At OhLife (YC S10), daily e-mails motivate a new wave of online diarists

http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/10/26/ohlifes-daily-e-mails-motivate-a-new-wave-of-online-diarists/

by waderoush • 16 years ago

74 27 16 years ago

dabent• 16 years ago

I've been using this for a few weeks now. It's super easy to use, but I really wonder how they plan on monetizing this app.

tlrobinson• 16 years ago

Perhaps by offering a premium digital "archiving" service that aggregates the history of all of your online presences into one nice interface. It would be cool if I could see the activity on my Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc accounts along side my journal.

I'd pay for a service like that. I'd be worried about the service going away, but if they offered an easy export option I'd use it.

sjs382• 16 years ago

I think that selling you a printed version of your journal each year would be a great selling point. Not sure if it would have enough buyers, though.

marknutter• 16 years ago

I'd buy mine in a heartbeat.

sushrutbidwai• 16 years ago

one possible way of monetizing would paid iPad app.

pkaler• 16 years ago

Highly targeted advertising in the daily reminder email. They basically know your deepest darkest secrets that you don't want to publish widely.

Email CPM ranges from $10/CPM to $100/CPM depending on targeting. http://archive.newsmax.com/mediakit/newsmaxemail_rates.cfm

I'd imagine people would put health and financial matters in their private journal.

hugh33• 16 years ago

If I were they, I'd steer clear of directly targeting ads towards private matters discussed in the diary. Creep your customers out too much and they won't come back.

primigenus• 16 years ago

How do you handle intent though? When I see that email my goal is to write a new entry, not click on an advert for Deepest Darkest Secrets (TM).

To fix the intent problem, perhaps showing relevant ads while you're writing could make sense. If I'm writing about health and financial matters, that stuff's in my head and I might be coerced into clicking on a related ad.

briandarvell• 16 years ago

Cool idea. Basically it really offers nothing new except they have changed the way the game is played. You don't need to force yourself to begin, they're taking that first step for you.

nlanier• 16 years ago

I signed up when it they first appeared on HN and have been using it ever since. It's a simple idea that's been well executed. Kudos to them, I hope the service sticks around!

swombat• 16 years ago

To offer a counterpoint, I signed up, posted about 3 entries, then got distracted and added these emails to the masses of automated mails that my eye automatically glosses over while looking at my overtaxed inbox.

Then I unsubscribed the next time I had an automated-mail-culling exercise.

So, "one more email demanding my attention" didn't work for me.

kirpekar2• 16 years ago

Same here. Kept up for about a week, then unsubscribed to rid the pain.

The solution has to be non-email related.

hugh33• 16 years ago

If you can't stand being reminded to keep a diary, perhaps you just don't really want to be keeping a diary?

edkennedy• 16 years ago

I filter my e-mail inbox pretty aggressively, and also use it as a to-do list. I have found that having a reminder from OhLife in the evening when doing a daily review has dramatically reduced the friction from posting into a blog or even a word file. Both of those journaling methods I tried which were abandoned a month later. The way an OhLife reminder e-mail shows you what you have written seems to model our natural way of learning by making arbitrary connections between entries.

grandalf• 16 years ago

Shameless plug: http://www.onepageperday.com (similar concept but for authors, launched last winter, starting to go viral lately with NaNoWriMo around the corner)

h34t• 16 years ago

I like the service. Helps keep me on track. For some reason I use this differently than paper journals.

I think there may be a market for online coaching for independent, creative / solitary workers. A 10 minute phone call each day with a coach could have gone a long way for helping me stay focused when I was working by myself on projects. Journal entries like this could be a natural "entry" into this space.

If they gave me the option of paying a monthly subscription for a qualified, trustworthy coach to read my entries and help keep me on track I might go for it. Knowing there was somebody who would read it would motivate me to keep going and put more thought into my life.

(Of course, I'd change the way I wrote the entries if I knew it wasn't totally private. It changes the nature of the service.)

troutwine• 16 years ago

I've been considering building a service for this very thing. Would you be interested in having a conversation with me? My email address is in my profile.

klous• 16 years ago

I've had some similar thoughts for a set of services like this, I'd be up for a discussion. My email is in profile. (your email is not at the moment)

Stuk• 16 years ago

This is a really interesting idea, one that I would seriously consider subscribing to. I imagine having someone phone/Skype you would push the price up a lot though.

Possibly an email service, although that slightly removes the personal connection from it. I'm going to have to think about this...

mkramlich2• 16 years ago

for those who've used this and like it, how is it different than a blog? how is it different from or better than, say, Posterous?

hugh33• 16 years ago

I haven't used it, but surely the difference is that the diary is something you don't want anyone else to read (but secretly worry that somebody will) while the blog is something you do want others to read (though in fact, nobody ever does).

mkramlich2• 16 years ago

k. i'm wondering if uploading text to the Internet, to some company, is a good strategy for keeping that text private and secret. :)

One alternative is to write a diary the old fashioned way. Paper and ink. Very simple and cheap, and you have your choice of security methods. Hidden, safe, guard dog, etc.

Another is to write it on your computer using any editor of choice, save as text file or doc, whatever, then if you want security you can ensure it's stored on disk in encrypted form, perhaps using a 'file vault' app.

On the other hand, automated cloud backup is a good feature you get from OhLife. But there are ways of doing that independently too, where I can be absolutely sure it's encrypted on my end before any strangers get a hold of the bits in stored form.

noglorp• 16 years ago

Interesting; perhaps the addition of SMS, voice call, or more could help people with overtaxed inboxes.

This is pretty much exactly what a normal journal doesn't do for me though (HEY! YOU! WRITE IN ME!)

fylox• 16 years ago

No offence, but I am curious: Am I the only person here who doesn't want to write such personal data on someone else's hd?

This: "OhLife is private, secure, & friendlier than Ned Flanders. Only you can see your entries. " is pretty brilliant indeed :-D

At OhLife (YC S10), daily e-mails motivate a new wave of online diarists

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