Rare Bird, Inc. | Articles : FutureMe.org

	Web Reviews From 1997 to the present, President/Creative Director, Jim Cota has been writing informative reviews of Web sites and other internet related issues for the Indianapolis Business Journal. If you've missed the articles in print you can catch up on past stories here. Articles are reprinted with permission of the Indianapolis Business Journal, copyright 1997 - 2005, IBJ Corp.

Communicating With Yourself... Tomorrow

Let's pretend for a moment that you have something to say, to yourself, at some point in the future. Remember that exercise in high school when you had to write a letter to your future self to be delivered at some later date? There were always problems with that assignment. What do you know in high school that seems worth reminding yourself 10 years later? And how would that letter ever get delivered: postal rates go up and you've probably moved four times since then… I got a little sidetracked there, so let me retrace my steps a little.

A 27-year-old IS specialist at a high school in San Francisco was out jogging one day and was thinking about the goals for his life. Heavy stuff, like "Where will I be in ten years?", "What will I be doing?", "Will I have finally lost 10 pounds?", etc. And he got to thinking about the high school letter writing thing and thought, "Wouldn't it be cool to create a way for those letters to actually get delivered?" He told his web-developer buddy and before you could write an e-mail to yourself, FutureMe.org was launched.

The premise is simple: write an e-mail message to yourself to be delivered at some future date, wait the specified amount of time, receive the letter. The most interesting twist on FutureMe, however, is that some people (quite a lot, actually) allow their letters to be displayed publicly, providing visitors to the site the opportunity to briefly eavesdrop on any number of people thinking (and reminding themselves) about any number of topics.

So far, there have been more than 10,000 messages written, growing at a rate of almost 400 a day. Most are exactly what you'd expect, checking up on the authors to find out if they've (finally!) gotten their finances together, lost that extra weight, or found the perfect mate. The letters come in all types: happy, funny, sad, poignant, ridiculous. There are a surprising number written in Spanish, French, German, and other languages.

A few stand out in my mind as favorites, but I suspect everyone would have their own opinions on that. I asked the site creators about the most amazing letters they'd seen and they mentioned a couple of sad letters, like the one reminding a writer about the death of a loved one, and the unique way that people will open up about their hopes and dreams in letters to themselves -- and then make those letters available to the public.

So what does the future hold for FutureMe.org? The creators say that they ubiquitous themes of "have you lost weight" and "have you found love" have them considered adding diet, exercise tips, and dating tips in version 2.