Hi Ian, Thanks for your analytic thoughts. I'm glad you've recognized that it is a good idea. The truth is, I'm happily using it myself. I love it! It really does help me get reminded about old friends from Sweden and people I've met in London who have moved away.
For me personally/socially it was not a failure. In fact, it's been a success. In getting other people to also enjoy its benefit has been a failure and that's a shame I think. It's their loss.
Not everyone has a long list of contacts that they don't already keep constant contact with but I doubt that out of all my visitors, so few of them would benefit from the service.
The biggest problem I think, is peoples fear of trying it because of the upfront cost of having to register with their email address. My problem has been: how can I convince them in less than 2 seconds that it's safe to enter their email address? Tricky.
One thing I've been thinking about is to not ask for peoples email address on the frontpage and instead make it part of a Page 2 in the signup process.
PS. I've signed up for AutomaticRomantic but currently waiting for my password.
I remember reading that you started RememberYourFriends.com about the same time that I started http://AutomaticRomantic.com. I was worried because these ideas seemed to be in the same basic space - remembering your friends and remembering your partner : All using email reminders as the medium.
I'm sorry to see it hasn't worked out for you yet. It's a nice site but I didn't sign up because it didn't seem to solve my real problem of finding the time to maintain these friendships and knowing what level of communication was necessary (1 page email, a couple of lines, a forwarded joke?)
RememberYourFriends is still a good idea and I think you can still do something with it.
I've said more over at my blog :
http://automaticromantic.com/blog/?p=37
Good luck!
Comment
Hi Ian,
Thanks for your analytic thoughts. I'm glad you've recognized that it is a good idea. The truth is, I'm happily using it myself. I love it! It really does help me get reminded about old friends from Sweden and people I've met in London who have moved away.
For me personally/socially it was not a failure. In fact, it's been a success. In getting other people to also enjoy its benefit has been a failure and that's a shame I think. It's their loss.
Not everyone has a long list of contacts that they don't already keep constant contact with but I doubt that out of all my visitors, so few of them would benefit from the service.
The biggest problem I think, is peoples fear of trying it because of the upfront cost of having to register with their email address. My problem has been: how can I convince them in less than 2 seconds that it's safe to enter their email address? Tricky.
One thing I've been thinking about is to not ask for peoples email address on the frontpage and instead make it part of a Page 2 in the signup process.
PS. I've signed up for AutomaticRomantic but currently waiting for my password.
Parent comment
I remember reading that you started RememberYourFriends.com about the same time that I started http://AutomaticRomantic.com. I was worried because these ideas seemed to be in the same basic space - remembering your friends and remembering your partner : All using email reminders as the medium. I'm sorry to see it hasn't worked out for you yet. It's a nice site but I didn't sign up because it didn't seem to solve my real problem of finding the time to maintain these friendships and knowing what level of communication was necessary (1 page email, a couple of lines, a forwarded joke?) RememberYourFriends is still a good idea and I think you can still do something with it. I've said more over at my blog : http://automaticromantic.com/blog/?p=37 Good luck!