Show HN: BetterFriend – a CRM just to be a better friend | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: BetterFriend – a CRM just to be a better friend

betterfriend-drab.vercel.app

34 pointslttree45 comments

I've moved around a lot - and I realized I'm losing track of friends across a lot of apps, locations, and time-zones.

At work, we've got a CRM for clients, to remind ourselves to message people. I just needed something much smaller, just to remind myself to message friends and family.

Friends, best friends, and family have different cadences that this will generate tickets to remind you to message them. Feel free to use, as I'll continue to host this just for myself regardless.

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I realize this is useful to many, but I still find it sad.

The same way I find meditation apps sad.

We're trying to use tech to solve problems caused by too much tech.

I used to have this same opinion, but I realized I was wrong. It's arguably sad that we're in this current moment, but anyway we are — so these problems caused by too much tech (if they really are caused by that) are nevertheless, real problems, so...

...tech help solving them is welcome!

I'm not convinced we are solving them, this looks more like an addict caught in a loop where the only solution they see is more of the same.

^^Eh, I'll say while I'm worse now at keeping track, I've moved across 9 countries and many cities -- it's hard to remember to stay in touch.

Also esp when friends use snapchat/instagram/discord/signal/whatsapp/imessage/sms and that one weirdo that only has an email. I barely open my socials, but it doesn't mean I don't value those friendships.

Like eating a vegetables and proteins is just more of the same fats and sugars?

I live a long distance from my parents and siblings - technology helps me retain some closeness with them that would not otherwise be possible.

I live close to my children. Technology could be a barrier to closeness with them.

For me, I enjoy having friends and interacting with them, but keeping in touch is still hard. Doesn't come naturally to me. This is basically kinda like a reminder.

If anything, I'd like it to go further - (privacy aside) integrating with email and communicators to automatically remind me of birthdays, friends I didn't message for a while, their kids names etc.

Sounds like effective altruism:

"Make as much money as possible regardless of ethical or moral issues" will some how allow you to "strategically investing helping the most people as possible"

Very cool! Are you familiar with https://www.monicahq.com/ ?

First thing that came to mind. The vercel domain here is also off-putting, makes it feel like a weekend project that could be turned off any second.

Yeah, that was my first take as well. If you can’t be bothered to spend the time or money to put this on a custom domain, why should I spend my time or money either?

Fair -- migrating it to a custom domain. No plans on monetizing.

I thought about this topic a lot. In my humble opinion: a database is overkill.

My solution: A simple spreadsheet and a reminder The spreadsheet has "contact every 3 weeks", "contact every 2 mos", "contact every 90 days".

I have a reminder in my todoist app to look at the spreadsheet every 2 weeks.

To track birthdays I used google calendar.

I suppose if you have a who lot of friends that a database would be a better option. For me, I only track about 45 people and my system works just fine.

> ... a database is overkill... I have a reminder in my todoist app ...

So you have a database, it's just someone else's and it's called todoist.

A spreadsheet is simply a graphical view of a database.

Landing page sucks hard tbh. Why should I start a free trial for something where I don't even know the price or can see any screenshots?

nixing that -- will remain free.

I find it irritating that you can toggle to dark mode, but in dark mode the toggle switch is invisible, because it doesn't have a dark mode. You can click where you know the toggle to be, but that doesn't seem optimal.

fixed

Realized there was a mention of a free trial on auth -- updated and removed. Will be hosting on https://www.betterfriend.fyi in a few hours.

Like others, I am also very interested in this functionality. I've used Monica (https://www.monicahq.com) before; too bad it seems abandoned.

But providing personal info to an anonymous external website is a blocking point. I've used such a service in the past, and I ended up building an encryption layer on top of it so I had friends with names like QXJ0ZW1pcyBZYWdvdQo=.

Do you consider also providing the software for people to self-host?

Most calendar apps will have an option to add birthdays from your contacts onto the calendar. If you add people's birthdays to their contact record in your phone you'll see all their birthdays on your calendar. Bonus points if you add the year, the calendar will show their age.

This also works for anniversaries and other dates and can usually be color coded.

Feel like a yearly cadence doesn't match some goals sometimes, but I could toss that in there too.

I’m interested in this concept but I’m unwilling to give information about my relationship with friends and family to an entity that I do not own and host. My current solution of Obsidian + plugins isn’t perfect but absolute data ownership feels worth it for me.

Very cool to see more projects focused on building frienships! For another alternative that’s focused on building authentic connections check out https://soonly.com

Super cool -- have had a list in a journal for a few years now, felt it could use a refresh, so will always keep betterfriend live and, as far as I can, free.

I had a feeling someone would build this after reading the HN discussions several months back about the folks who applied GTD to their friendships and professional network.

Literally -- I've had friends use attio for their personal life, and I needed it to not be a commercial crm

I think OG facebook was supposed to be like this. Rather people used it for this usecase.

yeah. It was the whole advantage of centralising social media on one platform: all your friends were there and they used it to share things. At the very start, it spread through universities because it was how you got invited to parties (events was the killer app they never really developed)

They burned it all for short term clicks and now if I look at my feed I get content mills and only a handful of people who still do updates, and the notifications it sends to me "someone whose profile you haven't looked at in years has some comments on it" feel more and more desperate.

^^ that and group updates.

Wasn’t OG facebook about stalking women on your own campus? Did The Social Network lie to us? /s

Yeah it was nerds trying to get laid, of course the answer is: we need a database!

If you're emailing me because your CRM told you to do so, you're not my friend.

That’s short-sighted… I need a reminder to call my mom, doesn’t mean I don’t care about her.

Yeah, sure, sorry about that. But I'm able to forget my own birthday so this could be useful.

an entire thread of my people.

I’d be honored to be important enough for someone that they thought about adding me in such a tool to not forget me.

It was surreal how many of my extended family stopped wishing me a happy birthday once I left Facebook. Automatic reminders are amazingly useful.

That, and pokes. -- ^^^ Big up on the reminders.

Just go offline and meet your friends irl

“I've moved around a lot - and I realized I'm losing track of friends across a lot of apps, locations, and time-zones.”

From the first sentence, sounds like this isn’t an option. I can relate.

If you need an online tool to remind yourself of the existence of another person or your plan to interact with them you aren't friends.

This is a pretty shallow take.

Not everyone's brain works the same way. For people with ADHD (and other neurodivergent conditions), executive dysfunction can make it really hard to remember to reach out -- even to people they care about deeply. It's not about not valuing the friendship; it's about how memory and motivation work differently.

Instead of disparaging people for using tools that help them maintain relationships, maybe try having a little empathy -- or at the very least, an open mind. Not everyone connects the way you do, and that doesn't make their friendships any less real.

There’s also SDAM / severely deficient autobiographical memory, which can make it harder or impossible to remember a consistent narrative of the events of your life, including who you’ve hung out with recently, what you talked about with them, etc.

This kind of tool can be a be useful crutch / prosthetic memory.

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