Lettrs: More than Just a Writing App

When was the last time you took time to write someone a letter? When was the last time you actually sat down and filled paper with carefully selected words from its address line down to its final salutation? When was the last time you gave your hand the pleasure of feeling your pen glide as you you sign your name at the bottom of a letter?

P.S. This app is so rave worthy!

As technology and military veteran Drew Bartkiewicz realized that the younger generation (including his kids) is slowly losing the art of addressing and responding to a letter, he decided to merge the old with the new. He launched Lettrs in January 2013 after seeing that current social media apps lack the ability to preserve meaning and lasting words in spite of rapidly connecting people. Lettrs began as a web platform that transforms your desktop into a writing desk, enabling you to write and send letters privately or to the Lettrs online community which the company dubs as "a community that encourages people to take time to write". The desktop platform was soon followed by an iPhone app and in July 2014, an Android app that became Google Play's Editor's Choice and made it to the Best Android Apps of 2014.

Lettrs gives its users the traditional snail mail experience in an enticing environment. Writers can choose between many beautiful themes, fonts, and stamps and even freehand their own signature at the bottom of each letter. One can choose penpals among their friends or the writers from over 180 countries in 80 languges. Among these writers are beauty guru Michelle Phan and international award-winning and bestselling author Paulo Coelho. You can include your photos, tags, and location, use your voice to input your letters, and share your letter to other platforms. I personally take advantage of their ready-made layouts to share my poetry on Instagram and I would definitely recommend the app to anyone who is easily inspired by a writing environment that is aesthetically pleasing. The app is also really great for writers that are looking for a tool that can help them achieve their daily writing duration goals.

Writer or not, anyone would enjoy Lettrs. We have been living in a world that shrunk meaningful conversations into milliseconds of likes and beautiful paragraphs into 140 characters. We have brought to life a TL;DR culture that discourages many to stop reading something when the text goes beyond a 1x1 Instagram frame. While I understand the importance of communicating concisely, sometimes I fear that we are sacrificing not only the quality of our attention spans, but our literacy and capability to articulate genuine expression in exchange of that. We need apps like Lettrs to make sure that longer conversations and sentences remain as important parts of our lives.