In an age dominated by social media, the quality of our long-distance interactions is diminishing. There's only so much you can say in a 140-character tweet, it's tough to express yourself in a Facebook message and emails seem to be getting shorter and shorter.

But tech startup lettrs is trying to change all of that. After providing an inventive cloud-based platform to send both paper and digital letters around the world since last year, lettrs launched its first mobile app for the iPhone on Tuesday, with Android and iPad versions already in development.

The app extends the function of the lettrs platform by converting mobile voice, data and pictures to digital and paper post letters. With the goal of increasing meaningful communications from the palm of your hand, the app allows you to dictate, modify and deliver a letter through either the cloud or via lettrs' real-life postal operations in Collinsville, Conn.

Drew Bartkiewicz, founder of lettrs, will introduce the app at the PostalVision 2020/3.0 conference in Washington, D.C., where he's leading a panel discussion on the future of written communications.

Bartkiewicz describes the lettrs platform as a personal writing desk, designed for slowing down and catching up on all of the letters we stopped writing at the advent of the digital age.

"Technology is what we make of it, and no app has yet been designed to dust off the previous — though timeless — aspirations of letter writing," Bartkiewicz tellsMashable. "I hope people will choose to take time to create a 'lettr' when more purposeful words are desired, but with the efficiencies of mobile and social firmly intact."