Has it ever struck you as strange that when you travel with your friends or family you do most of your trip planning separately? Kevin, Billy and I recently traveled to India for 2.5 months and we did most of the planning on our phones through various travel apps. At least 100,000,000 links and screenshots were exchanged in our group chat as we looked for flights, hotels, Airbnb’s, excursions, and everything in between. This constant and unrelenting stream of messages and content seemed so redundant and inefficient! Taking the time to dig through TripAdvisor, Yelp, and similar sites to find experiences you think will appeal to everyone in your group can be quite cumbersome, then there is the time needed for everyone in the group to review your recommendations, opine on them, and then come to a consensus…
As we kept going back and forth, trying to come to some conclusions, it dawned on us that our planning could get done much faster if we could all be in the same room reviewing everything together. Unfortunately, this wasn’t possible as Kevin was in San Francisco while Billy and I were in Toronto. On top of the physical dislocation, Billy was always at work and rarely had time for socializing during the week. Despite it being impossible to be physically together, we were able to make time to be in the same group chat at the same time and occasionally get on the phone together as well. What we really needed was a solution where I could broadcast my phone screen to Kevin and Billy and we could collaborate on the same screen in real-time. This is one of the many reasons we built lightbeam 😊.
lightbeam allows you to live broadcast your phone in a private messenger. It turns your mobile experiences into shared mobile experiences. lightbeam has an incredibly interactive user interface and allows you and your friends to collaborate over your choice of text, audio, or video. On top of more traditional digital communication channels, we have also built in the ability for you to communicate with your friends through annotations as well — it’s almost like digital body language. Check out the video below to see how lightbeam works.
This is not just an app for collaborating on itineraries though, it is an app for collaborating in every part of your mobile life. People are spending upwards of 5 hours a day on their smartphones and due to the nature of those 6-inch screens, this is mostly alone time. We want to reduce digital isolation and allow you to loop your friends into your digital life. With lightbeam, you can watch your favorite YouTube videos with friends, jam an album together on Spotify, or accomplish something more productive like collaborating around what your weekend plans look like! If you are anything like us, we think you will agree that most things in life are better when they are shared 😊
