On the internet, it’s always all about the next new thing. Our 24-hour news cycle has been chopped down into minutes as bloggers like me jump over and around each other in desperate attempts to grab all of your shitty attention spans. We’re constantly focusing on NEW NEW NEW, but isn’t there value in the old?
As a huge fan of old stuff and nostalgia, I come down hard on the pro-old side of things but as a blogger I usually have to focus on new. That’s why I’m super pumped about Timehop, a new app that focuses on the past.
Leeeettt’s Dooo The Time Hop Agaaaain!
With Timehop, all of your carefully composed Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram status updates rise from the junk pile that is the internet to live again in a chorus of “d’aaaaaaaaaaws.” Each morning you’ll wake up to a sweet little bundle of information about what you were doing on that exact day last year and, if you’re anything like me, it will be pretty much the perfect way to start the day.
CEO Jonathan Wegener and CTO Benny Wong created Timehop in February 2011 at the first ever Foursquare hackathon in NYC. The original name was cheeky – 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo – and focused solely on Foursquare. It was followed by PastPosts.com for Facebook, and And7YearsAgram for Instragram before the team merged them all into one nostalgia-fueled engine and renamed the whole thing Timehop.
On top of giving you a little happy hormone injection when you view, for example, the goofy pictures you took with your little brother at this time last year or read the status update: “expat note: no matter how many times you do it, leaving home is still really hard,” the app also lets you share your past moments in your present. It’s like automatic #TBT, all the time. The little snippets of the past just left me wanting more and I honestly can’t wait for my Timehop tomorrow.
Me and my bro, BrandYourself co-founder Evan McGowan-Watson, cheesing at dinner.
And it looks real nice too.
The app is not only adorable, it’s also wonderfully designed. While the onboarding process is a little onerous, I’m willing to forgive them because, so far, no one that I know of has figured out a truly great way to connect all of our social accounts without many clicks. (And if you, reader, know of an app that has nailed it, get in touch with me on Twitter @MissEmmaMcG because I need to write about them, clearly.) Once inside, the whole experience is simply a delight.
The added bonus of Timehop is at the very end of your daily update, where the app gives you a fun fact about something that happened that very day in history. Here’s the one for July 8:
18 years ago today, the Spice Girls released Wannabe.
Aaaaand now I feel old.
I’m going to go talk about dating apps with my aunts to make myself feel better. Go download Timehop. I can pretty much promise it will be your new favorite app.
Photo Credits
Timehop | Emma McGowan
