The recently-departed co-founders of Twitter – Ev Williams, Biz Stone and Jason Goldman – now working together again under the old Obvious Corporation name, announced their latest product today, a stealth alpha app called Lift. It’s described as a way to help users achieve their goals through positive reinforcement.
It sounds like Twitter in its simplicity and from what I’ve seen it looks a lot like Twitter too, but with more structure. What’s called Lift today was apparently called Mibbles just weeks ago and was described then as “a very simple tracking and encouragement tool.” GetMibbles.com now redirects to Lift.do. What was Mibbles all about? Lift has disclosed almost no details about how it works, but you can find a number of hints about it if you look at the previous iteration of the project. It looks like a really interesting idea, too. (Lots of other coverage of corporate background etc. is here.)
Changing the World, One Action at a Time
Obvious Corp. has long said it was a new kind of organization seeking to foster startups that would help make the world a better place. Just like Twitter is a deep mix of the personal and the public, Lift (at least when it was Mibbles) is a way to share the daily accomplishments that mark progress towards your goals, with friends interested in the same sorts of goals.
It’s a very ambitious goal for a startup. It’s also not something Lift will be alone in trying to do. See, for example, Healthmonth, Bud.ge, Streak.ly, Love Machine and others. Let’s see what you’ve got, Lift!
How It Works
Back when it was called Mibbles, users joined multiple groups with names like Happydog (as in “I want to keep my dog happy”), Love or Home. Then they gave themselves Awards when they achieved accomplishment leading towards the goals they were grouped around.
The Mibbles team has been working with Obvious all Summer and the service itself appears to have been under active development since at least the spring. The website underwent a dramatic redesign to take on its snazzy new look just a few weeks ago, by which time it was already renamed as Lift.
How does the user experience flow so far? It appears that the News Feed metaphor is employed for each group. It looks like this:
In the Group #presentationskill, user Tonystubblebine (the company’s co-founder) gives himself an Award for remembered to say my name and other users in the group can click +1 to like that Tony did it.
Over in the Group #health, user c_t_montgomery (the student developer/designer who built the interface over the Summer and is now joining the team full-time) accomplished the Award ran for 20 minutes. He cross-posted to the groups #workout and #forrealthistime. User Tonystubblebine liked the Award.
Group #1, perhaps unsurprisingly, is titled Productivity.
I think Lift is a cooler name than Mibbles; but Mibbles is pretty cute too.
Continued below.
Simple Interface, Deeper Strategy
It’s a really simple service – it’s not hard to see why it resonated with the Obvious team. They say they’ve been using it (according to the Mibbles site, someone using Mibbles set up an Intranet for Obvious) and that “it works.”
It appears that the team has been exploring some sorts of aggregate data analysis as well – highlighting the kinds of activities that have been posted most often to the various goal-oriented groups.
For example, members of the #Health group have on multiple occasions said they “avoided refined sugars” – so if you’re a member of the Health group, perhaps you should consider doing that too.
I can imagine the basic outline of the social engineering, if the service that launches looks at all like what’s been under development: you’re shown a stream of accomplishments by people who have similar goals, you’re encouraged to give yourself an award for any accomplishments you’re willing to claim publicly – then you get simple positive re-enforcement for those accomplishment.
It appears that the team has been exploring some sorts of aggregate data analysis as well – highlighting the kinds of activities that have been posted most often to the various goal-oriented groups. For example, members of the #Health group have on multiple occasions said they “avoided refined sugars” – so if you’re a member of the Health group, perhaps you should consider doing that too.
There’s no indication when Lift will launch to the public, but calling it an Alpha implies that it will be awhile. The dashing new design and public announcement of the partnership with Obvious, on the other hand, might imply that we might be able to use it sooner than we think.
