Hi all, I have an open letter on the app which has been up for a few weeks now, I have a filter set on who I would like to contact me, age etc, it’s mostly set to females as I am a female myself, however it isn’t getting any responses? I am getting 0 letters from it. Imo it is pretty good, relatively lengthy and explains stuff about myself such as hobbies, etc, I’m not sure what else to put in it? Help please!! What should I do?

Hi there! I have had Slowly for a couple weeks and I upgraded to the Plus account today. I updated the app earlier too once I had purchased Plus to make sure everything went through.

I initially upgraded because I thought I would get 800 coins via this, but I think I interpreted the promotion wrong? Because I did see that the 800 coins wasn't there, so I took that as a 'my bad' for misreading, kinda thing.

However, I did see that I could now access ads for coins. So then I think "ah! So is this what the promotion meant?" but this too isn't working. I have watched about 10 ads so I should have 10 coins but at the moment there is nothing. Is there a way I can sort this out?

Thank you in advance!

probably someone will kick me off, but i cannot believ slowly still does not have an 'auto save' feature while writing letters. i'm using notepad for saving texts because its not the first time i got problems because i forgot to save my draft. or maybe i'm wrong, there's already this option and is working... i think developers could work on this feature instead of new letter stamp. i'm also paying, i'm supporting. wishing you the best.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I think that an option which allows users to filter for sent-received ratio would be of much help. We're in 2024, and as a result of the pandemic era coming to a close, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of dead or otherwise inactive profiles on SLOWLY which have received more letters than they have sent. There are also other users who consciously prefer to limit their engagement on the app, which is fine, but it would be great if people who're looking to find other users who actually actively reply letters could make use of the sent-received ratio system to make it easier to find them. I've always believed that the sent-received ratio is one of SLOWLY's most neglected features, and if it could be somehow overhauled to just show 1:1 or +1:1 profiles and omit all the dead, inactive, or voluntarily limited profiles, that would be great. It's just tiring to have to skim over countless such profiles just to find one that more or less guarantees you'll have at least one reply.

Hello everyone. I've been using Slow for two years now and never had any problem or suspicions.

I had penpals from all over the world and from China, and again never had a problem. But since I posted my open letter, many replies came from China and every user asked about which chat app I use. They kill the conversation we have and send letter with nothing more than "is telegram your chat app?" "do you have another chat app?".

Now I know that many scams start this way. Anybody else had this experience?

I am aware you can decline letters (...) if someone sends them first. However, it would be useful to just have the unfriend option instead or remove (which is the only one right now and it is the equivalent of blocking) well apparently. I don't want to block people, just want to be able to remove "inactive" penpals that either ghosted (perhaps) or just hasn't replied for more than 2 months. 🙆🏻‍♀️

It bugs me to just have the option to "hide them" (...). With that said so, isn't there a way to actually (...) request this Unfriend feature to Slowly? I have written them before, but I don't know if they still take feedback. 🤔

Some World Countries are still without a Slowly Stamp ?

United Nation member States on World Map

The United Nations member states are the 193 sovereign states that are members of the United Nations (UN) and have equal representation in the UN General Assembly.[1] The UN is the world's largest intergovernmental organization.

Souce : Wikipedia.

Where are we now in terms of Coverage?

My fairly current Slowly Stamp collection show 210 Location specific stamps (210 countries, total) ??

The list of Nations at the UN Wikipedia page is here. And contains the 193 current members mentioned.

How come collection has MORE States than U.N. list?

Well, this is due to some inflation, from Slowly team's part. When they decide to add a flag and/or a location stamp to a region, which is not an independant nation, for example.

And we had VARIOUS of these. Arguments issued as some felt they deserved it, others that full Nation States deserved stamps first.

We ended up with a mix - a bunch of non-State entities like Isle of Man, while some medium size countries might still be missing.

I had a request for an updated list

And so, here it is. 😎👍

This topic is an update of my original post from June, 2022 here in the subreddit, which is also present in my Blog here.

And that topic was itself an update -- of my original post from August, 2020 here in the subreddit, which is also present in my Blog here.

In May, 2022 we got the new Slowly Stamp Suggestions site

And I made a topic there, requesting some love and attention for the Democratic Republic of Congo - a large country with 108 Million people which to this point does NOT have a single Slowly stamp yet.

The post was well received, got lots of comments, and has been upgraded to 'Under Review' status - the first stage on moving along to a possible release. Yey!!

Update - the DRC got both their national flag and a Location stamp, much deserved! 😄

There was much progress in these many months

Compared to my original post mentioned, the African Continent coverage has improved dramatically.

But there are still missing ones, as the DRC I posted for.

Vika Vika took the time and prepared a very thorough list

....of ALL the missing countries, the ones without any stamps, including many small island nations (which could not get as much attention as they are so small). That was great work which I acknowledge here once again.

Some African countries without flags:

Since the last post, 11 African states for their flags! What is pending?

• Comores – 6 July.
• Eritrea – 24 May
• Central African Republic – 13 August

And he continued on with other Regions :

Europe:

Since the last post, 3 EU states for their flags! None pending.

Caribbean:

Here, all 5 listed States also got their national flag stamps. No pendencies either.

Oceania:

Some smaller islands still missing.

• Vanuatu – 30 July
• Kiribati – 12 July
• The Marshall Islands – 1 May
• The Federated States of Micronesia – 3 November
• Nauru – 31 January
• Solomon Islands – 7 July
• Tuvalu – 1 October

Also, some Countries with stamps but still without flags:

Since the last post, 6 listed states for their flags! Still pending:

• Afghanistan – 19 August
• Vatican – 11 February

So 38 countries have no flags + Palestine + Faroes (not country but have stamp). 11 of them have national day in July + Faroes (29 July)

Big Thank you to Vika Vika for this

...which is a nice, detailed update. Cheers!

I have also posted a request for a Palestinian Flag - here, which received a number of supporting votes, thank you all. AND - the Palestinian flag was issued, along with a Location stamp. Big thank you, Slowly team.

And Countries that have a Flag but no Location stamp?

In a comment on our subreddit topic, Eisenherrz asked :

Does that include flags as well? I am very interested to know how many countries we have without Location stamps (even if there are flags available).

An interesting question, which I did not have an answer to at the time. Soon another member there, EducationalAd1575, worked on a listing of these. So here is, copied from his comment and sorted in alphabetical, geographical order.

Countries with Flags but no Location stamps yet :

African Continent :

Since the last post, 9 African states for their location stamps! Still pending Location stamps :

• Djibouti
• Guinea
• Guinea Bissau
• Lesotho
• Liberia
• Mauritania
• Mozambique
• Niger
• Somalia

In Oceania :

Since the last post, 3 Oceanian states got their Localtion stamps and flags! Pending:

• Samoa

And Elsewhere :

• Tajikistan

Tools to help update missing Countries?

A quick way to check would be to look at this list, and the current Stamps Issued by country list - if you find the country name on the list, it has received one or more stamps.

We have also an alphabetical order list of stamps by country, here. I used two computers with one opening Reddit post and the second showing the Stamps by Country list. Great help, and now we have this.

Thanks to the Slowly Team for this new addition!

Keep in mind that the Slowly Stamp Requests and Suggestions site/forum is now open for business and already lead to VARIOUS suggested stamps being taken from idea to Releases in a short time!

And what should I know about privacy on SLOWLY in general? After all people share a lot of personal information in their letters. What should I consider in regards of pen-name, email, password, sync, etc, to make sure it's safe for me and other people?

A couple of my friends deactivated their accounts. No hard feelings there, I'm pretty used to people coming and going randomly in SLOWLY, even if I'm not pleased with this tendency itself.

(I grew up doing traditional pen-pal letters for years and years, and that's not how the real deal worked. Same with people cleaning their pen-pal lists so often; but that's mostly due to app limitations, not to mention, utterly besides the point of this post, sorry for rumbling).

However, now I'm curious,if it's technically possible to restore your account after deactivation? And do people come back to SLOWLY after giving up on it, in your experience?

Hey there!

I'm quite new to Slowly and I wonder if I may make any mistakes here. I've tried the open letter option for the third time and I just don't get any replies. I think my letter is pretty normal, not too long, not too shallow, mid-lenghth, I tell about myself and ask questions. After about a day I deleted the letter as I got no reaction. I wonder if I did anything wrong? I read here that normally people get lots of responses to open letters.

I just had an idea for a feature I think slowly could implement.

We can ofc send pics and audios, but what if instead there was a USB feature. In real pen palling, if you wanted to send some sort of media and didn't have a physical copy, you could trade a pendrive back and forth and add anything you wish to it.

It would have a Max storage, like 4mb per letter, and in there you could attach anything you wish, documents, videos, audios, images, etc. It'd be cool, since you'd have to work to make your files fit the max, just like a real USB with real correspondence.

There could even be a feature like, you could get 0.5mb to 2mb extra with the free gift feature. We get our cool features, and slowly gains add revenue, a win win. Premium people could have 1.5 x the amount of storage, also giving more reason to buy the plus version. There's a plethora of ways this could be adapted to.

Ofc, you'd have to accept penpal by penpal which forms of media you can send through the usb, like we still do. Now you can add stuff like MP4 and PDF files though.

Tell me what y'all think

I recently received a letter, which looked like it was auto-matched to me. It was only 2 sentence long, and the sender had a ratio of 125:106. It's also not the first time since something like this has happened to me. Another one had a ratio of 500:317! I have the Automatch disabled, but I still have Profile Suggestions on, because I don't mind getting new penpals, who actually go through my profile, and genuinely want to write to me. Is it possible that these senders just mass-sent letters to random people through Profile Suggestions? I know that a similar post was made here some time ago, but I want to know if someone with these types of ratio can actually send this many letters through Profile Suggestions.

I am thinking about rewriting and updating my biography and I would like to have your opinion on what it need to have, what do you like to see in one, what you don't, also other aspects such as length, use of emojis, etc.

If you did so in the past, how was it? Did the conversation go anywhere? I'm curious to hear as many opinions and experiences as possible regarding this topic.

This person likely doesn't have any bad intentions but there's a couple of facts one can't ignore, such as:

• this is a generic copy/pasted letter, there's nothing aimed at the recipient (I have a medium-length bio and filled in many sub-topics with specific subjects of interest)
• the user's sent:received ratio is 50:33, which supports the above, they likely send it to as many people as possible without having to change anything
• the letter is mostly a rehashed version of their short bio
• assuming it was a unique letter, what is it really about?
• there's other apps for language exchange, just like there's Tinder so you don't have to use Slowly for dating; why not get to know your pen pal and let the language exchange come naturally
• short letters can be ok but let's be honest, this one's a text message at this length (I've genuinely received longer texts from people I met for the first time on subreddits and other similar platforms)

​Am I being too harsh on this person? Please let me know what you think.

EDIT: in the interest of transparency, I'd like to mention that I declined the letter with a short message​ along the lines of "Thank you for writing to me but I'm looking to pursue other interests. I wish you all the best and hope you ​find the people you're looking for​. Have a lovely day."

https://preview.redd.it/r1rt8y25wcyc1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=09d8a044b0f5daf792300fd812e80072a991cc5f

I stopped using the app for a while and now that I came back I noticed that I only receive letter for India and the middle east the proportion doesn't seem right and also most of them seem to be bots. Most of the letters are like chatGPT and the users always stop responding in the third letter, there's also a pattern in the questions and the sentences. Also the usual creeps seem to have multiplied.

​

.

Last time I posted here, it was for version 3.07, and now we have some more improvements to share.

This morning I was reading a letter from a pen pal friend and we discussed the Stamp Comparison Tool, both the older web based JavaScript one and the more recent PowerShell version.

We had a problem - as mobile devices are not able to run the PowerShell version.

But...

I just managed to solve the CORS issue

...which we had in the past, so the web based version should run for anyone:

- on Desktop machines, laptops, it runs without needing the browser CORS extension.

- on Mobile devices, it runs as well - and there were no extensions for the mobile browsers, as they do not support these.

Image above is a cropped shot of my iPad running it. 😎👍

Resulting in a new, slightly changed Web based version. Now supporting Desktop, tablet or mobile phones, no workarounds needed.

NEW Version is already online - same URL as before : https://yann2.neocities.org/Slowly-Compare/Stamp_Comparator

Detailed information of what this tool does, how to use it, please see our previous release post here.

​

Cropped screenshot, Android mobile running it too

​

It seems like whenever I respond or even send a letter to someone, they stop answering, I recently came across a TikTok about a woman finding her partner from slowly, have any of you found your partners or long term friendships from this app? Please share your stories if you have any, I’m so interested 🤗

Has anyone else been getting many letters that look like automatch (ie don't mention anything about what's on your profile, are very short, etc.) despite having automatch turned off? And low-effort automatch, at that—most recently, one that was just a copy-paste of their bio. It's the only kind of letter I've been getting for a month or two now. I always feel bad declining them, but I turned off automatch for a reason. (And yes, I've triple-checked that automatch is actually turned off.) I'm honestly considering turning off matching altogether to avoid it. Is it just me or have others noticed the same thing?