A CRM for personal life

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5803549
by shadowcats • 13 years ago
2 6 13 years ago

Also on FS: http://firespotting.com/item?id=1056

I'm working on scratching an itch of my own: developing and refining my personal (ie outside of work) network of contacts in a systematic way.

For business, CRM usually boils down to:

-Keep track of sales

-Do customer support

-Keep track of social media, email campaigns, communication with customers, stuff like that

For private life you could boil it down to:

-Meet new people

-Do more with people you already know (ie have more fun together)

-Introduce people to each other in order to create a stronger network

Here are some examples of private life social "campaigns":

-Spend more time with grandparents

-Meet Chinese people to learn the language from

-Meet a partner

-Salsa dancing w/ friends

-Find a training buddy

-Go on fishing trip with casual acquaintance

-Meet new friends in new city you're moving to

-Host Thanksgiving

-Introduce one friend to another

Etc.

The question is: would you use a CRM to track your social life like this? Too creepy/machiavellian?

What features would be important?

My list of features that I would want:

-Import from Gmail, Linkedin, FB, etc

-Keep track of when I last emailed them

-Keep track of commitments/promises by myself/others

-Keep track of what kind of new people I want to meet

-Comments, journal, attachments, etc

-Set reminders to ping people

-Tag, and rate contacts on various dimensions (ie geographical proximity, how many years I've known them, what their skills/hobbies/passions are, do they know Spanish?, etc)

-Scan business cards (quite standard CRM feature I think)

-Connect friends with friends. I think this kind of combinatorics thing is really interesting. A personal life CRM could really help you spot opportunities for introducing friends to each other and see combinations that you might not have thought about before.

-Send out emails to friends and do analytics and A/B tests.

-Email templates for contacting multiple friends fast

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