Storage and backup solutions are all the rage right now. Everyone wants to preserve their data. You want to keep it safe from intruders, but you also want to easily be able to access it for yourself. Dropbox, Backblaze, Carbonite, mounds of external hard drives – all of these are great ways to store your personal pictures, movies, important files, and the like, but what about if you are looking to preserve moments? Moments and experiences that you share with your closest friends and co-workers? That’s not as easy.
There are endless terabytes of data being transferred between friends and family on a daily basis through text, email, and social media interactions. One broken phone later and those precious text moments can be forever lost. One angry night and all of your messages and pictures with friends on Facebook can be wiped from existence. It can be difficult to keep these interactions safe, and that’s exactly what Shryne is trying to accomplish through their social archival application.
Shryne, founded in 2014, has gone through some changes but with this latest 2.0 releases, they are really finding their niche in the market. The focus of the service is storing memories between you, your friends, and your loved ones. The service, currently only available for iOS/Mac, allows you to store interactions in unique, creative ways that you can easily access in the future. This isn’t about storing financial information or past work projects, it’s about creating and preserving lifelong memories that you can look back on fondly.
The true power of Shryne is in some ways held in the data experience and analytics. Once you’ve, as I recommend, invested your life into building your archive out, it becomes a kind of digital mirror. You’ll see more than a scrapbook of your life, but get a full understanding of the digital life you’ve spent building, one that you can interact with and consume as well as contribute more and more to. There are few social experiences that can both immediately and progressively grow with you, and Shryne is one of them.
It works like this. You set up an account (there are three different tiers, including free) and start setting up profiles for the friends and family that you want to store interactions with. Could be a girlfriend, an aunt, your best friend from high school, anybody. From there you can sync your account with them in order to store those memories. Text messages, emails, Google Hangouts, Facebook messages and photos, and even Instagram posts. The information is then compiled in chronological order so you can quickly and easily go back and look at your time spent laughing, opening up, and brainstorming with them. This is also the only service to actively offer you the ability to archive and review your life in this way, especially in the case of iMessages, Facebook messages and Google Hangouts. While services have made it really difficult to access your stuff, Shryne has found the workarounds to take your data into your own hands.
Security is obviously in the forefront of everyone’s mind when dealing with a service that stores data and information, but Shryne assures TechCrunch that security remains a priority. “We don’t look at anyone’s data, obviously. It’s all encrypted so it’s designed as a safety deposit box,” says founder, Aldo Cherdabayev. The company also uses high level infrastructure and top of the line encryption practices, so it’s apparent that your privacy is important to them.
The service definitely isn’t for everyone, but if you’re the sentimental type or truly value your friendships and accompanying memories, then definitely check it out. It’s currently available for iOS and Mac applications, with Android and Windows coming in the near future.
