Odd Friendships You're Probably Part of (http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/12/10-types-odd-friendships-youre...)

When I lived in the same town as my friends, I didn't really need a reminder. Now I, and a lot of my friends, live half a world away from one another, and it's remarkably easy to fall out of touch. Also, as Facebook dies and impromptu phone calls become awkward (the social niceties around phone calls seem to have shifted dramatically) I find myself feeling more isolated.

Though really, maybe that's just being in my thirties.

I recently had a desire to get in touch with people from my past, and reached out on LinkedIn because I'm not on any other network. Man alive was that ever a rewarding experience. I was blown away. I got 4 of 4 responses back (even the consultant who works 100+ hours a week and who I haven't seen in 10 years replied.)

I think if the app caught on it could potentially be a platform for more. Like, "Too many neglected friends? Time for a party."

Author here. Nice one, I will keep that in mind.

I've been looking for something like this for a while.

It would be cool if this integrated with social media platforms automatically to figure out when we communicated with someone via text/email/facebook message.

Also, I would have probably liked this more if it was an app, though I know not everyone will agree with that.

I once used such an app, but uninstalled it when I realised the nagging didn't help me. Googling "app to remind you to contact friends" shows that this idea isn't that unique: https://www.google.com/search?q=app+to+remind+you+to+contact...

As you said, some people might disagree. For such a simple (web)-app, one can probably implement everything using modern web standards (Push, Service workers).

EDIT: Seems like Chrome is not there yet. Maybe in the future...

Good idea.

Not sure about the experience from a mobile, so take it with a grain of salt. I tried this with Firefox on Desktop.

When adding a new friend, there is a feld labled "Name" (in grey). I somehow assumed that clicking "Name" focuses the name field. I actually went back and forth because I thought it is a bug. Some sites use pre-fill text-fields with the label (this is bad and should be avoided, because the label is no longer visible once you have filled in something). I guess I got accustumed to this anti-pattern or it is because there is no visual distinction between the label and the actual text field until you actually start filling in something.

Author here. Thanks for feedback, I will definitely look into this.

The next, obvious step, is a bot that reaches out to your friends for you.

Step after that is a replicant that shows up to the meeting for you. Maintaining friendships has never been this easy.

And regifts: Virtual presents you can receive on an occasion, hate, and send to someone else on their occasion such that you don't seem cheap.

Is it just me that is jaw-droppingly astounded at why this is getting any love at all as a concept? Really great execution and design, but I simply cannot get on board with the concept. It is literally specialised calendar alerts and has no USP whatsoever. I'm amazed people are actually suggesting they would pay for this service.

I honestly thought this was a parody app as a social experiment performance art to highlight social media behaviour. Sorry, love the design and execution, but product has zero intrinsic value.

I wonder if their is a danger we'll become robots responding to massive Todo lists. E.g. work emails, personal emails, voice mails, apps telling you to exercise, meet up with a mate or post a blog or have sex (ok last one is a straw man, sorry!). I can imagine any fun and spontaneity being sucked out of life by too much Todo tech.

Not meaning to be cynical of the work done here, but I don't know if I understand the overall concept. If you aren't staying in contact with a particular friend "enough" then maybe you aren't really friends? Sort of a natural selection of your friends.

In my experience it's very easy to grow separated from people you don't see organically. That doesn't mean you don't want to be close with them, or they're not important to you, just that life without help won't throw you together anymore.

And that help might be a schedule (work friends, social sport, regular get togethers with others who have kids) or it could be an app/site prompting contact. However you can make it work, do it IMO.

Out of sight, out of mind is insidious when it comes to friends.

Even for acquaintances I see it happening. My work has two offices. Someone I spoke to a lot on Slack moved to the other office and I realized today we haven't spoken in 3 weeks. Our Slack conversations were jumpstarted by things we experienced in the flesh and they we kvetched about it all day.

I find it funny/sad that 3 weeks is considered a long time between seeing an acquaintance. For me, i can easily go a year between seeing a close friend.

There's a spectrum of time that's acceptable and people fall along it differently. However, a year between seeing a close friend? If they're in the same city, that seems more like an outlier.

Friend relationships require active work to ensure they remain friends.

If you are young this might not be obvious but as you get older there is nothing more certain.

Friends who you do not make the effort to see in person do not remain friends.

Staying in personal contact does not happen without action.

Facebook/text messaging alone does not count as being in contact.

Men in particular have a tendency to not maintain their friendships and many end up old and friendless.

> Friend relationships require active work to ensure they remain friends.

Isn't it the thought that counts, though? Seems very shallow to maintain a "friendship" using an app.

It's weird the things that we're automating away.

I don't think there's anything wrong with being organised about staying in contact.

Perhaps it is something best kept as a one sided thing though where only the organiser knows that they are being systematic about maintaining their friendships.

You could mostly do this with a pencil and paper. Would it still seem shallow if someone tracked contact with people in their journal under a 'Important Relationships' heading?

If I write down all my friends' birthdays on a calendar and use that as a reminder to get in touch, is that shallow? Some of us are just bad at remembering these things.

Also, when you work 60+ hours a week, have a kid, have a partner with whom to maintain a relationship, and spend an astonishing amount of time on chores, it's not shallow to just get distracted. For what it's worth, people remember, I think, just not as often as they'd like.

i don't mean this as a snarky reply, but i'll assume you don't have kids?

3, 6, or even 12 months can easily slip by between seeing some of my best friends who live in the same region. while i'm an introvert, i deeply value the time I spend with my friends. i put a good amount of energy into balancing work and family, with whatever is leftover usually being "me time" (reading, learning, building). I try and weave "friend time" into one of the former, but it usually takes more conscious effort than i can spare.

I don't think that is snarky and you are correct. I'm simply trying to understand from others' points-of-view, though apparently simply asking is controversial...

I personally would feel like it cheapens the interaction if it was initiated solely on the fact that my friend set a reminder. I'm sure not everyone thinks that way, but why not ask?

I agree that it cheapens. If everyone starts using this app the way they currently use Facebook and their concept of lots of light friendships, a lot of people will have to make decisions about meeting at any given time because someone wants to check a box in their app so the smiley face doesn't go to a frown based on some arbitrary date that one party set when they created the reminder.

Great! I need this. I asked a friend about it when I first thought of making this for myself. My friend said he achieved the same thing using some customer relationship management software and then decided to stop using it. Not sure why. I've signed up.

I like it! I can get caught up in my own hobbies and interests and I forget to keep in touch.

There's a lot of missing features:

* Change friend name

* Add notes

* Remove friend

* Import friends (they are already on my facebook, so why not)

* Send message (can open a messenger link, for example)

Author here. Thanks for the suggestions!

You can actually remove a friend - just slide the list to the left.

It's sad you need to be reminded to meet a friend with an app.

My exact same thought. Sadder still is that someone like me could probably benefit from such technology.

I'm getting an error about it still being in development mode when I try to log in with Facebook.

Author here. Thank you so much for spotting this, it should be fine now.

Another one: How can I change my password?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com