In December of 2018…

I wrote the pitch below for a project I was calling “FamTime.” It was built around the idea that existing social media tools were not just failing to connect us… but were actually driving us apart.

I suggested:

Time boxing interaction
Limiting group sizes / connection
Any dynamics that lead to more “real” connection.

Over the past few decades companies with this premise have come and gone. I’ve invested, tested, and even tried building (I put $100k and 6 months into building a FamTime prototype).

BeReal may be a flash in the pan (though I don’t think so). But more importantly, it signals an appetite for genuine connection, and healthy social media.

See my note below… many of the same trends, ideas, and observations, hold true today.

The Short FamTime Pitch

(Copied from an email sent in Dec of 2018)

Differentiators

25 Friends
- Benefit is you’re only sharing with people you care about. So you share more real things and you get closer to those people.
Fixed Fam Time
- Benefit is that you break an addictive habit (checking whenever you have 30 seconds free)
- Benefit is you have a richer, synchronous experience with friends

V1:

Existing social media apps suck. We downloaded Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat to bring us closer together. Instead we’re following hundreds of people we hardly know. We spend hours each day scrolling through content from celebrities, middle school acquaintances, and advertisers. We’re addicted to these apps, despite the fact that usage is correlated with anti social behavior, depression and anxiety.

FamTime exists to actually bring you closer together with 25 friends, who are organized into “Fams” - one group might be your actual family, one might be your college friends, another might be your work friends. Like other social media applications, users share moments from their day via photo or video. Unlike existing platforms, users don’t consume these photos and videos whenever they want. They can only view content in specified consumption windows.

The result is that users spend less time in social media applications, and the time they do spend results in synchronous, real connection.

V2:

Here is how FamTime works. Throughout the day you capture moments from your day, and share them with groups of friends (called “Fams”). For most of the day, nobody can view the content that has been shared. Then at a specific time, everyone gets a notification inviting them to “FamTime.” Then, everyone jumps into the app, views the content, and has a conversation about what they’ve seen. It feels like sitting down at the dinner table with your family after a long day.

Today almost everyone has a group text with friends where they share photos and videos - FamTime is like this, but better. It really brings people together.