folsom

folsom is a social networking app for iPhone and iPad from Ordway Projects, Inc. for staying close to friends and family by sharing feelings. Users post how they feel once a day, a few times a day or a couple of times a week, and friends respond inside a community that folsom describes as kind and supportive. The app is in public beta and asks users for feedback.

AI helps at two points in a post. A user who has trouble naming a feeling writes a sentence or two, and folsom's AI expands that into a wider feelings vocabulary. Each feeling can then be illustrated with an uploaded photo or with a unique image that AI creates to represent the emotion. Friends can interact with the post, send love, and check in to show they are thinking about the person.

folsom is free to use and has no in-app purchases. It requires iOS 13.4 or iPadOS 13.4 or later, also runs on iPod touch, on Macs with an Apple M1 chip and macOS 11.0, and on Apple Vision with visionOS 1.0, and is designed for iPad but not verified for macOS. The app is in English and rated 13+, and the developer states that contact info, contacts, identifiers, usage data and diagnostics may be linked to the user.

Use cases

• Staying close to friends and family wherever they live
• Finding words for a feeling that is hard to name
• Illustrating a mood with an AI-created image
• Letting friends know someone is thinking about them
• Supporting friends by responding to the feelings they share