Private social networking is back. Gratitude Plusa startup that aims to shift social media in a more positive direction is expanding its wellness-focused personal reflection journal to include support for families who want to stay in touch even when they’re physically apart.
The startup, whose name reflects its core offering of a gratitude journal, is reminiscent, in some ways, of Path, which was built years ago. Path had briefly emerged as a challenger to Facebook by creating a space for smaller groups of people to interact with each other. The app differentiated itself by limiting users to just 50 friends, ensuring their interactions stay within tighter circles than larger social networks.
For a time, Path caught up, and while it never toppled Facebook, it stood out as an example of how private social networks could work if executed correctly. (The company had raised too much venture capital to return its investment without going out, so Path sold to Korea’s Kakao in 2015.)
Likewise, Gratitude Plus is not intended for use by a general public. Instead, it encourages users to build healthier relationships and better mental wellness habits by offering a space to journal, track mood, and keep in touch with family and friends through small, private “circles” in its app.
“I designed it to be very simple,” says New York-based founder and app developer Daniel Shaffer. “I wanted people to feel like they were writing in a stylish magazine.”
When opened, the app prompts you to journal by asking a simple question: Write down three things you’re grateful for today. You can also change the prompt to other sentences, such as “What made you smile today?”, “What are you looking forward to doing today?” and others, or you can write your own. Calendar reminders can also be set to shuffle so you can get a new one every day. You can optionally include photos to illustrate their answers.
However, unlike a private calendar, your responses to the app’s prompts are meant to be shared with a private group, such as your family members, close friends, or even a partner.
“When I’ve talked to users, they love that this is an app where they can take a minute or two to think about their day,” Shaffer said.
Shaffer says he was inspired to make Gratitude Plus after his mother passed away. His journey with grief led him to seek more accessible mental health tools, he says, and prompted him to create a wellness platform that people could use with their own friends and family to stay in touch with a more positive and personal way than is possible through traditional social media. He is not alone in seeking such tools. another startup founded by widows, DayNew, offers a social platform for people dealing with grief and trauma, for example.
With Gratitude Plus, however, the focus is not on healing grief, necessarily, but on maintaining the relationships that matter in the present.
With the new family plan starting on Mother’s Day (Sunday), up to four members can share a premium membership for $74.99 per year.
In addition to private networking, a community feed, powered by anonymous shares from individual users, also lets you see how others in the wider app community are feeling that day. Users can interact with these posts by leaving hearts or messages of support. About 50 percent of the app’s users share the feed anonymously, Shaffer said.
“People feel really good when they support other people. That’s one of the magical things, is if you keep at it, and if you have a negative mindset, you’re going to send some messages to people and you’re going to feel better,” he says. “A lot of people say it’s like a positive social network.”
Gratitude Plus encourages daily habits with features like push notifications and stripes, but Shaffer believes the biggest draw comes from the people you use the app with: family, friends, a partner, a child, and others you care to interact with. . A certain subset of users also post on the app to a wider set of friends, such as those in a dorm or school, or even among a group of fellow YC founders, for example.
Shaffer plans to add more mental wellness tools to the app, such as meditation, breath work and more.
The freemium app currently has more than 10,000 users, 650 of whom are on a paid subscription plan that offers access to more features,
