Introducing LOVE: A Brand New Way to Communicate Face-to-Face With Those Closest to You

A few years ago, I was travelling weekly for business engagements and hit a wall. I had a constant baseline of fatigue, and I knew it was because I used too many different forms of communication to keep up with the people who mattered to me. 

So, I decided to get off social media, ditch my smartphone, and start using a flip phone. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how it would go. I thought the “work” of checking in on people without social media would make it difficult to keep up with everyone.

But I found that staying in touch with the people closest to me became much easier and more enjoyable. It didn’t feel like work. In fact, the communication fatigue that I got with my smartphone and social media apps disappeared.

I knew I couldn’t be the only one who felt this way.

Right now, there are more ways than ever to get in touch with each other at a distance. There are 4.2 billion people on social media and 5.2 billion using a cell phone. Video calling, unsurprisingly, surged dramatically during our collective pandemic year.

The problem is that all of these methods have yet to match the open and easy experience of speaking to a friend or loved one in person. 

• With SMS and messenger apps, we’re glued to a keyboard just waiting for the next message to come so we can respond. It’s disproportionately time-consuming and difficult to use for longer, complex conversations. 
  

• Video calls—once thought to be the answer—have turned out to be draining instead of energizing. 
  

• Social media, which was supposed to bring us closer, has made communication impersonal, revolving around manufactured personas of ourselves. 
  

No wonder people are getting burned out by these mediums.

The idea of a digital detox has been around for quite some time, but it’s not exactly a silver bullet. Rather than pushing ourselves to the limit and then taking a break, we need a healthier, more vibrant way of communicating when we’re not face-to-face.

‍Enter LOVE, a brand new way to communicate face-to-face with those closest to you.

At its core, LOVE is a new take on video and audio messaging, video calling, and more.

LOVE combines what’s great about our current communication options in a way that diminishes their negative effects. Instead, LOVE places intentional, natural communication at the forefront.

There are no ads on LOVE. No gimmicky features. Nothing to distract you or diminish the experience. 

It’s simply a place where you can be unapologetically you.

SO, HOW DOES LOVE WORK?

Enabling Seamless Communication

The key to LOVE is its multi-modal design. In plain English, this means you can send and receive communication in whatever form is best for you at any given moment—whether that’s video, photo, audio, or text--synchronously or asynchronously, irrespective of geography, language, or time. Just as importantly, you receive messages in any form you want.

You can read the transcript of a video message or listen to a text message. If you’re communicating with someone who prefers to speak in a different language than your own, you can get instant translation from more than 50 languages.

Communicate flexibly and fluidly across video, audio, and text—whenever and wherever. 

Multi-modality reduces friction and humanizes your experience. You aren’t forced to reply or send a new message in a specific format, and you aren’t forcing that format on anyone else. Everyone communicates in the way that works for them.

Innovating the Keyboard

If you’re thinking, “Well, I can already send an audio or video message via my messenger app,” take a moment to consider how often you do that.

It’s rare, isn’t it?

Think about how you feel when you get an audio message. It’s often an abrupt experience. You can’t see what’s in the message without playing it, and it feels out of place, like someone just left you a voicemail on your messenger app.

Because LOVE’s platform integrates so many different modes of communication seamlessly, you never get that jarring feeling when the style of communication changes. The experience isn’t centered around a keyboard, so there is no expectation placed on the type of communication you use.

Empowering Your Right to Forget

One reason social media can be so rough on our mental health is that it doesn’t allow us to forget. And humans are actually hardwired to forget, to allow memories to fade and time to heal all wounds. 

But that’s not what happens online. 

Something we posted a decade ago pops up as a “memory” and makes us cringe. An old flame keeps appearing in our timeline and bringing up painful memories. Our social circle is artificially inflated as we keep up with people we don’t really know at all. We’ve never had less power over what we choose to remember and forget.

LOVE operates under the assumption that we don’t need to make everything permanent. Want to save a message that’s important to you? Of course you can do that. But otherwise, your communications will disappear after seven days. 

This is about creating a healthier communication experience. At LOVE, we want to encourage everyone to nurture relationships with the people closest to them. By letting go of permanence and the need to play to the expectations of a broad circle, you have more time and energy to foster the relationships that matter to you.

Forging a Genuine Visual Expression

LOVE is working with the world’s leading artists, technologists, and designers to re-invent visual communication on the internet. 

Our team is creating a unique visual language that enables individuals to convey not only the content and context of a message, but more importantly, the experience of a conversation, the human connection.

‍Imagine you are sitting with your closest friends, listening and laughing as one tells a story around the proverbial campfire. Are you looking at yourself -- scrutinizing yourself -- in a mirror as that friend speaks?

No. Of course not.

LOVE’s visual expression removes the barrier of self-scrutiny and examination from visual communications.

Keep in mind, the options to change your appearance on LOVE—say, when answering on a video call—doesn’t change your features. It’s not beautification. It’s not hiding behind an avatar or a distracting dog ears gimmick. Instead, LOVE’s visual expression captures the individual’s essence, like a portrait by Andy Warhol or Shepard Fairey.

The reason we’ve created this iconic visual expression is simple: people get caught up in their appearance online. It’s natural to end up looking at your own image most of the time you’re on a video call or posting a photo to friends. LOVE is about getting past that visual hangup so you can focus on communication and connection.‍‍

Powered by Innovative AI Technologies

LOVE’s technology stack is based on transformative AI in a number of different domains. Its voice and facial recognition, natural language processing, privacy and encryption, contextual analysis, and transcription and translation algorithms all use state-of-the-art AI to ensure people communicate clearly and meaningfully on the platform.

But for the people who use LOVE, this cutting-edge technology has to be accessible. That’s why we’ve packaged it in a simple platform that makes communication feel natural, rather than a hassle. It’s a human-centric design that we believe is the solution to the fatigue of modern communication. 

The impact will be enormous. 

By making conversations more personal and meaningful, we can restore a sense of joy to our personal communications. Even better, we can restore a sense of privacy and respect. It bears repeating: LOVE is completely ad-free. It protects your privacy with the strongest encryption possible and empowers you with the right to forget. 

Together, the aspects of LOVE create a safe and inclusive environment for you to talk openly with the people closest to you and deepen the relationships that matter most.

WHO IS LEADING LOVE?

LOVE is led by an exceptional founding team of internet and telecoms pioneers, serial entrepreneurs, technologists, and designers. 

Our Founder and Executive Chairman, Christopher Schlaeffer, is a serial entrepreneur, ex C-suite at Deutsche Telekom, helped create and launch the Android platform, and released the first iPhone in Europe. He’s also a board member at Amnesty International.

Timm Kekeritz, the Chief Design Officer and creator of LOVE’s product magic, has designed products for leading brands such as Porsche, AT&T, and BMW, worked at the leading consultancy IDEO, and teaches interaction design in Copenhagen and Berlin. His work has been featured in Wired, Fast Company, Gizmodo, and more.

Jim Reeves, our CTO, is a technical genius who contributed over 14% of the codebase of a publicly-traded telecoms operator while serving as its head of mobile development.

As for myself, LOVE’s CEO, I’m a 3x founder in consumer and emerging tech, author of #1 Best Seller Bitcoin Pizza, Forbes 30U30, and a faculty futurist at Singularity University, where I’ve worked extensively towards a more democratic and decentralized future of society.

Together, we believe LOVE has a chance to help millions of people stay close and connected to the ones who matter most. We are excited to see you on LOVE.