by Katie McDermott and Jane Whitehead | Featured Contributor
“It’s the little moments that make life big”
Heavy Facebook use has been known to cause anxiety, depression and can cause users to overestimate how happy others are, causing them to be less happy as a result. The average time spent on Facebook per user every day is around 30 minutes, with some spending up to eight hours a day at the call of the addictive Facebook newsfeed… that’s a lot of unhappiness right there.
The idea of consciously striving to make social media a positive, meaningful and mobile experience is something we find very exciting. We have excitedly watched the Happier Inc. app grow in 2013 to hundreds of thousands of users sharing happy moments every day with each other. The app encourages users to record happy moments or things they are grateful for each day with an emphasis on being happier in the moment.
Even the most tiny things can bring happiness, from the sun shining through your bedroom window, to having five minutes to yourself after a busy week and these can be recorded in the Happier app and added to collections for you to look back on. The science behind the app is solid and straightforward; expressing gratitude has been shown to do more than improve your mood. People who write down a few positive things about their day are healthier, more energetic, less stressed, less anxious and sleep better. We have actively used Happier for more than a year now and we can honestly say it really does makes us happier! We are absolutely rooting for the future of the platform and the team behind it, especially co-founder Nataly Cogan who we interviewed on our blog recently.
We aim to add to the happiness movement with the launch of our new lifestyle app; Countdown Keeper – Collect Moments, Not Things. Our app is a customisable and shareable iPhone app which has been thoughtfully designed to include a number of features. Users can add images to further personalise count downs from the built-in image library, Camera, Camera Roll or Facebook. Once events have been created users can share count downs through a number of services such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and add them to the iPhone calendar too. After the count down event arrives, the app automatically switches to counting the time since that event allowing users to collect, and look back on, memories.
Download the free app for iOS today from the App Store here http://bit.ly/1iCxa4c or search ‘Countdown Keeper’
Studies have shown that anticipating future events is an important source of happiness and so we wanted to create an app that highlights those happy moments every day in a meaningful and useful way. Having something to look forward to, enjoying the moment, sharing the pleasure with others to heighten the experience and then reflecting on moments make even the smallest of experiences even better. Countdown Keeper allows you to get excited about upcoming events in one place, record memories through images and notes and then share the experience again with friends.
Since its release there have been thousands of downloads and a raft of five star reviews, from users who particularly love the simple interface and design. UK singer Lily Allen enjoyed Countdown Keeper’s count down to her new album release ‘Sheezus’ retweeting it to her 4.6 million Twitter followers!
5 stars – “Awesome Countdown app. Great features, felt really organic.”
We hope you love it as much as we do and we’d love to hear any thoughts or feedback, or any dream features you would like to be added in our next update – we have a very long list of our own! You can visit the App Store to download Countdown Keeper for free today, and if you like the app, we’d be so grateful if you could leave a review to help others find it too, and join us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest by using the hashtag #collectmoments
Instead of heading towards the Facebook app when you have some downtime today, why not try one of these popular apps and see if your mood improves… have a happy day!
—————————————————————————————
Katie McDermott and Jane Whitehead – Social Media Trainers and App Developers – Co-Founders of ‘Katie & Jane’ based in Birmingham, UK
Katie & Jane are on a mission to make their mark in the tech world through social media and app development with a difference.
Firstly, Katie & Jane are experienced social media trainers with a mission to make social media simple through bespoke training and consultancy, helpful toolkits and fun eCourses. They know social media isn’t rocket science so aim to lead and inspire people to use social media effectively in business.
Secondly, they are addicted to apps! Katie & Jane get excited about the role they play now and will continue to play in the future and the power they have in connecting and engaging people every day. Some friends go so far as to call them ‘app-geeks’ (but they don’t mind!). Katie & Jane were finding it increasingly hard to get their hands on beautifully designed apps that were fun to use, meaningful and packed with useful features, so… they started to create them!
Discover more about Katie & Jane on…
Twitter: @KatieAMcD @janiexx #katieandjane
One Reply to “Can Apps Help Us All to be Happier? Introducing @CountdownKeeper by #katieandjane”
Kenna Griffin
I like this idea. I have a few friends who are doing 100 days of happiness photo posts on Facebook and Instagram. I love looking at the photos. It really is the simple things in life. For example, this morning one of my friends posted freshly brewed tea as her happiness moment. I could totally relate to that.
Comments are closed.