Lifebit makes journaling life’s best moments simple, fun and sticky

Lifebit adds a gamified layer to journaling, which makes tracking your real-life activities and accomplishments more exciting.

Are you one of those persons who would keep a journal or diary, logging in an entry at the end of each day? In this day and age of social media, some would be obsessed with recording each and every event in one’s life — to the extent of taking photos of breakfast, or taking selfies in the bathroom. This has been preceded by blogging, which required a bit more effort and which had a different audience. Some mobile apps like Flava and STEP Journal help us keep track of small things in life.

But what makes journaling an enduring activity? In my experience, you will sometimes lose steam when trying to keep track of your activities. Too tired to write a blog post? Connection to slow to post a Facebook photo or update?

When you try to give incentives for life-journaling, however, then you might just keep people using your app. This is exactly what Lifebit is trying to do. Currently in public beta, Lifebit gamifies journaling, which encourages users to keep on posting updates and accomplishing challenges.

Lifebit pitched at the Philippines Satellite in April this year. Back then, the concept was still a bit vague to me, but now that I’ve started using the app, I can see the potential in changing the way I keep track of milestones and daily happenings. With the developers launching the beta on the iTunes App Store and Google Play, they did not intend for the app to be used by the general public at first. But it took a life of its own after passionate Life-casters (or Lifebit users) raved about how they can earn points from their accomplishments.

Live life consciously

Lifebit was built by the developers of Piclyf, which is considered to be the precursor of this gamified journaling app. Co-founder and CEO Eric Clark Su told e27 that living life haphazardly is not very optimal. “We only have one life. We should seize it and live it consciously. So we built this platform, where we remove the dullness of documenting your life by crafting a system of risks and rewards around it, in the process creating a game layer around your life that sort of give a happy ambiance to your everyday life,” he said.

Eric and co-founder, CTO Blue Jayson Basañes, actually have backgrounds from mobile and game development, which are quite relevant in what the team is trying to do with Lifebit. “[W]e had an indie game development company called Cavalcade games before starting on the startup path. We are now 15 people and looking to hire more,” said Eric. He also highlighted that the team operates a “loose mobile strike team called FuFu Labs that does most of the mobile apps of major brands in the Philippines under digital agencies.”

Don’t give up

Eric notes how difficult it is to maintain a journal, though, especially with the fast paced lives we lead today. He also stresses how valuable the social and community aspect of journaling is. “Our target are people who have tried to start diaries or journals but given up, people who want to have a more complete history of their lives, people who want to belong in a community around passions and people with smartphones.”

With Lifebit, quests make journaling more interesting. Eric says the app can be used in two ways: freeform and quest — and also a mix of both.

“Freeform you can use it like a typical diary app like Path (before it became a messaging app) or Day One. You post thru a bunch of editors like our simple but versatile camera with real-time filters that you can customize, doodle editor, check-in and text. We even have posting in the past, offline mode, and beautiful life pages.

“Quest based is where it gets interesting. We are designing a collection of badges around people’s passions — like cooking, biking, running, movies, games, books and so on. Inside these badges are quest that goes from easy to do to hardest. You complete these quest by posting a diary entry to that quest and the community validates it. Once thats done you win and claim your points. The points now level up the passion badge its in. So for example, the Cooking badge might have a quest that says ‘What is your breakfast today?’ that is worth 5 points. But at the end of the list it will have ‘Cook a 3-course meal for your loved ones’ worth 40 points. If you complete this you level up your Cooking badge to level 8. Extend this to Runner, Traveler, Bookworm, etc.

“In addition, all points you get from completing quests, suggesting new quests, getting a bit popular, etc are tallied in a Global and City leaderboard where you get more exposure and more followers.”

Making a big difference

Eric says Lifebit has received validation not only from its early adopters, but venture capitalists and influencers. The startup is funded by Kickstart Ventures, Skype co-founder Toivo Annus, and a few other local angel investors. In addition, Plug and Play Tech Center founder and CEO Saeed Amidi thinks that Lifebit is one of the few Philippine startups that can make a big dent on the global mobile space.

In terms of revenue sources and potential business, Lifebit actually has several sources. “The most basic one we will try first is letting users bid for free items using their Lifebit points. We already have companies waiting to provide the freebies to a community of life casters,” Eric says.

While the startup would not reveal any additional revenue sources, Eric says these all relate to the app’s reward mechanisms. In my mind, brands and businesses can perhaps leverage on its use of quests and challenges, or they can offer branded rewards for accomplishing these quests. What’s important here is that users also get a share of the benefits, Eric says. “Unlike traditional social products such as Facebook or Tumblr where the company gets everything while leaving the users with next to nothing, our plan has a strong ingredient of rewarding users.”

Live life and earn points along the way

Similar to loyalty and rewards programs, Lifebit therefore has the potential to create a win-win situation between businesses and consumers. One can, for example, earn points from his life-casting, and then exchange these for real world items from sponsor brands. And because accomplishments require validation from one’s real-world friends (on social media), businesses are secure with the knowledge that the system is not that easy to cheat.

Interested in learning more about Lifebit? Check out the infographic below. You can also follow Lifebit on Facebook and on Twitter. Lifebit is a free download for iOS and Android devices. The app is currently in public beta, and will officially launch this July.

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