Matt Petronzio2013-04-23 09:00:27 -0400In an age dominated by social media, the quality of our long-distance interactions is diminishing. There's only so much you can say in a 140-character tweet, it's tough to express yourself in a Facebook message and emails seem to be getting shorter and shorter.
But tech startup lettrs is trying to change all of that. After providing an inventive cloud-based platform to send both paper and digital letters around the world since last year, lettrs launched its first mobile app for the iPhone on Tuesday, with Android and iPad versions already in development.
The app extends the function of the lettrs platform by converting mobile voice, data and pictures to digital and paper post letters. With the goal of increasing meaningful communications from the palm of your hand, the app allows you to dictate, modify and deliver a letter through either the cloud or via lettrs' real-life postal operations in Collinsville, Conn.
Drew Bartkiewicz, founder of lettrs, will introduce the app at the PostalVision 2020/3.0 conference in Washington, D.C., where he's leading a panel discussion on the future of written communications.
Bartkiewicz describes the lettrs platform as a personal writing desk, designed for slowing down and catching up on all of the letters we stopped writing at the advent of the digital age.
"Technology is what we make of it, and no app has yet been designed to dust off the previous — though timeless — aspirations of letter writing," Bartkiewicz tells Mashable. "I hope people will choose to take time to create a 'lettr' when more purposeful words are desired, but with the efficiencies of mobile and social firmly intact."
Screenshot courtesy of lettrs
According to lettrs, an estimated 40 billion letters are stored in boxes, drawers and basements across the United States. The new mobile app furthers lettrs' commitment to help people preserve those beloved letters from family and friends, and to highlight the happiness in sending and receiving snail mail.
"Implicit with the phrase 'I sent you a letter' is the notion that someone took time to choose more deliberate words, more completed thoughts," Bartkiewicz says. "And the words of a letter delightfully exist without a 'reply' button hanging over them.
"This makes people happy, and this is why we make receiving a letter as quiet an experience as creating one."
"This makes people happy, and this is why we make receiving a letter as quiet an experience as creating one."
Users can customize the experience by choosing from more than 20 fonts and themes, uploading a letter with the iPhone's camera and preserving letters in their Shoeboxes (private) or on the Fridge (public).
Lettrs also offers a school program, called Literacy Through Letters, to teach today's generations about the aspirations and affirmations of good letter writing.
"Because lettrs exists within their world — digital, social and mobile — we believe we can improve the way students communicate with each other and us 'older people' in perhaps more valuable ways," Bartkiewicz says. "We hope lettrs becomes a place that students choose when they have something more complete, purposeful and lasting to say."
The app is available on the App Store for $2.99. There's even a deal up front: If you enter the code "mother" between now and Mother's Day (May 12), you can send a free letter on fine linen or parchment paper, scented and enclosed within a handcrafted card that's sealed with a wax stamp. Digital letters delivered via the cloud will also be free.
"We hope to bring the social grace of letter writing squarely into social media, to offer a tasteful correspondence option and eventually a personal post office in the cloud," Bartkiewicz says.
Will you download the app? Let us know what you think about lettrs in the comments
Image via iStockphoto, AZemdega.
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