Show HN: NanaGram – SMS photos and we'll mail 4x6 prints to your Grandma
nanagram.co
nanagram.co
My grandpa Tirrell Cook, aka Grandpa Cook, passed away peacefully on April 9th after a tough month-long battle in the hospital. I was fortunate enough to have flexibility in my schedule to be by his side 4-5 days a week. He was truly a great man - I don't know anyone else like him - and I'll miss him dearly. I'm super grateful for all the crazy great times we had the past couple of years. I wrote more about my relationship with him here: https://nanagram.co/blog/on-happiness-from-tirrell-cook
With his passing, I considered putting NanaGram on hold for a while but the feedback from customers has been tremendous, as well as the media: https://mashable.com/2018/04/24/nanagrams-photo-printing-ser.... Plus my Mom, my Grandma, my future mother-in-law, and my Aunt all get a monthly NanaGram.
Great idea
A thing I like about the phone number implementation is I can snap a photo and push it to a loved one (just search their name in my contacts, saved with a NanaGram number behind the scenes) with a few swipes. SMS is the first option on iOS when sharing an image.
We've spent a bunch of time obsessing about notifications and they're not quite where I want them to be yet, but close. I'm not a big fan of addicting apps or services that steal your attention. Every user can tweak exactly what notifications they get. Right now, by default, we notify all the users on an account when a new photo is posted by another user. This is nice since it makes a community of sorts, like a private social network for families. It also helps teach people how the service works. Recently I created a setting allowing you to subscribe to a Saturday morning email instead. This makes for a nice surprise factor, kind of like getting film developed. I'll probably adjust things at some point so all users move off the instant notifications (which help teach people what the service is all about) and onto the Saturday morning digest after a few weeks of using the service.
NanaGram is a super simple service for sending regular printed photos in the mail to your loved ones. Our service acts like a Netflix account. After you sign up, we give you a unique phone number and you can share it with unlimited family and friends. Once someone is approved by you they can send in photos and together the group curates a few fresh photos per month. We print and ship 4x4 and 4x6 prints in glossy or matte. All you have to do is text your photos and wait for a phone call from your loved one.
We’ve had a nice bump in growth the past couple weeks, with Mother’s Day on the horizon (Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! <3) and lots of new folks planning to use us as a gift.
This is the happiest product I’ve worked on. It’s super heartwarming to see it bringing families closer together (the product functions like a private family social network), bringing our elders into the loop (many of whom don’t do social media), and most of all the increase in phone calls and visits.
Would love to answer any questions.
I really like your wording and photos on the website. Refreshing and joyful.
IMO this is actually a really good decision given the purpose of the service. A lot of my older family members that I will likely invite to my new account (great idea btw) are familiar with sending pictures through SMS and don't really use any other messaging apps or many apps at all, if their phone even supports apps. Believe it or not many older people and some younger people still rock low powered phones with little or no data plan. However most if not all phones made within the last decade can send SMS messages and more than likely are on a plan with free texting.
Why should I need to download another app that is a glorified REST client when SMS does the job perfectly well?
They may be familiar with sending images over MMS, which generally limits the size to less than half a MB. Hardly "high quality".
I never once suggested that it should be an "app". This could literally be a web page with a single file input and a button, or a fucking customer-specific email address. It could be any number of things that makes more sense than sending shit quality images over MMS.
My father has an email account solely because an Android phone makes you get one. He definitely doesn't know the password and I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't know the address either. However he is very comfortable taking pictures and attaching them to text messages.
He can easily save a contact in his phone on his own. I or my brothers would have to help him set up a bookmark in a browser. Now my father may be somewhat of a Luddite but keeping the barrier really low for family members who aren't texh savvy is a good idea for this.
And as far as quality I can almost guarantee my grandma doesn't care what is in the pictures or how blurry they are. She is going to care that I am sending her something. That's the important part not HD images.