Product Updates: August 2022

Apart from a few small features, August updates have mostly been focused on performance improvements and bug fixes. A large group of people recently moved to Happyfeed from another app (that unfortunately was discontinued), and they’ve been keeping me very busy with ideas and feedback. It’s fun to see several Pods with dozens of members and even a few with over one hundred. However, this creates a variety of new challenges!

I also went for a short vacation at the end of the month, so it wasn’t quite as productive as the previous few. It’s good to practice what I preach and spend a little time enjoying the summer. 🌴

Overall

• 👷‍♂️ Pods and Following - Wide-ranging improvements to the backend code to catch bugs, avoid duplication errors, and better manage increased usage within groups. (Boring, but necessary as Happyfeed scales!)

iOS

• 📸 Photo-Only Memories - Many of you use Happyfeed as a photo journaling app or way to send photos to friends. Now text is optional to help with those days where a simple photo says enough.
• 👨‍🔬 Sharing Experiment - If you’re in a Pod or have a bunch of followers, it’s pretty easy to forget to share even your favorite moments. We’re testing a new pop-up to prompt sharing when you save a new post. But don’t worry, it’ll only appear for people actively using Pods.
• 🐛 Performance Updates - Some Happyfeed Pods are growing bigger than I originally expected and are seeing a buzz of daily activity. This means more stress on our servers and new kinds of bugs, which I’ve been fixing as fast as possible!

Android

• 📆 Memories 3 Years Ago in the Calendar - Did you know you can use the Calendar to add moments to any day? The Calendar previously only went back to the day you joined Happyfeed, but now you can go back 3 years.
• 🛠 Calendar Performance - The calendar code has been heavily optimized, especially with regard to how months and days are rendered efficiently. If you’re on an older device, these changes should be noticeable! In addition, I fixed a few bugs related to adding moments to past days.

Coming Up

It seems like there’s an infinite list of ways to optimize the apps even further, but I’m hoping to devote the upcoming month(s) to building our most common request: video uploading. Video requires more bandwidth, smarter caching, and all sorts of work behind the scenes to feel totally seamless.

If you’re interested in checking out an early version of video please send me an email at [email protected] and I’ll send a beta version for you to test when it’s ready!

As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you’ve had a chance to relax a bit this month as well. 🕶