IRL to URL: A New Era of Connection ✨🕯️👀⚡️🧿💭🔮

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A few years ago, I started describing every assessment of social tools I used as “IRL to URL.” It became my shorthand for evaluating how well a platform could bridge the gap between our physical and digital lives.

Earlier this year, I shared a post coining the term more formally within the venture capital world, framing it as a lens for understanding the next wave of consumer social. After a year of investing in and analyzing consumer products, I’m finally ready to contextualize how I see URL ↔ IRL at this moment, just as the year comes to an end.

Let’s define it, dive into its evolution, and explore why this concept feels more relevant than ever. The timing is perfect as an article I’m featured in “how IRL social apps like Partiful and Timeleft are getting people to hang out in person” by Sydney Bradley at BI just went live.

IRL to URL: A New Era of Connection

Welcome to Fan Behavior! This week, I’m excited to take a deeper dive into my IRL to URL thesis—the framework I’ve been building for years to better understand the evolution of consumer social. If you’ve followed my thoughts on this before, you’ll know it ties deeply into how I view the past, present, and future of social media. But today, we’re taking it up a notch. Let’s define it, dissect it, and dream big about what’s next.

What is IRL to URL (and Back Again)?

At its heart, IRL to URL is about closing the loop between the physical and digital worlds. It’s not just about moving offline experiences online—it’s about creating tools that facilitate, enhance, and sustain relationships across both spaces.

Think about how you connect with people today:

1. You meet someone at a party, an event, or even in line at a coffee shop (IRL → URL). How do you maintain that connection?

2. You organize a group trip, plan a dinner, or even attend a niche fandom meetup (URL → IRL). What makes that seamless?

The challenge is that most platforms today do one or the other—but rarely both. They help us get together or stay in touch, but they don’t nurture the relationships we’re building.

The Problem with Current Platforms

Social media as we know it has lost its social. Once upon a time, these platforms made us feel closer to each other:

• Connectivity: You could reconnect with a long-lost friend.

• Intimacy: A carefully curated Instagram post felt like a peek into someone’s world.

• Self-Insight: Social timelines doubled as digital diaries.

But the magic has faded. We’ve become lazy bystanders, caught in endless feeds of content that don’t actually nourish relationships. We’re more aware of each other’s lives than ever before, yet we feel disconnected.

Social media has become about consumption, not connection. The result? A generation of users who crave more intention in their friendships and interactions.

Why Gen Z Is Leading the IRL to URL Movement

Gen Z is driving a quiet revolution in consumer social. Apps like Partiful, Posh, and 222 are exploding because they tap into a core insight: people want to be in the room.

This shift reflects a generational rejection of passivity. Gen Z doesn’t just want to watch their friends live their lives—they want to live those lives alongside them. And this isn’t limited to flashy dinners or curated parties; it’s about meaningful, real-world connections.

Here’s what IRL to URL looks like today:

1. URL → IRL: Apps like Partiful make it easier to bring digital communities together in person.

2. IRL → URL: Emerging platforms like 222 and Timeleft focus on forging new connections offline.

But what about what happens after the party ends? This is where I see the biggest opportunity: platforms that go beyond introductions to help us cultivate and maintain meaningful friendships.

A Call to Action: Bring Back Effort

One of the reasons I’m so passionate about this thesis is that it taps into something deeply human: the joy of effort. Relationships thrive when they’re intentional, when they’re nourished by acts of service and thoughtfulness.

Let’s bring back:

• Meme Sending: Sharing inside jokes is modern love language.

• Resy Links: Thoughtfully planning a dinner for friends.

• Offline Discovery: Curating shared experiences that can’t be summed up in a DM.

What we need are tools that make these small gestures feel natural and joyful. Platforms that create space for real effort, whether it’s finding a new friend group or staying connected with someone you just met.

How Does AI Fit Into IRL to URL?

When I first came up with the idea of IRL to URL, I was obsessed with this notion of a tool that could make maintaining our social lives feel effortless—something that would seamlessly connect who we are offline with how we exist online. At the time, it felt like an impossible dream. But now, the answer feels obvious: AI has been the missing piece all along.

In the past year, there’s been a wave of innovation in AI within the URL world, especially in areas like character-building and creative tools. Platforms like Character AI, which lets users chat with AI-generated personas, and the resurgence of AI-written fan fiction (replacing the classic “Y/N” trope), have made the digital space richer and more immersive. But these inventions rarely step beyond the screen. What’s missing is consumer AI designed to close the gap between IRL and URL—tools that aren’t just about helping us function digitally, but about actually bringing real-life connections into the digital space and vice versa.

Imagine an AI that does more than just remind you to text back your friend. It could remember the little details—how you met someone at a concert, the inside joke you shared, or the TV show you bonded over—and actually help you follow up in a way that feels natural. Or imagine a platform that uses AI to suggest plans, anticipate the next steps in a friendship, or even make it easier to coordinate an event without all the manual effort.

AI isn’t just about making things faster or smarter—it’s about removing the friction that keeps us from staying connected. The same tools being used to generate characters or recommend content could help us build, maintain, and deepen relationships across the IRL and URL worlds. That’s the future I see for IRL to URL—an entirely new way of weaving our digital and physical lives together.

What’s Next?

I want to see more founders, creators, and investors embrace this idea: social media isn’t dead—it’s evolving. The death of 2010s consumer social is the opportunity for smarter, better, and more intentional products.

Let’s create platforms that:

• Celebrate effort over convenience.

• Build bridges between online and offline worlds.

• Focus on relationships, not algorithms.

If you’re working on something in this space, reach out—I’m always eager to connect with founders, creators, or thinkers reimagining what social connection can look like. And if you’re as obsessed with IRL to URL as I am, stay tuned. There’s so much more to explore.

I know everyone is in their “yeah, but how do they monetize?” era—but honestly, the true essence of consumer products is simple. Either you give someone incredible utility in a friction-filled area of their life, or you deliver the most whimsical, joyous, obsessively fun experience they’ve ever had. In both cases, retention becomes astronomical, and honestly? You can figure out monetization later.

If we’re to believe that anonymous VC who posts company stats, these IRL companies are doing just fine. And I should probably mention: my 14-year-old cousin in Hong Kong uses Partiful… and so does my 60-year-old hairdresser from Ohio. Seems like they’re onto something.

💌 Zehra