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Illustrative Circle example

Friends, every summer.

Four people, six festivals and one trip that was not a festival. Nothing here is damaged and nobody has been lost. This is a record being made while it is still happening.

This is a fictional story

Maya, Ellie, Priya and Jonah do not exist, and neither does their festival. The people, names and pictures were created for this site to demonstrate how a Circle is built. Nothing on this page is a customer, and none of the pictures show real people. Real customer studies will be published separately and labelled distinctly.

Six years, and not one of them is anywhere.

They have gone to the same festival every August since 2019, apart from the year it did not happen and the year they went to Majorca instead. Between them they have thousands of pictures of it. What they do not have is one place where any of it sits together.

The photos are on four phones, two of which have been replaced. Some are in a cloud library only one of them can reach. A whole year is on an account Jonah deleted. The rest is in a group chat that has scrolled past six times over, where nothing is searchable and nothing is dated.

The part that is disappearing fastest is not the pictures. It is which year each thing happened in.

A small pile of festival paper on a wooden table: four cut cloth wristbands in different colours, two creased tickets, a folded leaflet and a lanyard.
The wristbands are the only dated objects any of them kept, and nobody can remember which colour was which year.

Four people, and one of them owns it.

A Circle has exactly one owner: the person who opened it. Maya invites, sets what each of the others can do, and is the only one who can remove anybody. Everyone else here is a contributor, which means they can add material, create, and comment.

  1. Maya

    Opened the Circle after the 2023 weekend, when she realised she could not remember which year the tent flooded.

    Owner

  2. Ellie

    Takes the most pictures and loses the most pictures. Two of the six years exist mainly because of her.

    Contributor

  3. Priya

    Writes things down. Has a note on her phone from every year since 2019 and has never shown it to anybody.

    Contributor

  4. Jonah

    Remembers set times, stage names and who they met. Adds almost no pictures and most of the facts.

    Contributor

One Circle, an album for each August.

A new Circle would be for when the people change, not when the year does. These are albums inside the same one, in the order they happened.

  1. 2019The first one

    The year they did not know each other well enough to take pictures of each other. Twelve photos survive, all of them Ellie’s, none of them good. Added to the Circle four years later from a laptop that had been in a cupboard.

    Ellie added the photos. Priya added the note she wrote on the train home.

    Four friends in their early twenties sitting close together on wet grass at a music festival at dusk, in cheap plastic ponchos, a lit stage behind them.

  2. 2021The one with the rain

    The year the argument comes from. Maya has told people for four years that it rained the whole set; Priya wrote at the time that it stopped after four songs. Both accounts are in the album, next to the photo they disagree about.

    Maya recorded 1 min 48 s. Priya’s written account went in unedited.

    Four friends standing arm in arm in a festival crowd at dusk, two of them holding paper cups, a lit stage behind them.

  3. 2022The campsite year

    Nobody took a picture of the thing everybody remembers, which was a stranger with a guitar at four in the morning. What exists instead is the morning after, and three separate accounts of the man with the guitar that do not agree on what he played.

    Jonah added the date and the campsite. All four commented.

    Four friends sitting on the ground outside a tent in flat morning light, wrapped in sleeping bags, one of them laughing at another mid-story.

  4. 2023The one that started this

    The weekend after which Maya opened the Circle. It is also the first year with material from all four phones rather than whichever phone happened to have battery.

    All four contributed. 340 photos, and a lot of duplicates of the same chips.

    Four friends sitting on a groundsheet on trampled grass between sets, a paper plate of chips between them, a distant stage behind.

  5. 2024Majorca, not the festival

    The Circle is the four of them, not the festival, so the week they went somewhere else instead is an album in the same Circle. A new Circle would only be right if the people changed.

    Ellie added the photos. Jonah named the bar so they can find it again.

    Four friends around a small table on a whitewashed terrace above the sea, plates and glasses pushed together in hard afternoon sun.

  6. 2025Last August

    The first year the album was mostly filled in before anybody got home, because adding to a Circle you already have is a different job from starting one.

    All four, from their phones, over the weekend itself.

    Four friends unloading a small hatchback in a wet car park, pulling out rucksacks, a folded tent and a crate.

What the Circle actually uses.

Not everything Cirluma does. There is nothing to restore here, nobody needs a Likeness, and none of them has four views of the same field. A Circle that never touches the paid creation tools is a normal Circle.

Photos from several devices
Six years of material from four phones, two of them replaced since, plus a laptop backup and one account that no longer exists.
Voice stories
Recorded in the app and attached to a specific photo or album, in the name of whoever recorded it.
Written stories
The same, typed. Priya’s notes from 2019 went in as written stories rather than being rewritten into captions.
People, dates and places
Who is in a picture, roughly when it was taken, and where. Approximate dates are allowed, which matters for 2019.
Albums inside one Circle
One album per year, and one for the trip that was not the festival. The Circle is the four of them.
Comments
The mechanism by which the 2022 guitar disagreement has now been running for two years.

What they have now that they did not have before.

Not a backup. Six Augusts they can each read the others' half of.

The years are separable again. Before the Circle, everything between 2019 and 2023 had collapsed into one undated summer; now each August is an album with the material, the accounts and the dates in it.

The disagreements survived. Maya was wrong about the rain and the record says so in her own voice and in Priya’s writing, which is worth more than a tidy caption either of them would have settled on.

It keeps growing without a project. Last August went in over the weekend, from four phones, because adding to something that already exists is a different job from starting it.

Privacy and permissions, in this Circle.

Everything below is how the product behaves today, not how this particular story needed it to behave.

  • There is no public version of this Circle and no way to reach it from outside. Every member was invited by Maya.
  • Every contribution stays in the name of whoever made it. Removing somebody from a Circle removes their access, not the material they put in, which stays attributed to them.
  • Nobody in this Circle has created a Likeness of anybody, so no consent for one has been asked for or recorded. Consent is required before a recognisable person can be given one, and it can be withdrawn.
  • Maya pays for the Circle. Ellie, Priya and Jonah take part without a subscription of their own, and a subscription that lapses makes a Circle read-only rather than deleting it.
How roles, consent and privacy work in full

Start the one you have been meaning to start.

If your group has done the same thing more than twice, you already have six years of it somewhere. This is the shape it goes into.

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