8 ms·

Is anyone else getting a dystopian vibe from the idea of "managing" friends and family? I can definitely see this service being useful, but that branding makes

• robinhood 9y ago
  I know :-/ Sorry about this, I'm trying to find the best way to explain what it does, without using a boring video that sucks, or poetic terms that say nothing. If you have any idea, please, please let me know :-D
  • macawfish 9y ago
    Lots of people use planners and datebooks to remember important dates (like your high school best friend's upcoming wedding!) And lots of people use journals or diaries to take notes or keep memories. These things are less about "managing" and more about cultivating relationships and memories. "Organizing" is a word with less controlling vibes. Maybe start there and take a journey through the thesaurus? http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/organizing?s=t http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/organizing?s=t
    • robinhood 9y ago
      Ohhh that's a very good idea. I disliked the notion of management, and organization makes much more sense. Thanks a lot!
      • macawfish 9y ago
        Here are some other ones that might help: - stay in touch/keep in touch - coordinate - focus - balance - "look after", as in "look after you relationships"
        • edraferi 9y ago
          How about terms related to tending a garden? "nurture" "Attend to" "Mind to" "Tend to" "Cultivate" "Nourish"
          • macawfish 9y ago
            Garden metaphors always do it for me.
  • cperciva 9y ago
    "Your social memory" works much better than "manage your friends and family". So take this as a complaint about the HN headline, not about the site itself.
    • arjie 9y ago
      I wouldn't have clicked through if it said "your social memory". That sounds like some NGO talking about causes. But this I instantly understood.
  • kej 9y ago
    I think you could convey this pretty well if you changed the first screen shot on your page a little. Cut out the actual browser window part, and paste that on to an image of an address book/planner with the same information about Jim Halpert. That way it's an instant visual association with an existing non-computer idea.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  • mistermann 9y ago
    My memory is terrible, I've wanted something like this for ages to manage my life in general, love it!! I would like this to be hosted for $12/year.
    • robinhood 9y ago
      Blush. Thanks for the feedback. Glad that all the hours sitting on my couch coding this tool helps you today :-D
  • bonniemuffin 9y ago
    To me it's "an external brain for your social life".
  • anigbrowl 9y ago
    The product is super cool and useful, although I hope you won't limit it to being a single-user thing because it could actually evolve into an amazing social tool. But I would really lose the word 'manage', it kind of suggests that personal relations are just another kind of task which is apt to make the people being related to feel devalued because they're not important enough to be given space in someone's day-to-day consciousness. poetic terms that say nothing ?! If poetic terms say nothing then why is poetry (both literary and lyrical, as in songs) so popular? Social relations are not purely functional or transactional, although they often have those aims or characteristics. Friendship and warm familial relations are based on feelings. I often say that hackers need to develop better emotional intelligence and this is a good example. Would you take someone on a date and say 'statistics indicate that we have a high degree of socioeconomic compatibility and synergistic aesthetic appeal, suggesting that we should pursue a merger strategy so as to maximize our mutual future advantage?' Most people would prefer to hear something along the lines of 'I love you and want to marry you.' I understand that your product is aimed at busy people who are invested in their work and want to handle their social relations at least as well as their business ones. But you need to be cognizant of their motivations for doing that; because they like, love and generally care about the people in their lives that lie outside their career. It is that drive which might move someone to start using your product, and you must appeal to that drive, which is an emotional one, in emotional terms. Incidentally, calling it Monica carries connotations of having an assistant called Monica that helps you remember those little personal obligations and although I'm sure you didn't intend this it gives me a sort of sexist vibe because historically such tasks have often been delegated to stereotypically female subordinates by busy executives (think Pepper Potts in the Iron Man story franchise). Even though both men and women seem to prefer female identities for things like GPS and virtual assistants, a gendered brand identity like this is likely to limit your appeal to one half of the population straight out of the gate. The brand values you wish to attach to your product are reliability, loyalty, and patience, so it would be worth your while to dig through mythology and fiction in search of characters who are associated with those qualities and then develop variations from any particularly inspiring name stems you encounter so as to leverage those psychic associations.
    • robinhood 9y ago
  • shoover 9y ago
    The word "manage" has to go, but it's a tough one. Any word having to do with augmentation is too robot/AI sounding. I like the idea of "cultivating," as in the Dale Carnegie approach or the another commenter's awesome uncle with the spreadsheet. But it's a balance of memory and cultivation. Anyway, nice work.
  • oever 9y ago
    Here's a non-boring video. It has some good product taglines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2UPoHJAOSQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2UPoHJAOSQ
• macawfish 9y ago
  It's kinda weird, but it's way better than facebook. This is a digital social journal & planner. If it helps me cultivate healthier relationships, I could get into that. We need tools like this to combat the parasitic overlords' tools.
• blowski 9y ago
  I know how you feel, it's my first thought as well. But then I realise that I'm doing this anyway - I put appointments in my diary to call my grandparents, I have todo lists for things to do with my wife, and I record promises I've made to friends so I don't forget. Having it all in one place sounds like a nice idea.
• abelhabel 9y ago
  I see it more like keeping track of things. Of, course we might get into the territory you are referring to once you see that you have all this data and you start manipulating your and other's behaviour based on this data. However, the need for recording and documentation is as old as scribbles on a cave wall and some also really do need to document things to remember. I must agree, though, with the wording. It is unfortunate but it probably does attract those who have an itch for efficiency.
• nickpsecurity 9y ago
  "Is anyone else getting a dystopian vibe from the idea of "managing" friends and family?" First thing I thought. Although, it is accurate in a sense given that there's a lot to track, filter, setup and so on. It's why the same activities are called "management" in CRM. It's just socially unacceptable to say the truth sometimes. In this case, the author should change the wording so it doesn't say CRM or "manage." Instead, some propaganda along lines of "family reminder app" so you "don't miss an opportunity" might sound nicer. Actually, the opening paragraph seems fine.
• keithpeter 9y ago
  On the other hand for keeping track of interactions with my adult education students, it looks quite useful. Anyone comment on data export functions?
  • robinhood 9y ago
    You can't export for now, but this is something I have in mind. You should be able to be in total control of your data, for sure. So I'll do that. Probably in CSV.
    • keithpeter 9y ago
      Excellent and I suppose CSV is the nearest we have for a lowest common denominator format for structured data
      • confounded 9y ago
        CardDav exists for pretty much this purpose. It's how contact lists are exported from Google, LinkedIn, iOS, mail clients, etc., and has fields for arbitrary metadata.
    • ekzy 9y ago
      That makes me much more confident in spending the time to input my data. Cool.
• creepydata 9y ago
  Nope. Unless you are a psychopath you have always managed friends/family even if was managed informally in your head. You used to have a Rolodex of phone numbers and addresses. You may have even kept additional information about the person in your Rolodex, perhaps their birthday or anniversary. Important dates and social obligations used to be written on a wall or desk calendar so you didn't forget. You make notes (written or mental) of people's needs and preferences in order to accommodate them. (ie "I better have a vegetarian meal for Susan.", "John works nights so I better not call him until 6." "Sarah likes red wine.", "Joe doesn't like clubing.") You store in your mind what is happening in friend's lives to talk to them about it next time you see them. You made a paper list of people to send out event invitations, thank you notes, or Christmas cards so you don't forget anyone. It's all social management, even if informal. But it's so natural you might not have thought about it as "management." Nothing wrong with formalizing it and taking it all digital, if anything it can foster closer relationships if it's easy to use and consolidated. Someone can only remember so much at once and its great they care enough to store that information for easy retrieval in the future. We have never, as a society, faulted people for writing things down, (Rolodex is a generic trademark, for crying out loud), we are all only human. We don't think twice about setting a reminder to take medication or water the plants.
  • anigbrowl 9y ago
    I believe you're missing the GP's point, which is the unwelcome connotations of power relations that attach in the words 'management' and 'customer' (from CRM). Generally a manager exerts authority over those managed, although it's true that managers in the showbiz world are the employees of performers rather than the other way around.
• JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  No. My wife and I foster, so keeping track of hearings, therapies, medications, milestones, visitations, continuing education, etc. is quite a chore. This looks intriguing, but we are already restricted from posting to any social media, so as a family we decided to not host any data externally, if we can help it. If this were self hosted I'd be taking a much closer look.
  • robinhood 9y ago
    It is self hosted if you like, it's open source. Feel free to host it yourself. https://github.com/monicahq/monica https://github.com/monicahq/monica
    • JustSomeNobody 9y ago
      I don't know how I missed that! Thank you for the direct link. I will take a closer look at it and give you feedback in the future.
• allenu 9y ago
  It does feel gross, even if we all implicitly do it. Some things aren't meant to be consciously commodified, I think. It's like the thought experiment of asking a friend (or your mom) how much you owe them if they make you dinner.
• eddieroger 9y ago
  I did, but I sort of talked myself out of it. I keep a lot of PIM-level info on people in my address book already (which is on my computer and syncs to my phone, etc), so it's not like I don't keep some of this, but I don't go to the level of tracking when I do stuff with people other than placing reminders on my calendar. I think calling it a CRM is what's weird - it's making your friend group something different, when really it's just a fancy rolodex. The trick is for them to never, ever get hacked, should you keep some unsavory stuff in there - I think it feels like a better offline thing to me, not because I like to keep a shit list on people, but because my friends are worth more to me than most of the stuff I do online.
• LordKano 9y ago
  My first thought was that it can be subpoenaed. For example: if, unbeknownst to you, two of your friends were involved in some kind of criminal conspiracy and you had spoken/met with both of them near the time it was known that they had met, an enterprising prosecutor could use your record of having met with them to accuse you of having taken part.
  • robinhood 9y ago
    Hum. Is there anything I can do to prevent that?
    • plygrnd 9y ago
      Not really. If it's on your server and not protected by something like the DMCA, you have to turn it over if legally ordered to. Check with a lawyer though.
      • confounded 9y ago
        The DMCA is unlikely to affect a subpoena.
    • confounded 9y ago
      - "No knowledge" (e.g. decrypted on the client) data storage. Very very difficult to do well. - Make it easy for people to host data independently of you. Either by running your app on thier server (related to discussion above about for Heroku/Sandstorm, but a regular VPS is probably preferable), or using your client to read data stored in some generic format, e.g. an existing CardDav server, or even just Dropbox, with the web UI running locally, or as an extension. The most important features for self hosting are probably maturity and stability, and signed releases via an up-to-date PPA. For using some generic back-end you'd need to support it.
      • infinite8s 9y ago
        Even if people self-host, if a prosecutor suspected you had data about them meeting they could probably subpoena your server.
• delfinom 9y ago
  The only thing dystopian about this is the service eventually selling off the data and others data mining you even more detailed.
• haffla 9y ago
  I get the exact same feeling mixed with some pity for people who need to be reminded to meet a friend. Moreover, hell, if you don't know the names of your brothers children, there is something wrong with you and this app won't change that.