Launched this week
Lettoral
One message out, one message back. No social hack.
2 followers
One message out, one message back. No social hack.
2 followers
Lettoral is a shoreline where life’s quietest fragments drift ashore. While today’s internet is a stormy sea swirled with ads and algorithms, Lettoral offers a sanctuary: a connection that is quiet yet exciting, fragile yet certain. There are no profiles, no followers, and absolutely no hacks to go viral. Here, we share the moments too small for social media, but too precious to keep to yourself. Cast one “bottle” into the sea, and receive one back from a stranger somewhere in the world.
Hello everyone! I am the creator of Lettoral. 👋
I used to be a game director in Japan. This project started when I was looking through my idea sketches for a personal project and found a note: "The experience of picking up a message in a bottle." That note was the spark for this project.
Lettoral is a service you can enjoy as soon as you access the web page.
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# How to play
The rules are simple. Send one message, get one back. Once a day.
It is completely anonymous with no profiles, no likes, no following, and no followers.
It's just you and a stranger, connected by a single "bottle" drifting in the digital sea.
# Why I built Lettoral
I originally planned to turn this idea into a game, but I felt it would be a better experience as a social service. At the same time, I was feeling tired of modern social media—the constant arguments, unavoidable ads, and the obsession with numbers. I wanted to create something where you could escape that noise.
# The experience I want to create
Imagine finding a weathered bottle with a letter inside on a beach, or throwing one in, believing someone across the sea might pick it up. What is written inside? Who wrote it? While your imagination is sparked, you feel a connection to someone who really exists in this world. This creates a connection that is fragile but certain.
It's not something you'd tell your family first, nor is it something you'd post on social media for likes. It's something you hesitate to share publicly, yet keeping it bottled up feels unsettling—let's exchange things too precious to keep to yourself.
# Privacy
As an individual developer, not a professional engineer, I prioritized privacy as much as possible. IP addresses are salted and hashed, making it impossible to link them to posts and identify individuals. Messages are typically deleted 24 hours after being received (unless reported).
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I'd be thrilled if you'd give it a play!
I chose Product Hunt as the first place to release it outside my circle of acquaintances, but I plan to release it to the Japanese developer community soon after.
I hope the day comes when your bottles eventually travel across various countries and languages.
Thank you for reading.
I welcome your questions, advice, and feedback!