LifeUpdate.
I love sending video messages to friends but neither WhatsApp, shared galleries, snapchat, BeReal, nor TikTok are really suitable for that. So why not develop an app that allwos us all to stay closer connected by swiping through real friends short form content instead of random cat videos.
Tech Stack:
supabase
react native
expoDeveloper & Founder
Personal Project
About
It is not my first app. There was one try of developing an app with react native. It was a points counter for beer pong games. But now I really caught fire for developing an app. After all, endusers might use it more than websites since everybody just uses mobile these days. And I would really love to see my friends use this app, so I stay closer to them. Aaand! I am not developing on my own here. So sharing the struggles of learning app development and seeing the github repo growing without doing something is a lot of extra fun.
Challenges
Learn app development. Not everything is new. For example supabase, which is again our backend. But react native is completely new to me and there will come struggles with it. In the beginning I was especially curious how long it will take us to get to beta testing. Which in the end were about 3 months. Now, since the app is up and running the biggest challenge is getting users. A few friends are using the app regularly and find it nice. My family is also a heavy user, but other friends groups don't use the app at all. The argument I hear the most is: "Not another app".
Results
On the positive side, if you use LifeUpdate with your friends you really learn more about their lifes. The video component let's you see what your friends are wearing, do they look happy, how their life currently looks like. The fact that you send videos only to the exact groups you want to see your content gives people the courage to share real life things. On the negative side it costs energy to do a LifeUpdate and also to watch one. Similarly as it costs energy to call a friend or listen to one. You need to spend time and LifeUpdate does not give you the dopamine boost TikTok gives you. Which is good. We don't want that, but it also leads to people not using the apps. An interesting finding I would say.
