A Perpetual Cheer Up: Hyped Social Network Is About Sharing What Makes You Happy

Another day, another social network, another username, and another password. These days, you have to be choosey about which social media spaces you want to employ; there’s so many out there, how do you know which ones to use? What’s more, if you’re a social media marketer, how do you attract internet users to your app or site? The innovators at “Happiest” have come up with an interesting way of promoting their new social media site: it’s called hype. I remember standing in line to buy the third Harry Potter book for my boyfriend. Personally, I was never really interested in the series, but my boyfriend was a fanatic, and—like most Potter fanatics— he wanted the new book the minute it came out. He was pretty depressed to find out a week earlier that he’d be working the evening of the book’s release. In order to surprise him, I drove to the local bookstore in my small town to buy him a copy. No big deal, right? How wrong was I, I discovered, when I pulled into the Chapter’s parking lot that evening to find a lineup wrapping around the store’s entrance. For the book’s release, the Harry Potter marketing team organized a book launch with the same hype and anticipation as a Hollywood movie premiere. Chapters employees buzzed around the store in Harry Potter costume; Dumbledores and Hermione Grangers handed out balloons to anxious children as they waited in line, tugging on their parent's hands. The J.K. Rowling enterprise had shipped boxes of the new book to vendors across North America. The boxes were sealed with witch-green duct-tape, with boldfaced lettering across the top warning merchants not to break the seal until precisely eight o’clock that evening. It’s called hype, and it works. Happiest is a new social media app centered around all things blissful. Their team spent the last year in the social media lab brewing the online platform, and now they’re using Twitter, Facebook and Linked-in to build a network of followers before the site’s even launched, much like the Harry Potter hype. Exactly what is happiest? We’re not sure yet. The website states that Happiest is a personalized social app to “seek, explore, and share the things happiest to you,” but how exactly it operates isn’t quite clear, and will only be revealed at the Thinking Digital Conference later this month. “Now that our project has grown into a beautiful product we are ready to reveal our work to the world” boasts their website. Embedded into the Happiest marketing strategy is an element of mystery, an element that the team hopes will make the launch successful and attract a number of users. What we do know is that the app was created by 12 digital talents based in Newcastle upon Tyne and headed by social media enthusiast Bobby Patterson. “And what is Happiest we hear you say?” The blog rhetorically asks, before letting us in on some of the small details: “It’s a super-awesome personalized social app to seek, explore and share the things happiest to you.” The Happiest blog states that the social media site is “nurtured by love and coffee”—and if you’re a coffee enthusiast like me, you get it. As one of the initial Happiest blog posts explains, life is about small pleasures, like a great cup of coffee in the morning: “There’s something magical about a hot cuppa that just makes your day that bit happier.” So far, the site looks and reads like Twitter, with a sleek, bright design and casual, conversational language (“wahey! you’re in” the Happiest site boasts once I’ve created my account). The Happiest team even has their own mascot—a small blue happy face who flies across the screen with a yellow cap (think the now iconic Twitter bird meets the Pilsbury-Doboy.) Want in on the happy? For now, you can connect via Twitter and Facebook, and you can even create an account, although, as mentioned, the app isn’t fully functioning yet. Simply follow the link, provide your full name and email, and you’ll be in-the-know and ready to go for the launch. Stay tuned for more from happy, and until then, get in on the hype. After all, strategic marketing always earns my business. Just ask J.K. Rowling.

Social Pro Daily

A Perpetual Cheer Up: Hyped Social Network Is About Sharing What Makes You Happy

Happiest is a new social media app centered around all things blissful.

Amanda Cosco

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Amanda Cosco