Happyfeed

Reflect daily and share positive memories with friends

No Employees
Founders Code
Solo Founder
B2C
Health & Fitness
Writing

I first got into positive psychology while working on another startup, to deal with depression. When that ended I thought it'd be fun to "digitize" my journaling habit and Happyfeed has just continued to grow since then.

November 30, 2021 Apple Watch App

I started November with the goal of launching an Apple Watch app for Happyfeed by Thanksgiving (or technically, the day before, November 24th). Typically, I find 2-3 week development sprints to be the best way to motivate myself!

Why an Apple Watch app?

  • I thought it would be a fun technical challenge
  • Potentially a great way to remind and retain users
  • To increase visibility in the App Store

Working on the watch app was the second time I've tried working in SwiftUI too. There's a lot of buzz around the language and it certainly seems worth building a bit of competency. (At the very least, I have a lot of opinions about it now.)

Curious about the watch app? Here's the blog post about functionality, screenshots, and more:

https://www.happyfeed.co/blog/apple-watch-journal

November 2, 2021 October Updates

I've been taking a break from freelance work for the past month and have been able to focus on Happyfeed nearly full-time during October. That level of focus has helped me realize that the core experience had a lot of room for improvement.

Ranging from some photo updates to wrapping up the Next.js rebuild of the website, here's what I was able to accomplish over the past month:
https://www.happyfeed.co/blog/product-updates-october-2021

October 5, 2021 Launched Sharable Layout

I've been continuing to experiment with ways to boost word-of-mouth growth by encouraging sharing on social media platforms. If you see an amazing memory from a year or two ago, wouldn't you want to share it?

Well, it's up to Happyfeed to actually present memories in a sharable way. Since most platforms are visual, I'm trying out a new "update layout" button to show memories in a variety of ways.

Here's a demo:

Video on Twitter

April 27, 2021 New Feature: Share Links

Last week I launched a deceptively complex feature for Happyfeed - the ability to share each past memory with a unique URL. One of my biggest motivators was thinking about intuitive ways to spread by word of mouth (currently the main source of growth). How could I supercharge existing sharing and make the experience better overall?

In the old version, you could directly send text and images on iOS. This introduced several problems:

  1. Facebook sharing can only use an image unless you have a link, no text!
  2. Most people delete any link or [at]mention in the default message
  3. It’s uncommon to share pasted text from other apps and requires explanation

Share Links solve those issues and more:

  • Able to post in-depth content on social using meta tags and previews
  • Clearly shows where the memory comes from
  • Easier to encourage friends to download the app
  • Eventually can use the URLs to link to data in the actual app
  • SEO boost from extra traffic to the website

Honestly, I was a little worried about the reaction I might get from Happyfeed users. Would a URL feel weird or less secure than just copying and pasting text? Aren’t they going to prefer to just copy and paste the text directly from their moment?

I think it’s ultimately a better solution for everyone. Sharing a link tells others exactly where the memory came from, it saves you any extra cognitive load from fixing or changing the text, and works perfectly with social platforms. The app is still completely private by default too.

Excited to see where this goes πŸš€

Blog post on new Share Links

March 19, 2021 Launched on AlleyWatch

As part of a marketing push, I submitted Happyfeed for coverage in AlleyWatch. They exclusively cover startups in New York so it was a perfect fit for the company.

Rather than going for the largest outlet you can think of (TechCrunch, NYTimes, etc.), it's worth seeing what local publications might be covering your space. As huge as New York feels, it's a lot easier to reach out to a city-specific publisher!

Here's the write-up if you're curious:

https://www.alleywatch.com/2021/03/happyfeed-daily-gratitude-journaling-self-care-mental-health-app-matt-kandler/

Another quick tip: Don't change your app icon while you are waiting for an article to publish... this came out a day after I uploaded the recolored icon πŸ€¦πŸΌβ€β™‚οΈ

February 5, 2021 Launched Monthly Reviews

Joy Recaps

For the past few years, I've been sending users a monthly review email. It pulls together some random photos and top stats from the app - sort of inspired by emails you might get from Strava or even Uber.

I've been wanting to add this feature to the app for over a year. And it's been requested a few times. There are a bunch of benefits:

  • πŸ”’ Better privacy (not in email)
  • πŸ“± More room to add new features
  • ☝️ Can notify about each month in-app
  • ✨ Easy to screenshot and share!

The main part of this update is the "Image Grid" that allows you to make a 2x2 grid of random images from the month. I've built a "share drawer" that lets you share it anywhere from SMS to Instagram stories.

Inspired by Timehop, there's a little watermark on the image too, to help drive downloads back to the app.

And so far, so good! On Feb 1 and 2 I saw a big boost in downloads, likely from SMS sharing.

Here's the full blog post with images and everything: https://www.happyfeed.co/blog/monthly-joy-recaps

January 14, 2021 Launched Random Pods 🌏

One of the biggest issues with the social component of Happyfeed, Pods, is that you need friends to create one. Gratitude journaling isn't for everyone so a lot of people were struggling to find friends or family to join. Or maybe they just wanted to try it out first!

Now users can join a "Random Pod" in which they are paired with other Happyfeeders from around the world. It's fun to think that someone in the Midwest could be sharing memories with someone in Japan or New Zealand.

Technically, it wasn't a ton of work (thanks to a very well-thought-out initial build of Pods). I did have to build an internal dashboard to manage placing people into these Pods. Someday I'll need to automate the process of picking members and naming.

So far, I've made 28 Random Pods, which means over 200 users πŸš€

November 29, 2020 20% Increase in Retention

I've been struggling with retention for the past couple of months due to what I assumed were external factors (the election, COVID, etc.) but after a few emails from users, I realized it was a bit more fixable.

  1. There were issues with offline syncing. Basically, if you had a bad connection when uploading, the app would hang until you reinstalled (uncommon but 😱)
  2. Finding the right users. I've been testing keywords and probably ventured too far from ones directly related to the app - which means more downloads but also disappointment after signing up.
  3. Android was a crash-y mess. Update to Hermes on React Native was a huge step in fixing this.
  4. Another awful bug on iOS where users weren't told when their tokens expired. This means anyone with a new phone would get a buggy experience.

The silver lining? While these bugs were happening, I spent a couple of months building new features and AB tests to improve retention. Now I'm seeing better retention than even between the fixes and the features πŸ˜„

Lesson: Don't ever blame external factors on your metrics. There's almost always something going on and you need ways to discover these things quickly.

November 18, 2020 Dark Mode Support 🌚

After about 3 days of development, Happyfeed is now completely compatible with Dark Mode on iOS!

Since gratitude journaling is typically an evening practice, I'm hoping that users will be especially inclined to enjoy the darker colors in the app. Less eye strain -> calmer nights -> happier users. It was fun to build a couple of Easter eggs like a welcome screen image that changes based on dark mode.

Overall goals:

  • Increase App Store conversions for people who specifically care about dark mode support
  • Improve retention by supporting an important feature and fitting into user habits better
  • Hopefully, improve my chances for an App Store feature someday. I've read that they do care about supporting big releases like Dark Mode, App Cards, etc.

I was surprised by how well adaptive colors work in Swift, and luckily, I've been using variables for most of the colors in Happyfeed from the start. (Made this whole process a LOT easier.)

https://www.happyfeed.co/blog/dark-mode-journaling

October 10, 2020 Multiple-photo uploading πŸ“Έ

Yesterday I launched a feature on Happyfeed that I've been wanting to build for the better part of the year. Now when you add a moment, there's an option to add up to 3 photos. The interface is similar to Instagram (swipe left and right to view).

I use the app daily and am always frustrated that it's 1 photo per moment. Having to post a bunch of different moments for a hike (for example) is a huge pain. So I'm personally thrilled that this is done!

Technically, it was a complicated challenge too. I had to:

  • Move uploading to AWS to speed up the process
  • Fix the way photos are configured in the database to be an array
  • Update interfaces on iOS, Android, and Web
  • Create an intuitive interface for adding the photos.
  • Break the above work up into manageable chunks

The other huge benefit to this feature is that it's an excuse to bump up premium prices. (Which I've also been meaning to do forever.)

I'm going to email all iOS users to tell them about the feature and mention the price increase. I'll give them 2 weeks to get grandfathered into the current pricing and (hopefully) see a nice bump in subscriptions. I'll report back!

About

I first got into positive psychology while working on another startup, to deal with depression. When that ended I thought it'd be fun to "digitize" my journaling habit and Happyfeed has just continued to grow since then.