11 Years of Digital Journaling

A year ago today, marked ten years since I first launched Happyfeed in the Apple App Store. I intended to write a long blog entry, post on social media, and do something special. But, as often happens, I got too busy and the day came and went. So here we are, Happyfeed’s 11th birthday and nothing prepared whatsoever. (In my defense I’ve been working on a big update for Android that’ll be released later this week!)

In lieu of a well-coordinated app birthday announcement, I thought I’d reflect on where I started, how far the app has come, some of the highlights, and some of the lows along the way. This isn’t meant to speak about Happyfeed’s evolution or its features, but instead to recall the story. This is meant for anyone wondering what it’s been like to run an app business, without any funding, for eleven years.

Origins

You can go to the about page to read the quick story on how Happyfeed got started. I was going through a very tough time in 2012, became an early believer in the gratitude movement, and wanted to build a product 100% on my own from scratch. I sketched out all the designs on a single piece of 8.5 x 11” paper while I spent a month learning to code iOS apps via a free Stanford class online. (For anyone wondering, yes it’s still free, and it’s updated all the time, so it’s still as good a place as any to start!)

The first version of the app was basic. You could write three 140-character text posts each day and watch smiley faces fill in as you did so. You could also go back a day and see a list of everything you wrote. I distinctly remember what a scramble it was to launch the first version of the app. One day, during a downpour in NYC, I ducked into a bank ATM room on my commute home to design the original app logo. I was busy with a full-time job and took any chance I could get to add a bit of pre-launch polish.

When Happyfeed launched, there was almost zero buzz. I shared it with my friends and family and most were afraid I’d just read their posts. A good friend from school shared it with everyone on Instagram - you never forget things like that!

Highs

Launches have always been fun for me. Putting together a blog post, writing a clever email, the anxiety of sending a typo to tens of thousands of people. My favorite is probably the annual re-launch of the Gratitude Grid or Memories Mosaic. Anything that makes it easier for people to connect with their memories - because I also get to sort through my own memories in Happyfeed while testing those features.

They say feedback is a gift and I think that’s especially true when you’ve built a gratitude journal. Most of the feedback I receive is overwhelmingly positive. Even the negative feedback has taught me patience. No one intends to be mean, they are often upset for good reason and don’t expect a real person to reply.

I haven’t focused much on press coverage for Happyfeed so the few articles I worked on stand out. In particular, I was covered in Indie Hackers in 2018. It felt like the height of the “indie” developer movement and led to dozens of interesting conversations with other founders.

I’ve always been one to enjoy a difficult technical challenge so no doubt some of my favorite moments came from building novel features. Mashup Movies was a surprisingly difficult thing to build, but turned out to be a favorite feature for many people. For some, it’s the primary reason to use Happyfeed.

The highest point though, was the day that the first person subscribed to a monthly subscription for Happyfeed. Knowing that even one person found the app valuable enough to actually pay for was such a joy. Up until then, I didn’t really know. The app was totally free and adding payments was scary! After the first subscriber, it felt like the app could grow and go anywhere. (Of course, it took another six months just to get to a hundred subscribers 🙃)

Lows

If making my first “online dollar” was the highest point, then the lowest point was likely while the app was costing me hundreds of dollars every month without any business model in sight. There was a stressful year where I didn’t have the bandwidth to figure out monetization while paying to support the app out of my own pocket.

My biggest regrets are the things I moved too slowly on or missed out on entirely. Happyfeed was one of three gratitude apps in the App Store when it launched, and it was perfectly situated to “ride the wave” of positive psychology. A few small changes would’ve made a huge difference, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

Personal constraints played a big role. If I had some extra income to put into Facebook ads, I certainly would have tried that while they were incredibly cheap. If I had a little more flexibility, I could’ve devoted longer periods to features I knew people wanted. But life brings what it brings and I'm mostly just glad to have stuck it out!

Luck, favorable financial situations, and flexibility can really accelerate a project, but for the average person… the best you can do is just keep putting in the work. Keep improving and improving and improving.

Future

Happyfeed is nearly unrecognizable today compared to the original version. Sure, it’s still rooted in practicing gratitude, but plenty of people use it mostly as a video diary or for sharing memories with loved ones. The mental health component is more of an ethos these days and less of the focus. I like to think that this makes it unique in a world where other products try to add mental health and positive psychology as an afterthought. It’s not a north star for them, it’s a way to squeeze out more engagement.

Happyfeed is better for you at the core and happens to have some incredible technology on top. I’ll continue to make it faster, support more formats, and delight users with ways to review and share their memories.

Thank you for reading and maybe next year I’ll do a standard “birthday” post all about the evolution of the app itself.