Meet Anita Licis-Ribak, an architect, photographer, musician, and her husband Agustin Schapira, a computer scientist obsessed with making technology work for humans and not the other way around.

It all started in March of 2009, when Anita was reaching an, ehem, rather respectable age. After living in many countries and continents, Anita has friends and loved ones scattered all over the globe. "Wouldn't it be nice", Agustin thought, "to find a way to get in touch with all those people and invite them to prepare a collective surprise for her on the day of the birthday?".

That's how the first version of FromABirdie was born: Agustin created a website with a single page and invited Anita's friends to visit it and write a letter for her, promising that the letters would be kept private and only be seen by her. He also asked friends to pass the invitation along, hoping that it would reach friends of friends of friends whom he didn't even know about.

By the time Anita´s birthday arrived, the website had 85 letters for her, from 35 different cities and 10 different countries, written in 5 different languages.

Letters from friends she hadn't seen in decades. Messages from people she had lost touch with and with whom she could re-connect. Imagine her surprise, and her joy. It was, she said, the best birthday present ever.

So, why not make it into a service available for everyone? Wouldn't there be lots of people out there who would treasure letters from friends? FromABirdie.com was built on the belief that, in this age of quick, short, and careless digital communication, there are many among us who still prefer to sit down and write a detailed and thoughtful letter. We are here to help you write, store, print, deliver, and preserve those precious words.

Our view & mission

We are trying to solve a problem that didn't exist 30, 20, or even 10 years ago. These days our communication is dominated by cell phones, email, chat, Facebook, Twitter, whatsapp, SMS: all instant, quick, pervasive, and in most cases without much meaning.

FromABirdie is our attempt to restore, in a tiny way, the time when it was common to sit down and compose a letter carefully, focusing more on quality and depth than on instant delivery. We believe that even in the fast-paced world of today there are many occasions that demand this kind of thoughtful writing and, because the medium is the message, we are trying to create a medium that encourages carefulness, deep communication, privacy, and permanence.

Most of the letters that people write in our albums are long, detailed, thoughtful, personal, and loving - together, they make a great surprise and a memorable gift.

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