Why we never email your friend

When you make a card, the builder asks for a name, your name and a short message. It never asks how to reach your friend. No email field. No phone number. No "import your contacts" button with a cheerful icon. You get a link, and then the builder gets out of the way.

People sometimes ask whether that is a missing feature. It is a decision, and it is the one we are proudest of.

The link is the delivery

A card is a thing you hand to someone. You pick the moment, the chat, the face you make while they open it. If we delivered it for you, the card would arrive from a service they have never heard of, at a time they did not choose, with your name typed into a template. That is not a card. That is a notification.

So the link is yours. You copy it, you put it where it belongs, and the card waits there, sealed, until your friend taps. Nothing moves until you move it.

Their inbox was never ours

To email your friend we would need their address. To text them we would need their number. Your friend never agreed to give either to us, and we are not going to collect it through you.

That rule has a nice side effect. There is nothing to leak, nothing to sell, and no list of people who once received a questionable noise from a friend. We know the card was opened, because the card tells us. We do not know who opened it, and we like it that way.

Nothing arrives uninvited

A fart card in an inbox at 6 a.m. is not mischief. It is spam with a soundtrack. A link in a chat from a person your friend knows is a completely different object, because the sender is the sender. Your name is on it, you chose the room, and they can see you grinning from three messages back.

The card itself follows the same rule. It arrives sealed and silent. The sound plays only when your friend taps to open it, and there is a mute button right there if the room turns out to be the wrong one.

What that means for the small print

Because nothing is sent by us, we can be honest about what we count. A copy or share click shows that you meant to send it, not that it arrived. An open is an open, and a replay is a replay. The card page says so, and the small print does too. We would rather show you a true small number than a flattering big one.

What you give up

You have to paste a link. That is it. In exchange, your friend hears about the card from you, in your words, in a place you chose. Every card that has ever been opened was opened that way, and the robot version is not coming.

If you want the full route from blank card to opened envelope, how to send a fart walks through it. It is five steps, and the last one is yours.