In 2007,

The iPhone let us share our lives as we lived them. For a while, that’s what social apps were for.

Seeing what your friends were doing was often reason enough to join them.

Then the apps traded our friends for entertainment from people we’ve never met.

Our friends disappeared from our feeds, and when we stopped seeing them go out, we went out less.

We are now living through a social recession, with more time alone than a generation ago, much of it spent on apps that still call themselves social.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The people we love are still a message away, and the places worth going are still around the corner. What’s been missing is something that points us toward them.

We believe the next great social network will be built on what people actually do.actually do.actually do.actually do.actually do.actually do.

That’s why we’re building Dote.

A photo journal of the places you go and who you go with, kept for yourself first and shared only with the people who matter.

Sunday on the hillSunset on the pierMuseum dayWhere we studyMaya’s 22ndLeo’s last night in townThe cove, finallyRooftop after finals

Guided by the taste of people like you, so finding somewhere worth going feels like asking a friend.

Someday, the endless feed will look like a strange detour in the story of the phone: the years it kept us home watching strangers instead of out with our friends.

Strava showed that people will share every mile when their friends are the audience, and Beli showed that we’d rather trust a friend’s list9.8 than any critic’s. Each was built around one thing we do, and the rest of life is ready for the same.

We believe in a future where…