alive

Simple. Social. Mobile.

At alive, our goal is to help you achieve yours. Since we launched a couple of weeks ago, we have received tons of feedback, most of which was (fortunately) very encouraging and positive. If we can make your goals a bigger part of your daily lives and help you inspire others, it is a very worthwhile mission for us.

There are three things we constantly focus on in the process of improving alive. Making it simpler, more social and getting ready for mobile. As a first step, we’re launching an improved version today. Here’s what happened.

Simple.

Your steps and challenges have become more central, getting more of the attention they deserve. You will notice a cleaner and less busy layout, which will help you focus on the most important elements of the service. We have dropped a few (often somewhat arbitrary) elements of gamification, including badges and challenge leaderboards. Your past achievements are not lost though, as we transferred your accumulated points into the new system. Also, expect some real use for all these great points very soon!

Social.

The key to motivation lies in the social elements of the site. Social encouragement through boosts now receives much more weight, as we give less points for each step. We have also improved the ability to challenge your friends, whether they are on alive or not. Finally, steps streaks and points now have two central leaderboards which allows you to compare your achievements with other users - just click on the icons in the toolbar to see your ranking.

Mobile.

We are working hard to get native apps out there as soon as possible. In the meantime, we have optimized the site for a much improved mobile experience (admittedly, it was a real pain before). So the next time you take a step, make sure to track it using your mobile browser.

Much of this is still at an experimental stage. As always, we are very thankful for your valuable feedback - please drop me a line at kajetan@alive.do. Thanks a lot for your support, ideas and encouragement.

Introducing Resources

Picture yourself climbing a mountain. The hike is long and exhausting, you climb steep walls, cross crevasses, crawl on your hands underneath giant boulders, and stumble through areas of rocky ground. The blazing sun in this high altitude blinds your sight, and a steady, cold stream of wind - causing the only sound you hear in this high altitude - further drains your energy. Far way in the distance looms the peak, barely visible from where you are. Will you ever make it?

At alive, we believe that concentrating on manageable steps helps a lot. So does good company - climbing that mountain will be easier if you’re not alone. But in the end, you will also need the right resources - sturdy boots, a good map, knowledge of a good climbing technique, a pickaxe, sunglasses, warm clothes etc.

The right resources are out there, just not always at your fingertips. But someone surely read that inspiring blog post about climbing the Kilimanjaro, found a great new app to learn languages, watched an awesome movie about your new travel destination, followed a helpful tutorial about running your first marathon or read a fantastic book about meditation techniques.

That’s why we started an experiment: On the new Resources tab, you can now find all these resources, tailored to your challenges. These are recommendations by other users - if you find them helpful, click the little arrow to vote for them. Of course, you may (and should) also add resources that we haven’t heard about yet. You will receive points for each click and can be sure of the gratitude of users you inspired.

From now on, instead of sifting through hundreds of search results (and even then, did you use the right keywords?), you’ll have the best resources to help you reach your goals, curated by the community, in a single spot.

There are many other things we have been working on lately

Invite friends via email or Facebook - you are more likely to succeed if you have at least one friend on alive. And it’s more fun, too.
Recommendations for next steps are getting smarter by the day.
Timezones: Your day on alive finally starts when it should.
… and yes, of course, Mobile versions: Coming soon!

We hope you like these new features and are happy about any feedback!

Why we built alive

Kajetan is a co-founder at alive, a new social app that makes you achieve personal goals.

We all have goals, aspirations and dreams. Some of us want to exercise regularly, some want to learn a new language or write a book. Others want to get involved in a cause, plan to quit their job and start their own business - or travel the world. The rewards of doing these things are great: Not only do you grow as a person, you also inspire people around you and impact other lives in a positive way.

Yet despite the obvious benefits, it is often incredibly hard to stick to your goals and actually make it happen. In a matter of days, we fall back into our daily pattern of postponing and procrastination. Why is that? We stumbled upon this question when we were training for a marathon early last year. Finishing a marathon is supposed to be a great feeling: You realize you have pushed your inner boundary forward. Friends and family have something to be proud of. Plus, you get a picture with a tired, yet beaming smile and a shiny medal, which is great, too.

But getting there? Not so easy. It turns out that we lose focus of the big reward at the end of the road quite quickly. You better bring some good music, otherwise running long laps on your own will become very boring in no time. And finally, even if you are very motivated, there will always be short-term distractions that keep you from pursuing your goal - sleeping in, watching a TV series or tidying up of your room (suddenly very urgent!) have never before seemed more attractive.

So what can we do to keep the motivation up? When we started working on alive, we had a few (pretty vague) ideas about what motivated us. Luckily, digging deeper, reading countless articles and interviewing psychologists and motivational experts seemed to confirm our (admittedly less structured) observations.

First, keep track of your big goals, but focus on small steps - running an entire marathon at once is impossible. Focus on the next mile, the next training session. Each step will feel like a small success that’s worth celebrating. On alive, you pick (or create) a few challenges, then set small steps that will get you closer to reaching your goal. Defining those steps can be difficult, which is why you can also copy steps that other users have taken on similar challenges before.

Second, get support from your peers. Have you ever studied for an exam in a group, gone for a run with a buddy, or worked on a team presentation all night? The motivational impact of your peer group can be huge. On alive, we team you up with friends and like-minded people pursuing similar goals. Not only does it motivate to see how others are progressing, it can also lead to inspiration and a helping hand: A friend might join you on your morning runs, another one might borrow you his climbing gear. If only he had known before.

Third, turn it into a game. Working on your goals can be tough enough, so why not have a little fun along the way? An ever-increasing amount of studies shows that game mechanics can have very motivating effects. On alive, you can “boost” your friends, in effect betting on their success, and earn points once they take the next step. Points allow you to compare your progress with others and (in the future) to unlock rewards from our partners.

At the end, one question remains - do I really want to waste even more time, on yet another social network? You won’t. alive will actually save you time. It is about you and your goals, aspirations and dreams. About focusing on what matters. About what you do.

Life is now. Make it count.