Frequently Asked Questions

A “Round Robin” was an old-fashioned way for a family (or other geographically distributed group) to keep in touch in the days before social media, email, or even cheap long distance calls. It was basically a packet full of letters that was sequentially mailed to each person in “the Robin”.

When someone received the Robin, that person would remove the letter they had included last time they had it, write a new letter talking about developments in their life, then add the new letter in the packet and send it on to the next person on the list. After the last person, it would be sent back to the first person, and a new “flight” of the Robin would begin.

Robin Letter is intended to replicate the Round Robin experience in a modern way appropriate to the internet age, but jettisoning the algorithmic feeds trying to capture your attention typical of social media.

Instead, Robin Letter intends to foster a slower, longer form, periodic update to a circle of people who care how each other are doing. Rather than anyone posting to a wide group of people, or even to the entire world, Robin Letter focuses on smaller groups who want to stay connected.

The key ideas are that specific people are included in a Robin, in a specific order, and they take turns providing updates for the Robin. When it is your turn, you give an update to the group, much as you would on a social media site.

Family members who want to keep in touch. Old school friends who want to keep in touch. Coworkers who want to keep in touch. Basically any group of people who find value with getting regular updates from the others in the group but who do not already find that happening spontaneously.

Look, if you have a group chat with all your uncles and aunts and cousins and siblings, and it is hopping, and you all know about what is going on with each other anyway, then you probably don't need Robin Letter for this. And there are people in our lives that are so active on social media you always know what is going on with them if you want to or not.

But there are many people in most of our lives where we would LIKE to know what they are up to, and where we would LIKE them to know what we are up to, but it just does not happen spontaneously.

When was the last time you actually heard from Cousin Fred?

This is where Robin Letter can help. It provides a structured way to get updates and give updates from those people regularly, and just gives that extra little nudge to make it actually happen.

Participating in Robins will be free. As will be inviting an initial number of people to join you in Robins you create or manage. After that initial number of people, there will be a small charge to invite additional people. This is both because I want to at least cover the cost of running this site, and to discourage people from using Robin Letter to spam their entire contact lists. Over time I may also introduce other premium features.

The intention is to allow each update to include a small number of pictures. Photos are often a key part of how we communicate with each other and I want to include them. Images will be added in the Beta phase.

This will depend on the specific Robin(s) you are included in. A Robin with only two people in it might go back and forth pretty quickly. A Robin with 100 people in it might only come around to your turn every couple of years. Some Robins may have lots of people who respond immediately as soon as it is their turn, while others may have people who wait a week before they submit an update. So your mileage will vary depending on the Robins you are a part of.

This will also be different for different Robins, as it will be something that can be set up by the creator. But generally speaking, when it is your turn you will have a certain amount of time to provide an update (default one week), or the Robin will pass along to the next person leaving no update from you in that flight of the Robin.

If you miss a certain number of flights in a row (default 3, also configurable per Robin) then you will be moved to an inactive mode, where you still have access to come view updates, but won't be invited to contribute again until you actively indicate you'd like to get back in the rotation (which you can do at any time). You're not actually "kicked out", you just won't hold up the Robins for everybody else until you are ready to participate again.

That's the whole point. Users will be able to create Robins and invite whoever they like to those Robins. You can create different Robins for different groups of people in your life as well.

After Robins are created, there will be a need to be able to add and remove people under certain circumstances. I have some ideas, but am still working on all the details for how that will work.

The creator will obviously have a lot of control, but Robins need to be able to continue even if the creator leaves. So I'm looking at ways to assign additional people as owners, or even democratic models for managing Robins.

Absolutely.