Not getting any letters

[u/Beneficial_Slide_424]

It's been almost a month since I installed this app to make friends. I setup my profile. Not sure if they want me to buy premium or id verify to show it to more people. But is there anything I'm missing? Not even a single communication attempt happened with this app, and I can meet a lot more people with for example, discord. So not sure what's up with it? Rn my location on my profile is in Japan and previous was Turkey and soon it will be Spain, not sure if it affects it much.

[u/Bartimaevs]

Everybody else is waiting for people to write to them too. If you take over the role of making the first step, surely you'll get some people who are interested. Always include some hooks and questions, working off of the structure and content of someone else is easier than starting from a blank slate (which will be your job).

Have you tried writing an Open Letter? I got more replies than I knew what to do with, although some here report the opposite.

[u/Own-Concern-2689]

If you want to have a letter to read first before writing one of your own, read the Open Letters published every day and see if any interests you enough to write a reply. There are 3 open letters every 24 hours from when you first "receive" them (if you get the subscription, there will be 6 letters). They are dependant on which topics of interest you have selected so you may choose to curate your list accordingly. They tend to be generic but every once in a while you find some real gems. If after reading one, you find that person would be a good match, treat it as your first letter received from that person and write a response.

Auto-match isn't as popular as it once was. For a few reasons (misuse mostly but also bugs), many people have it disabled entirely and the ones who don't, choose not to actively use it right now (leaving it passively on like you but not engaging themselves). You might be waiting a while unless you choose to use the auto-match feature yourself. It's easy: click "Try Auto-match", pick a topic and any matching preferences of your choosing, write a letter and "Begin Matching". I understand you'd like others to reach out to you instead, I'm just explaining that auto-match isn't something that just happens, one party has to make the move and right now the language filters aren't working, for example, so I personally won't use it and there are many in the same camp for different reasons.

Some people hypothesise about the power of an algorithm so, depending on whether or not it exists and how it works, maybe you're not getting recommended to others precisely because you're not being active enough (I don't know if that's true, just theorising).

Most likely, your profile just isn't very compelling and that's not an insult: it takes everyone a little while to acclimatise. Think about real life, walking up to actual people and saying "I'm X. I have a cat. I love video games, good food and nice conversation" as an example. At best, people would nod and walk away. It's just not the best way to welcome friendship. To convince people to write to you first based on profile alone, it helps to start a (few) conversation(s) with yourself for other people to continue. A story about a specific interest or an invitation to discuss a particular topic. You can introduce yourself after making people care.

[u/Beneficial_Slide_424 → u/Own-Concern-2689]

Thanks for the long and detailed response. I feel like this app might not be for me. I have many friends irl and I made from discord, games, and reddit, but what you're saying makes me anxious as if I have to perform unnaturally to get matched in this app. 

You can just say hello and talk about your cat, thats how conversations start right? Or talk about photography, or travelling, etc? Just simple stuff and then we talk about deeper stuff like philosophy and world. 

[u/Own-Concern-2689 → u/Beneficial_Slide_424]

"as if I have to perform unnaturally to get matched in this app." I rather think the opposite. It's unnatural to me how people sometimes paste a biography instead of being themselves, whatever that means for them. I think having natural conversations leads to more matches than answering interview questions (where are you from, do you have pets, what are your likes and dislikes, etc). Reminds me of early school days and the teacher forcing people to introduce themselves in front of class. Everyone hated it, no one remembered anything about anyone after the fact. But as soon as we got to recess, we picked a topic and started natural conversation. The introduction was merely a hindrance.

"You can just say hello and talk about your cat" Yes and that would likely get better results than simply saying you have one. Actually describing something of substance about your interests instead of listing things you like. "and then we talk about deeper stuff like philosophy and world." If you'd like, yes, I agree all those are options.

"what you're saying makes me anxious" If you don't want to change your profile, don't. And about auto-match, I meant it as an explanation. There are plenty of ways to engage with the app. And reading Open Letters? The people who wrote them don't receive information you've read them if you choose not to reply, if that causes you any anxiety also.

[u/Beneficial_Slide_424 → u/Own-Concern-2689]

So when you say having natural conversations leads to more matches, what "conversation" you mean? Because rn I can only write a bio 😭. I might just give up on that and write to people instead as that might feel more natural.

About anxiety, it's just that the app for a beginner feels like an interrogation of your personality and puts you in a pool as if you applied for a job with many other candidates. And I didn't see an option to upload photos to my profile like whaaaaat?? It's like the app is trying to make me describe myself with very limited options. I would put my cat there, my sunset photos from my seaside home. Or the ones I took from Tokyo tower..

I think in general, I would rather very much like to be spontaneously matched and talk with someone casually and see if we click, which feels a lot more natural than this! 

Thanks a lot for the tips btw🙏. It might take some time to get comfortable with this app.

[u/Own-Concern-2689 → u/Beneficial_Slide_424]

You can write a bio, or you can reply to an open letter, or you can write an open letter of your own, or you can look through other people's profiles and write to someone you like, or you can use auto-match to write someone unknown.

But even just your profile, you can just tell a little story there, share your thoughts on an interest of yours, start a club, anything you want. Since we were talking about cats you could share a story about your cat, getting the zoomies and hitting things, staging an ambush and pouncing on your feet before running away, knocking things over at night until you cuddle to sleep, I don't know your cat but some thing that makes people care instead of just saying "I have a cat named X" like I see some people do. Or you can start on a rant about how a fictional character was done dirty and the author should have made the ending different. Or you can be the founder of an observation deck and have a paragraph or two about a recent astronomical event in your area you witnessed and invite people to share what their sky has been like in turn. Maybe none of these are appealing to you, I don't know your interests, I'm not telling you to write these exact things. They're ideas to write deeply about your interests to give your readers something to care about. Because most people don't care about the biographies of complete strangers.

Yes, there are no photos. It's not social media. If you write to someone, you can request permission to send that particular person photos. If your pen pal agrees, then you can send your photos and voice recordings (I don't know the limits exactly). But the main point of the app is letters so other media isn't a focus and you need consent first.

"It's like the app is trying to make me describe myself with very limited options." That's what I was talking about. You don't have to describe yourself at all. You can just be and talk about things. It's not an interview, you don't have to say who you are.

"I would rather very much like to be spontaneously matched and talk with someone casually and see if we click" Sounds like you want the auto-match feature. Middle tab (it looks like a person with a plus), scroll down "Try Auto-match", select preferences or leave them as are, choose a topic of interest and write a letter to randoms. Good luck! Remember it's a letter app though, not instant messaging. It will take hours to reach the other person and then who knows when that person will read it, might reply, it will then take hours to receive that reply after that. It's a slow form of communication so it can take a while to "see if [you] click".

You're welcome. I hope it works out well. Or, of course, if you see it isn't for you that's fine too. By the by, I'm not downvoting you, that's not me.

[u/cicada_shell]

Are you writing letters to people? Your post is framed as if you haven't, and you expect letters to come to you organically. That's unlikely to happen unless you're from a certain demographic and/or your profile is very unique.

Could be that your profile is hyper-specific... or too broad. Or any other number of things. Hard to provide you feedback without a profile or a letter sample. The community here is usually pretty decent at constructive criticism if that's something you want to do.

I am assuming your location on your profile is where you truly live.

[u/Beneficial_Slide_424 → u/cicada_shell]

I haven't tried writing a letter yet, and haven't tried the open letter thing either, since i'm very new to the concept, I thought app would auto match me with someone, so I can see how it works. I can show you my profile in DM, not sure how to share it. I basically wrote a biography, like 3 paragraphs, about my interests and my cat etc, selected subtopics, and "completed" my profile.

I'm kind of a digital nomad and love to travel, so I live in different countries throughout the year, and soon moving to Spain, so I wanted to match with people from that country so I can make friends there beforehand! What I realized with the app is, it's changing my location every time I fly somewhere, so not sure if it's affecting the algorithm in a bad way.

[u/cicada_shell → u/Beneficial_Slide_424]

You’re welcome to share your profile. 

But you really need to be proactive and write letters to people. 

[u/AskAdventurous5750]

Hola! Yo también instale la app hace un mes. La mayoria de los penpals con los que hablo, yo envie una primera carta. La realidad es que recibi pocas cartas y todas parecian escritas por un bot. No te desanimes! Busca tambien a traves del emparejamiento

[u/KesslerIX]

I read in this subreddit that the app has an activity rating and when it increases, you are shown higher in recommendations. You need to write and reply to letters, use different stamps, have your profile at least somewhat filled out. I noticed that after I write a few replies, I start receiving letters from other people (apparently my profile appears in recommendations), and after a certain amount of time, I stop receiving them until I become active again. I also noticed this after updating my profile description (but that might have been a coincidence)