Slowly lacks a comprehensive roadmap to some great place. Rather, it's going nowhere, and fast. Badumtss.

The stated goal of Slowly is to provide a medium for people seeking a penpal experience, but from the comfort of their smartphone. In other words, to facilitate meetings between people. There are so many apps that can provide just that. Modern social media, multiplayer video games, specialty forums, chat room clients, and many more all have a similar stated goal with different window dressing. What makes Slowly special? The slow communication. That’s it. And in truth, that is the only gimmick it has that truly mimics the traditional penpal experience.

Slowly has been around in some form or fashion for around five years. During this time, the only meaningful evolution has been the release of a web client – a sorry little page used by not only us wretched power users but by anyone who wants to write a letter of any serious length. And yet, it has gone ignored since its debut. The mobile app has received all the attention, despite it being minimally used by those who monetarily support the app. A penpal experience can’t really be had on a mobile phone, either functionally or aesthetically, and it would behoove Kevin to focus more on his web app. Just as well, this hearkens to his most recent inane blog post regarding business development, which contained practically no insight about that topic – if he wants to be more like the specialty coffee shop he frequents, should he not consider focusing on the web client rather than being merely like everybody else trying to make a silly app?

Ever since Slowly’s massive and unexpected success during COVID, there has been discussions on how to best use this success to better achieve Slowly’s goal. Most of these conversations have taken place privately or voiced here and there in Reddit threads. I had many ideas myself prepared ahead of a meeting I was to have with Simone, Kevin’s sister, which she ghosted. Despite that treatment, I do still love the app, and I do still have hopes for its success. These last few months, anyone paying attention can surely see the app trending downward, which was bound to happen as the world reopened and Slowly's novelty wore off. This slow crash in the userbase can be a catastrophic wipeout or a controlled burn depending on the way Kevin chooses to respond – and non-response is a response.

Here are some ideas I've had over my time using Slowly:

Product Development

• Physical Products! Slowly has created in-app demand for its rather attractively-designed stamps. These stamps could be adapted to physical merchandise -- like stickers. Similar cute Slowly-branded stationery, ink stamps, notecards, postcards, and the like would probably also do well. If anything, it's advertising. Slowly's target audience, intentional or otherwise, is largely sentimental young women who enjoy writing. The demographic that likes (or would like) Slowly often also enjoys postcrossing, wax sealing, scrapbooking, journaling, and/or actual snailmail. Many of the goods sold for these hobbies appear in the same stores. Placing products in these places helps capture the demographic Slowly most appeals to, but currently isn't aware of Slowly.
• Themes! Users here have often called for purchasable themes to spruce up one's letters. Any customization helps give letters more of a "voice," rather than it just seeming like a glorified email. There is no customization in the interface at all. This is a huge missed opportunity. Really, it's so obvious, it makes me feel as if Kevin has never had a real penpal. Every paper penpal I've ever had has customized everything about their letters. The satisfaction from cool formats and decoration is sometimes half the appeal for some people. Like the enhanced access to avatar cosmetics, this could be a premium feature, making premium actually worthwhile.
• Postcards! This has been regularly talked about. Many would prefer smaller, single-serving doses of writing rather than longer letters that require a greater time and mental commitment. Some people for reasons unknown to me would prefer to just use this as a quirky messaging app without getting too deep into writing novellas to people. To that point, when one has been writing to someone for a while, it is not uncommon for letter length to grow very long and for the time between letters to likewise grow. It would be nice to fill the gaps between letters with a quick check-in. Some might just prefer to send little postcards and let that be it. Designing these cards would be like designing stamps. This could also be a premium feature.
• Crowdsourced Design! There are many passionate users on this sub, and no doubt many passionate people who would like to contribute to the project but have been stifled by Kevin's unwillingness to relate to his app's community or just don't know how. The wiki, efforts to improve the web client in the past, and this very sub are all testaments to that. There are no doubt many talented artists in our midst. The stamp suggestion feature, while having many issues that won't be enumerated here, has a missed opportunity for user-designed stamps, cosmetics, or aforementioned postcards and themes. A reward for one's design being accepted could be a special stamp, free premium, or some special badge on one's profile. The greatest resource here -- the community -- isn't being utilized at all.

Feature Refinement

• Improve the search. Obvious fixes include being able to search amongst subtopics or profile keywords, sorting users by date of last login, filtering users by send:receive ratio (declining letters should not affect this ratio, ergo only letters not replied to or acted upon should affect the ratio), filtering users by character count in their profile, sorting by number of topics in common, filtering by average letter length, and filtering by reply time. Kevin should be working to facilitate meetings between people whose communications styles are most compatible rather than forcing them to wade through chaff.
• Remove the ads from the free client. Rather than punishing free users with sticks, premium should be incentivized with carrots. You get what you incentivize. And if you incentivize users to resent you through making the app clunkier or unsightly with animated ads, then that's just what you're going to get.
• Eliminate overly specific topics and allow users to add infinite subtopics. Users should be actively thinking about how they can engage with the app and refine their interests to achieve the best connection with people -- providing some common and fertile ground upon which to plant the seeds of friendship. Thirty subtopics are far too few. Thirty main topics are far too many. Some are overly specific and ought to be written as subtopics, like martial arts should be beneath fitness. "Casual" is meaningless. Makeup and beauty are redundant. Handicraft and DIY are redundant. Business, investing, finance, and startup are redundant; as are many others, but that'll do. Topics like "sex" and "depression" being built-in are unbecoming.
• Add some kind of meaningful scoring system. There does exist a sort of user score, though none of us have really discovered its meaning. Good penpal etiquette should be incentivized. This score doesn't need to be visible, but it should play a part in who is and isn't recommended. Bad apples ought to be taken care of through the reporting feature, but those with a lackluster score aren't necessarily penalized -- their profiles should just not appear at the top of the search or be selected in the auto-match.
• Work on the web client! Seriously! To those sending long letters, the web client is critical. Allowing all of the conventional app features (like search...) on the web client would be a wonderful thing.

Housekeeping

• Sexual harassment is a problem. It may have died down in recent months, but Kevin's advertising of the app in certain weird publications attracted the wrong kind of people, particularly those who thought this was a dating app or some run-of-the-mill SNS. Kevin damaged his app somewhat by making it seem that it was ripe for weird and lonely people by pointing out the female:male ratio on one of his rarefied Twitter posts some years ago, "Why are there so few men on Slowly???" he asks. What the hell? Just as well, though he has since stopped accepting Slowly Stories, those he did select often have romantic connotations. Have no doubt, when people are meeting in an app like this and one opens their heart up to other people over the course of months or longer, feelings can arise in a "love is blind" sort of way. That's great. But the app shouldn't be positioned towards such a thing. Then you'll get people deliberately looking for it when many here aren't after that.
• Ghosting is a huge problem. This is not specific to Slowly, of course, but more a sign of the times. There is no accounting for the natural death of a relationship. It could happen for any reason. I send goodbye letters if I'm not enjoying the conversation with someone, though understandably, some people can't be bothered or feel too self-conscious to do so. Postcrossing.com handles users not following through with sending cards well by not giving them any more addresses until at least some of their sent cards are received. To mitigate ghosting or non-replies, the app could force users to choose to accept or reject the letter before allowing them to send more letters. Likewise, if a user has been removed, that user ought to be notified which is better than waiting for a letter that won't ever come.
• Community engagement needs to happen. Goes without saying. The lack of engagement is pathetic. Kevin doesn't deserve the community he has, especially given how rude he has apparently been to his former translator volunteers. My understanding is this was a little bit better when his sister was involved in the project. It seems to me that Kevin would prefer to just code and have no users to be accountable towards. Most people do not even know who he is outside of some on the subreddit here. An occasional town hall thread, more frequent announcements, suggestion feedback, responding to an email, or even just communicating to Yann here would all suffice. I don't get it. I've said before that even super niche video games have better community relations.
• Develop a coherent marketing strategy. If you look at the list of publications in which Kevin chose to advertise Slowly, you'll see no rhyme or reason behind them. See here: https://startupslowly.com/about/ In all of 2022, he advertised in two places. Many of these links are dead, or to publications that seem to be gone. Some are bizarre, like India's "Economic Times". Why he tried to get in every Hong Kong magazine (maybe fishing for a job?) I don't know, since he wanted to "connect the world," one would expect more diverse publications. Especially in the US, his biggest market!
• Reform the horrible website. It is not intuitive and reminds me of premade designs from like 2010. Some of the important pages, like the FAQ and such, are all the way at the bottom in small text. No one goes there. The FAQ has likewise not been updated in forever. Much of the English used is clumsy and unprofessional, often lacking articles (or proper grammar generally) and having random capitalization. Update the blog, rather than flushing away time on World Toilet Day stamps. Maintain an active presence on the social media you choose to link to from the website's home page -- having little activity on there makes Slowly look abandoned.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.