Last spring, Jessica Montoya hit an emotional low point.
“I lost faith in humanity for a while there,” said the Pearland mother of one.
Montoya, 31, felt surrounded by negativity and simply “shut the world out” for several weeks, avoiding social contact. “It was bad,” she said.
Now, six months later, Montoya’s much better. She’s started enjoying life again. She gives the credit yes, all of it to an iPhone app called Happier.
In an era when we’re drowning in social media when many of us give our spare moments to Facebook-Instagram-Snapchat-Pinterest-Twitter and feel (studies tell us) sort of miserable when we do Happier is a small upstart company that wants to put the joy back in sharing our lives online.
“It’s better than therapy,” Montoya said.
Happier is both a website (happier.com) and a free iPhone app (the Android version’s coming). It works a little like Facebook: Users can share updates, tag friends and scan a streaming feed of news from others. But it’s different in key ways. Profiles don’t display the number of friends each user has collected. Most users have public profiles, encouraging strangers to interact and connect. And — this one’s important — the site is all about sharing happy moments. Whining, ranting, arguing and complaining just aren’t part of the culture.
On Happier, users log the moments that make them smile: a great cup of coffee, a good hair day, a lunchtime walk in the sun. In return, they get deluged with positive feedback from friends and strangers. Negativity isn’t tolerated; this is the place to cheer and be cheered.
And a lot of people — mostly women — are starting to use it daily. The site has logged more than 1.5 million “happy moments” since it rolled out last spring.
“Received surprise emails from my cousin and an old friend,” says one user.
“Spending time with my amazing grandparents,” says another. “My grandpa may have cancer but he’s putting up a good fight.”
“Making Crock-Pot meatballs and watching football.” “Definitely aced my math test today.” “Having someone make me a grilled cheese sandwich after a difficult day.” “Found a lollipop in my purse.”
This summer, a New York Times writer compared Happier to “those radio stations that feature ‘love songs, nothing but love songs.'”
“The love song comparison is a little cheesy for me,” said Nataly Kogan, Happier’s founder. But if you hear a great love song on the radio, Happier is certainly the place to report that.
Happier’s mission isn’t to replace Facebook or Twitter, said Kogan, who lives in Boston. Instead, Happier offers users a place to share a specific type of moment — and a reason to start looking for those moments in the first place.
“We think these small happy moments, most of them, people aren’t sharing anywhere,” Kogan said. “I think most people don’t realize they’re having them.”
Starting Happier was a sharp turn in a straight-to-the-top career for Kogan, 37. Her family immigrated from the Soviet Union when she was 13. She perfected her English by studying Alyssa Milano’s speech patterns on “Who’s the Boss?,” then went on to graduate from Wesleyan University at the top of her class. For the next 15 years, she worked nonstop: She became a venture capitalist and simultaneously started a publishing company, married and had a daughter.
“I was trying to chase my American dream of becoming happy,” Kogan said, and she thought happiness meant achievements. She was exhausted trying to juggle it all, hoping her success would pay off in happiness down the road. Then she had an epiphany.
“The big realization I had was: There is no nirvana state of happiness you get to,” Kogan said. “It just doesn’t exist; that’s not how we work.” In chasing after one big happy ending, she said, “what happened for me is I missed all the actual happy moments that would have made me happier.”
Kogan wanted to share that realization. That’s how she came up with Happier, which she hopes to eventually develop into a lifestyle brand.
“I want everyone to stop saying ‘I’ll be happy when …,'” she said, “and I’d like people to start saying, ‘I’m happier now because …”
Nobody’s expecting Happier to dominate the social-media world. It’s not going to take down Facebook or topple Twitter anytime soon. But research indicates that spending time on social media sites is making us pretty … unhappy.
In August, a University of Michigan study concluded that the more time a person spends using Facebook, the less satisfied he becomes with his life. In the past few years, multiple other studies have suggested that Facebook use results in feelings of loneliness, envy and dissatisfaction.
Heather Dettmers, who lives in Humble, says her Facebook feed “has gotten so negative” in the past couple of years.
“All people do is bash each other and bash religion or bash one thing or another,” she said, and for a while she considered deleting her account.
Dettmers, 37, joined Happier in April when a friend sent her an invitation. She has posted nearly 300 happy moments since then, often celebrating small moments with her dogs, her husband and her friends.
It’s not a place for sarcasm or posturing, Dettmers said. “You can just completely be yourself.”
Kogan has reached out to some of Happier’s teen users, who have joined in larger numbers than she expected.
“One of them told me the other day — and this blew me away — that she spends about half an hour crafting her Facebook posts,” Kogan said. “She has other friends look at them to make sure they’re cool enough. That’s insane to me, but I think this is happening pretty broadly. There’s a certain version of yourself you have to present.”
Montoya said other social networks require a level of jaded cool that Happier doesn’t.
“On Facebook, if I posted the things I post on Happier, people would be calling me out,” she said. ” ‘Stop being so happy, it’s annoying!’ ”
She used to be on Facebook all day. She now finds herself checking in on her Happier friends instead.
“It literally changed my thought process,” Montoya said. “I’m trying to find happy moments all the time now.”
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