“We’re trying to redefine what social media looks like in the wake of the major social platforms transforming into entertainment and mass media spaces, rather than social ones.”
Michael Collett, co-founder
Why we started Kin
The story of how Kin started…
The idea for Kin came after a poem I read - ‘A Little Fellow That Follows You’ - really struck a chord with me, and I wanted to share it with my son. He was just a toddler at the time, so I set up an email account for him and sent him the poem to open in the future. This quickly snowballed into regular emails for him to open in the future, including milestones and memories I wanted to share with him.
I knew other parents that had done this, but it felt so clunky. I wanted my son, and other children, to be able to enjoy these memories without needing to wade through countless emails. I called my co-founder Matt Blom, saying “there needs to be a better way of sending future messages to loved ones”. We discussed if there was an app out there that allowed for intergenerational interactions – past, present, and perhaps future – with no ads, that’s totally private and safe. There wasn’t, so we created one.
That’s how Kin was born: with Future Messaging as its starting point - but ultimately with helping us stay close to the people we care about at its core.
Creating Kin has been an incredible experience: we’re trying to redefine what social media looks like in the wake of the major social platforms transforming into entertainment and mass media spaces, rather than social ones.
We hope you enjoy Kin as much as our first wave of users have, and that it helps you share the things that matter, with the people that matter.
Michael Collett - Kin co-founder
“We’re the generation who’ve been taken on a journey through social media — but one that hasn’t ended up where we expected.”
Matt Blom, co-founder
Kin represents a natural evolution in social media
As the idea for Kin developed we began to realise that the incumbent social media platforms were where we stayed connected to our close friends and family, but that they were becoming less and less fit for that purpose. “Are our families just another WhatsApp group?” was the rhetorical question we kept asking ourselves. We knew we needed something more than what was on offer - something private and uninterruptible by unwanted content or people.
Our core feature set began to take shape around this premise of privacy and control, for sharing the stuff that matters with the people that matter.
Storyline and Chat fulfilled the need to simply speak and share with the people we want to, and not be interrupted by those we don’t.
We created a Search function that is better than all other social platforms, letting you search for content by event, date, person tagged and keywords.
Future Messaging allows you to leave a digital legacy for generations to come, or just have fun sending messages ahead of time for occasions.
We developed Memorial Accounts to remember people gone but not forgotten, because no other social platform manages that with dignity.
Young Person Accounts was the obvious solution to involving the little ones in Kin and giving them control of their account when they’re old enough.
As we add more features - such as voice and video calls, pet accounts, and much more - we remain true to our private-by-design principles. Kin will continue to be the best of social media and messaging platforms but with total privacy, complete control over connections, and better ways to share memories and moments.
We hope you enjoy Kin as much as we have creating it.
Matt Blom, co-founder
