Less Liking, More Doing!
New Activity Planning Messenger LivnList™ Puts the Social in Social Media
We live in a social age where technology has fundamentally changed how we interact with the world around us. Most importantly, it connects us to all the people in our lives, for better or worse.
Being single during this digital age, I adapted and learned how to use a number of these technologies to maximize my social life on a daily basis. Nowhere was this more evident than in my search to find a soul mate. Mobile first dating apps like Tinder and Hinge have completely changed the pickup process (making it ruthlessly efficient).
One evening, I was headed out on a date that I had conveniently arranged with one of these apps. Having had my share of disappointing experiences, my expectations for the evening were very low. On the way to meet my date, I wondered what my friends were going to be doing later that night. It dawned on me — there isn’t an app for that.
The more I thought about my daily use of social media, the more obvious the problem became. Making plans is a pain in the ass and social media doesn’t help. Social media is great at capturing the past and present, but does very little to enable the future. Consuming social media on the commute to work has become a constant reminder of what my friends did that I wasn’t apart of. Where’s my dating app for my friends?
Social media is great at capturing the past and present, but does very little to enable the future.
The benefits of dating apps are very tangible. They enable real world experiences, from the comfort of your couch. You browse pics and profiles, swipe or message the ones you like, start a conversation, decide on a day, time and place and then get together. It’s a communication tool organized around meeting new people in a more efficient way.
When used with good intentions, dating apps expand our social circle while using technology to save time rather than waste it, a concept I believe everyone could benefit from.
When I thought more about what value social media brings into my life, I was left scratching my head. Social media was created to alleviate loneliness, but has turned into a success theater where people go to show off and brag about how fabulous their lives are.
There have been several studies done, including the one Facebook did in secrecy, that show that social media is having a negative psychological impact on its users. It’s created FOMO (fear of missing out), MOMO (the mystery of missing out) and leaves a billion plus users around the world feeling “alone together” rather than alleviating loneliness.
I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg ever imagined that his initial vision of making the world more open and connected could have such negative consequences. So what will it take for social media to drive progress, help humanity thrive and remain relevant for the next 30 years?
I began to wonder if there was a way to apply the efficiency of dating apps to make it easier and less painful to get together with busy friends who are scattered throughout my life. The industry seems to be very focused on location technology being the trigger for why people would get together. To me that’s just technology for technology’s sake at this point (at least until it doesn’t drain your battery).
My hypothesis focuses on intent, rather than location. I believe people will get together more often with their friends if they know what their friends want to do, not where they are.
I believe people will get together more often with their friends if they know what their friends want to do, not where they are.
In order to reverse the negative FOMO impact of social media and strengthen the friendships in our lives, my partners and I set out to build a company called LivnList.
Our app is a fun and easy way to get your friends to do things. We make it painless to organize, share and discover what you and your friends want to do. The simple act of letting friends know what you want to do in the future opens up a world of possibilities for you to live your life to the fullest with LivnList being the only tool you need to maximize your social life.
LivnList is a single purpose, mobile first app focused on more exact communications. We like to think of it as “contextual messaging” (or dare I say “messaging 2.0.”) There’s a point to what you’re messaging about on LivnList verses the many generic messaging apps to send stickers, emoji’s and GIF’s like WhatsApp, Messenger or ephemeral messaging app Snapchat.
Our activity planning messenger starts by making it super simple to capture your intentions, all the things you want to do. It’s like a bucket list, but instead of keeping track of all the things you want to do before you die, LivnList is about enabling all the things you want to do, big or small, to live your life. How great would life be if we lived a little every day…rather than consuming other peoples lives?
Social time- or doing things together- is highly valuable when it comes to improving our happiness and health.
Harvard happiness expert, Daniel Gilbert, explains it simply, “we are happy when we have family, we are happy when we have friends and almost all the other things we think make us happy are actually just ways of getting more family and friends.”
The first step to having an active social life starts with taking the initiative to keep track of all the things you want to do. Social media, to-do lists, calendars, event discovery apps etc. aren’t the most user friendly for capturing something you want to do when you’re struck with the idea.
Whether you’re planning a party, trip or night out at the movies, LivnList makes it easy to get your friends to do things. Users can get creative with our video invites (Livn’vites) to hype up their plan. Half the fun of doing something comes from the anticipation and preparation of actually doing it (the pre-game). We eliminate the challenges of planning by reducing the steps involved with features that actually make the process fun.
For the planners in the group, they choose the date, time and location because it’s what they want to do, but being a good host means that they have the difficult task of appeasing all their attendees’ preferences. These communications can stretch across fragmented emails, texts and phone calls making the planning process a hassle. With LivnList, all the details are organized around the event in one place and can easily be adjusted on the fly so that nobody misses a last minute change, update or suggestion.
The next step is sharing your invite with friends who you want to join in. Again, social media, email and texts can be fragmented, especially if you only have one form of contact info for certain people. LivnList brings your entire personal network (not your public social graph of followers) into one unified experience so you can easily extend an invite to a friend, co-worker or friend of a friend (people you actually do stuff with), even if they don’t have the app. We replicate digitally the established social norms for how people come together in real life.
We replicate digitally the established social norms for how people come together in real life.
For those less structured nights out, users can post to their friend’s activity feed that they’ll be watching the big game Saturday night at their favorite bar (it’s basically a casual future status update). Since your friends know where you’ll be in advance, they can let you know that they’ll be joining you, so make sure to save them a seat.
For the improvisers in the group who don’t like to commit to anything, they can lean back and peruse their activity feed to see what friends are planning nearby. Or if they decide to switch things up, they can change locations with our map view and pick a future date to see what friends have planned anywhere in the world.
The final step is to do. When you arrive at your scheduled activity/event you can check-in to let the other attendees know you’re there without having to remember who’s going. If you’re running late, you can let your friend’s know when they should roll out the red carpet for your arrival. Getting together with friends is now as simple as List. Share. Do.™
Getting together with friend’s is as simple as List. Share. Do.™
Ultimately, the grand vision for LivnList is to create a social utility that helps people live life to the fullest with their friends in the real world. We are reinventing existing behaviors scattered throughout many different apps by bringing them together in a unique way for a superior consumer experience (the familiar done differently).
We hope LivnList will become the daily tool you use to decide what you want to do, where you want to do it, who you want to do it with and then we’ll make it easy to coordinate all the details for you to actually do it.
Imagine mashing together search, discovery, a recommendation engine, to-do list, calendar and messaging app with your mobile contact list to build the ultimate tool to maximize your social life. It’s everything Facebook events could be if it got together with WhatsApp, Foursquare and Pinterest to make getting together easier.
We’re building the change we want to see in the world by helping to create kismet and empower YOLO by matching social butterflies (planners) with their friends who are looking for something to do (improvisers). In the way that dating apps digitized the real world experience of picking someone up in a bar, we’ve created an app that digitizes the real world dynamics for getting friends to do things, making the process ruthlessly efficient.
In the end, we hope LivnList enables happiness. We believe there should be less liking and more doing.
So let’s #getlivn with LivnList.
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About LivnList™
Get your friends to do things with LivnList™, the fun and easy way to organize, share and discover what you and your friends want to do. It’s as simple as List. Share. Do.™ The activity planning messenger is available for download on iOS. Android and web versions coming soon. For more information, visit www.getlivn.com or follow us in social media @LivnList.
