The problem it solves
When you plan a trip, the first thing you do is ask friends. The answers arrive in private messages and group chats, and that is where they disappear. Two days later they are impossible to find, and next year, when someone else flies to the same place, the recommendation is buried under a thousand messages.
Been There Done That keeps exactly those recommendations, in a place where you find them by destination rather than by date.
Private circles
A circle is a real group of friends: family, people from work, the crew that travels together every year. Everything written in a circle is visible only to its members, and you join by personal invitation only. There is no user search, no friend suggestions and no friends-of-friends. You can be in several circles at once, and they cannot see each other.
Postcards
Here are three real ones. That is the whole object: who wrote it, which category, one sentence, and the place itself.
"No reservations, a real queue, and cash only. They open at 12:30, so get there around noon and you are inside for the first seating instead of watching it from the street. Closed Sundays. Their cacio e pepe is why we went back to Rome."
Da Enzo al 29 · Rome · Italy Ask whoever wrote this"A 16th century house in the middle of the Albaicín, a short walk from the Alhambra. Ask for a room with an Alhambra view, it is worth the difference. Breakfast runs until noon, which means you are allowed to sleep in."
Casa 1800 · Granada · Spain Stays nearby on Booking Ask whoever wrote this"The view people queue an hour for at San Marco, except from here San Marco itself is in the picture too. One vaporetto from San Zaccaria, eight euros cash for the lift, and usually no queue at all."
Campanile di San Giorgio Maggiore · Venice · Italy Tickets on GetYourGuide Ask whoever wrote thisA postcard is one short recommendation about a place you have been: pick a country, find the place, write a sentence about what you loved and attach up to two photos. Every postcard carries a category stamp: food, lodging, attraction or local tip.
Before you fly
Type a destination in the search line and see everything your friends wrote about it on one map. A postcard you save moves to your saved list, grouped by country, and that is what you take on the trip.
What is not here, on purpose
- No ratings and no stars
- No comments, likes, points or leaderboards
- No ads and nothing sponsored
- No discovery: content never leaves your circles
Five stars from a stranger say nothing, and one sentence from a friend about a place they loved says everything. The moment there is a score, people write to collect points instead of to help.
Privacy is enforced on the server
The rule that circle content is visible only to that circle's members is enforced in the database permission layer, not in the app. An app can be unpacked and a screen can be bypassed, but a query that reaches the server simply gets no rows that do not belong to whoever asked.
The app is free, on Android, iPhone and in the browser. Same account, same circles on every one of them.