기쁨을 공유하는 SNS

요즘은 SNS가 굉장히 인기를 끌고 있는 시대입니다. 이 기사에 나온 SNS는 매우 독특합니다. 기쁨을 공유하는 SNS라고 합니다. 이 SNS를 통해 사람들은 자신의 기뻤던 순간들을 다른 사람들과 공유하며 기쁨에너지를 서로에게 전달한다고 합니다. 인터넷을 통해 수많은 사람들이 연결 된 시대에 기쁨을 공유한다는 발상은 매우 흥미롭네요.

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Happier Wants to Be Like Twitter For Sharing Happy Moments

by Seth Fiegerman|July 26, 2013

 The Launchpad is a series that introduces Mashable readers to compelling startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the detailshere.

Name: Happier

One-Liner Pitch: Happier's app prompts users to collect and share happy moments from their life — however big or small — in an effort to increase their well-being.

Why It's Taking Off: The startup hopes to eventually build a media company and lifestyle brand that inspires people to be happier.

Can a social network make you happier? Nataly Kogan is betting the answer is yes.

Kogan, a serial entrepreneur and former tech investor, launched an online community and app called Happier in February of this year with the goal of giving users a place to collect and share happy moments in order to make themselves feel more positive day to day. It now has more than 100,000 users who have shared more than 1 million updates.

The service functions similar to social networks like Twitter and Instagram, except that it specifically prompts users to share brief descriptions of what makes them smile each day — with or without a picture. Rather than Like or favorite an update shared by others in the community, Happier users tap and hold down on a smiley face, which Kogan says is intended to mimic the positive feeling of smiling in real life.

"We wanted to make it really simple. The core social action you take is that you smile at moments," Kogan told Mashable in a recent interview. "Smiling makes you happier."

While users can of course share similar content on other social networks, Kogan argues that Happier's emphasis on prompting users to post positive updates leads to "more personal, less braggy" posts. "On Happier, you don't need to brag about the best lattes of your life, you can just say you grabbed coffee for a few minutes," she says. "A lot of this content isn't being shared today on any social network."

When asked whether and how Happier does anything to restrict users from sharing not-so-positive updates, Kogan says there is no mechanism in place, and argues it isn't needed. "We have so little abuse of any kind," she says. "You have to think really hard about why you would come to this place and share something negative."

Kogan grew up in the Soviet Union, which she describes as "not a very happy place," before her family decided to leave everything behind and make a series of moves throughout Europe and eventually ended up in Detroit. For most of her teenage years and adult life, Kogan focused on trying to be successful: She worked as a tech investor and launched several companies, including Where, which was acquired by PayPal in 2011.

A few months after Where was acquired, Kogan says she had the realization that her success hadn't really made her happy. Even before the acquisition, she had begun to question what made her feel fulfilled and read through some books on the subject, but it wasn't until she was on one of many cross country flights to PayPal's office that she had the epiphany of what she wanted to do next: Build a startup around happiness.

She raised a $2.4 million round of funding from Venrock and Resolute for the startup and assembled a team of nearly a dozen employees to work on the project.

The app and website is just the first part of Kogan's plan for Happier. "Our big vision is to build a media company and a lifestyle brand that inspires millions of people to be happier," she says. That may include everything from Happier branded home decor to yoga mats inscribed with the tagline, "Yoga makes me happier."

For now, though, the startup is focused on the more manageable task of improving the app experience based on initial user feedback. Happier just submitted version 2.0 of its app to Apple and plans to release to it on Aug. 1. The updated app will make posts public by default — though users will still have the option to make them private — and replace the friending model with a follow option, effectively making the social network more like Twitter.

To hear more about Kogan's thoughts on happiness and what led her to launch Happier, you can watch a recent TED Talk she gave below:

Would you use a service like Happier? Share in the comments.

Image: Happier