Friends
You do not forget people. You lose the thread.
Beatrice keeps what they told you and hands it back at the moment it is useful.
The real problem
A reminder to text Sarah is one you will swipe away.
The reminder was never the hard part, since you have known for three weeks that you owe Sarah a message.
What stops you is standing in the kitchen with your phone out and nothing to say, because whatever you last talked about has gone. So the notification becomes one more red dot you clear without reading, and the guilt survives it.
Beatrice does not remind you to text Sarah; it tells you her mom got out of the hospital in March and her sister is getting married in June, and then you already know what the message is.
What it keeps
It keeps what she told you.
When somebody tells you something, write it down in a sentence or answer one question about them and it gets kept: where they grew up, what they are dreading, the name of the dog.
None of it is a form, and there is no profile to complete and no percentage anywhere. It fills in over months, roughly the way you would learn about someone anyway, and the difference is that the app does not lose any of it.
Who they are to you: a painted mark and a line like one of the people who steadies you.
Something to open with: answer one question and the starters rewrite themselves.
One tap: a wordless mark to send on the days there is nothing to say.
Difficult people, quietly: mark one strained and the pressure eases.
The hard part
Something to actually say.
Deciding what to say is the expensive part, because the typing itself takes thirty seconds.
So the app opens with a line ready to send in one tap, or a question that came out of the last thing you learned about them. Send it as it is, change it, or ignore it, and nothing follows up.
Difficult relationships
Some people are complicated.
Not every relationship is easy, and an app that treats them all the same gets it wrong in both directions.
Tell Beatrice that one is strained, or distant, and it goes quieter, with wider gaps between nudges and fewer, shallower questions.
It never says why, and it does not mark that person, color them differently, or put anything on a screen that somebody could read over your shoulder. The only thing that changes is how often it asks.
Occasions
Told in time to do something about it.
Hear about a birthday that morning and the most you can do is send a text. Hear about it eight days out and a card still arrives on time. Eight is not a number somebody rounded off: it is what the postal service itself says first-class mail needs in December.
So how early you hear depends on what you might actually do.
- 8days to mail a card that arrives on time
- 21days if it is going overseas
- 30days if the restaurant is hard to book
And it arrives carrying whatever they told you they wanted, because what stalls gift shopping is usually the deciding. Asked in a survey of 8,005 shoppers, the largest group who had not finished said they were still working out what to buy, ahead of both money and time.
No score
Nothing in it keeps score.
- A streak for staying in touch.
- A number beside anybody's name.
- A list of the people you have let slide.
The app knows how long it has been, and it will never say so in those words.
The other half of the same job is Household, and the reasoning behind all of it is on why it works.
Get Beatrice
You do not forget people.
It is free, and it is in beta on iPhone.
Your address is used for this list and nothing else.