One imagines that, if for some reason you wanted to create an old-timey sales pitch for the internet, it would go something like this: “Hello good sir/madam! Do you like to endlessly complain and moan about all the things you hate? Well I have just the thing for you!”
But if the open, instantaneous nature of the web has fostered a stream of constant negativity, it’s not the only end to which the internet is put. Take 1thingapp, for example. It is a dead-simple web service that, at any given moment, lets you record one thing for which you are grateful—and that’s basically it. Unlike many apps, which tend to allow a user as much freedom as possible, 1thingapp lets you record six notes a day, but permits you to share only one—and even that is shared anonymously. It’s an intriguing concept, and not only for its simplicity or focus on positivity. It seems to be part of an increasing number of apps and services aimed at making digital stories out of our lives.
1thingapp was the idea of Toronto resident Ayla Newhouse. Though a designer by profession, Newhouse has long thought about human happiness and where the web might fit into the concept. If bodily requirements are at the bottom of Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs and self-actualization is at the top, Newhouse felt that the web had spent too much time on the former and not enough on the latter.
“It began because I had been keeping a gratitude journal on paper for two-and-a-half years,” says Newhouse, referring to a notebook in which one lists things one is grateful for. “ Then I showed it to my now-business-partner last spring, who went home and started his own, and he said ‘wouldn’t it be cool if you could do the same thing from wherever cool things were happening?’”
That’s how the idea of a digital, mobile-friendly application came about, and 1thingapp launched just last week, not coincidentally around the time of American Thanksgiving. But if it’s that instant-gratification, “do it anywhere” mentality that drives mobile versions of Yelp or Twitter, the aim with 1thingapp was different.
“It’s for having a private experience that, as Maslow says, is about intrinsic growth of what is already there, of self-actualisation,” Newhouse says. “It’s not about saying ‘hey, I’m awesome, this thing is happening in my life’. It’s about giving other people some perspective and feeling like you’re part of a community in that way.” The point, then, is to document and collect moments of positivity, perhaps when one might otherwise have taken to a social network to complain.
The app itself is spare-looking, and so far has only 150 users, a miniscule number by any measure. But it’s refreshing in its simplicity, and the emphasis upon a mostly solitary experience (Twitter and Facebook integration are on the way) is, in light of current web dogma, almost defiant.
This isn’t the sole domain of 1thingapp, however. The very successful Path app, which initially launched as a photo sharing service—with an unconventional limit of 150 contacts—announced its second iteration this week. Though it adds many new features that essentially turn it into a way to capture and share numerous events in your life, it retains that cap on the number of people you can connect with. It has gotten a lot of flack for the choice, but the Path team remain committed to the idea that in between physical hanging-out and the public web, there is a space for an app that’s intimate in scope, limited to close friends and family.
And really, it points to a broader trend of digital apps being used to document life. Though products like Foursquare often get knocked for “gamifying” our time, they also produce a sort of storybook of what we’ve done, where we’ve been and what we like. Such apps are a way of producing a narrative of our existence, something central to who we are. After all, what is our sense of self other than the story of who we are?
Fittingly, then, 1thingapp intends to sustain itself through just such stories: Newhouse plans to let users produce and buy printed books documenting their notes of gratitude, creating a physical record or keepsake of positive thinking. Whether or not that will work as a business or marketing idea is far from certain. But in an era ruled by sharing on Facebook and complaining on Twitter, making a book of your own optimistic thoughts for yourself is certainly a pleasantly different take.
Navneet Alang is the Toronto Standard’s Tech Critic. (@navalang)
