When we founded IRL, we had a simple goal: We wanted to help you, our users, spend more time with your friends in the real world, in order to boost your overall happiness. 

We have been building our IRL apps and website to help you manage your time better, find more ways to coordinate and get out with your friends, and discover new things to do together. We named it IRL, or “In Real Life” because we believe that what happens in real life is so much more valuable, and more fun, than just what gets shared later on social media. 

Today, as the world fights Coronavirus, or COVID-19, real life is changing. In order to stay safe from getting sick, or from getting the virus and passing it to our friends, colleagues, and loved ones, we are all radically shifting what our “real life” is. Instead of getting together, we’re staying home. And, we’re staying safe. In these times, we believe it’s more important than ever to spend meaningful time with your friends. We want to help you do this. Our mission hasn’t changed even though our lives temporarily have. 

IRL is getting a new look today. We’re calling this “In Remote Life”. Our core social calendar will still work just as it has. We’re introducing a number of new suggestions and suggested calendar events to help you plan for a remote day. We have reminders for you to call your friends, and are building ways for you and friends to share open times when you can plan ahead to talk or hang out on a zoom or Facetime. And we want to help you navigate this new life, this “remote” life. 

We’re overhauling our directory of events around you to events you can join remotely. While our favorite concerts, sporting events, and local festivals are paused, there are more interesting things to join with your friends online than ever. IRL will feature live concerts, live streams on Twitch or YouTube, and many more things you can do online, together with friends. We think this will be one of the biggest live directories on the internet. If you see something cool you want to attend, you can add a listing too. 

More than ever, we believe in the power of spending time with friends is what makes our lives better and happier. Even if you can’t be physically together right now, we want to help you make the most of your remote time. Please let us know what you think and what else we can do to help as we all get through this, together.  

With Love,

The IRL Team