self-care
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Shine brings its female-focused self-care app to Android
Shine, one of the many apps capitalizing on the growing self-care trend, has now brought to Android devices its app used by 3 million people. Originally launched as a simple messaging bot that doled out life advice and motivation, Shine has grown over the years to become a larger self-help platform aimed largely at the millennial crowd — and, in particular, millennial women.
As of Shine’s $5 million Series A round last April, the app’s user base was 70 percent female, and 88 percent were under the age of 35.
Since then, it has added another million to its then 2 million users. That growth came despite Shine having missed the mark at times, as with its failed life-coaching subscription product that never emerged from testing.
Today, Shine’s focus is on personal growth, motivational messaging and other self-improvement topics, which are delivered by way of text and audio. Through short-form audio, users can get help across a number of areas, including things like productivity, mindfulness, focus, stress and anxiety, burn out, acceptance, self-care for online dating, creativity, forgiveness, work frustrations and more.
The app also sends daily motivational texts based on research-backed materials that help users better understand the topic at hand. These are presented in a more casual style — almost like it’s a friend chatting with you.
Shine now monetizes through a Premium subscription that offers expanded access to Shine’s audio talks and challenges, as well as additional features like offline listening and the ability to save favorite texts. This is either $4.50/month if you pay the $53.99 annual fee at once, or $9.99 per month. That’s roughly in line with what some meditation apps charge — for instance, the top meditation app Calm is $59.99 per year. And it’s cheaper than Headspace, which is $95.88 annually, by comparison.
Shine had said last year that one of its plans for its Series A was to build out the Android experience, as nearly half its customers were accessing Shine on Android devices. In those cases they were using the texting service due to the lack of an official app.
On iOS, Shine is fairly popular in its category. It has jumped to become the No. 16 “Health & Fitness” app in the U.S. following the Christmas holiday — a time of year when people get serious about wellness and self-care. However, it’s only the No. 86 app on the “Health & Fitness” Top Grossing chart, which puts it far behind other wellness apps, including meditation apps like Calm, weight loss apps like Lose It! and workout apps like the No. 1 app, Sweat from Kayla Itsines.
Given the app stores’ larger shift to subscriptions over paid downloads in recent years, it will be interesting to see how many apps the average consumer will actually pay for through the subscription model — and to what extent more niche apps like Shine will be sustainable in the long term, as a result.
Shine is a free download on Google Play.
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Aloe Bud is the adorable self-care app you’ve been waiting for
The buzz or chime of a push notification on your phone is, at best, a distraction, and at worst, a source of stress and anxiety. A new app called Aloe Bud wants to make those push notifications into something more welcome: gentle reminders to take care of yourself and your own needs. With its configurable reminders, Aloe Bud will encourage you to take a break, drink water, move your body, rest, breathe, and more.
The app is the latest to enter the booming “self-care” market, which caters to a largely younger demographic who are better handling the pressures of modern-day life by carving out time for themselves to mediate, relax, and practice other mindfulness techniques. Some older folks have scoffed at the movement, claiming millennials are too self-involved – or they just scratch their head in confusion. (“Mindfulness?”)
But there’s real demand for these self-care applications and services – in the first quarter of the year, the top ten self-care apps pulled in $15 million in revenue. Now who’s scoffing?
However, most of the self-care apps today are focused on meditation and calming techniques, not on the day-to-day aspects of self-care.
That’s where Aloe Bud comes in.
Even cynics will have to admit the app is kind of adorable with its soft color scheme and its original, retro-ish pixel art icons.
It’s also simple to use – there’s no sign-up process where you have to give your name, email or phone number. No “friend-finding” function, nor the competitive pressures of joining yet another social network, where people can track your activity and judge you accordingly. Instead, the app launches you right into a simple screen where you tap icons like “hydrate,” “breathe,” or “motivate” to set up when and how you want to be reminded. You can choose to use Aloe Bud without reminders by just checking in to those activities, if you prefer, and you can use it for journaling, too.
If you plan on using Aloe Bud long-term, you’ll probably want to pop for the $4.99 expansion pack which includes different versions of the reminder texts so your notifications’ messaging doesn’t become too routine. However, the app itself is free to use.
The idea for Aloe Bud – whose name is meant to invoke the soothing qualities of the Aloe plant – comes from Amber Discko.
Discko’s background in community, social, and development led to a number of opportunities over the years, including running social media for the popular Denny’s Twitter account, working as a creative strategist at Tumblr, founding the online publication and community Femsplain, and working on the digital organizing team for the Hillary for America campaign.
When the election was over, Discko needed to recover, and turned to self-care apps.
“I found myself destroyed mentally afterwards. I wasn’t leaving the house at all. I needed to find a way to get myself back to a grounded normal state,” they said.
Discko then tried a number of other self-care apps, but didn’t feel any of them did the trick.
“I didn’t find myself really keeping with it. I either forgot about the app, or I felt like they were shaming me, so I deleted them right away,” Discko said. “I couldn’t find one that felt like it worked for my personal needs – I’m a sensitive person. I work best with positive, encouraging reinforcement,” they added.
Aloe Bud was born of these frustrations, but originally as an online community where people could check in with their self-care routines. However, there was growing demand to turn the self-care system into an app. To raise the funds for the app’s development, Discko ran a Kickstarter campaign, which led to 1,538 backers donating over $50,000 to the cause.
A year later, Aloe Bud officially arrived, with help from the development team Lickability (Houseparty, Jet, Meetup), user interface designer Tin Kadoic, and pixel art icon designer Katie Belton.
The app went up on the Apple App Store this week, and was pre-ordered by 1,000 people. By day one, it had already gained 5,000 downloads.
Aloe Bud is deceptively simple. A lot of care and research actually went into its making, as it turns out.
Discko worked with a mental health researcher to help craft the app, and referenced other research in the space, as well. They even carefully selected language in the app so it wouldn’t be triggering – for example, the reminders to eat aren’t referenced as “food,” which people have hang-ups about (or possibly even eating disorders). Instead, it’s referenced as “fuel.”
Aloe Bud is not for everyone, but it will make sense for those who appreciate little reminders to take care of ourselves – like those in Apple Watch, which now alerts you to stand and to breathe, for example.
And it could be especially useful for those who work online, or who face ongoing harassment because of their work – something Discko is familiar with, too.
“I was getting toxic push notifications and it was really destroying my sanity for a while. I deleted Twitter off my phone and replaced it with Aloe Bud,” said Discko. “I encourage a lot of people to do that.”
Aloe Bud is a free download for iOS.
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Self-care apps are booming
Millennials may be a bit obsessed with self-care — and it’s beginning to pay off for the makers of self-care and digital wellness apps. According to data from multiple app store intelligence firms, the category is now seeing notable growth. In the first quarter of 2018, the top 10 grossing self-care apps in the U.S. earned $15 million in combined iOS and Android revenue, and $27 million in worldwide revenue, according to Sensor Tower.
The firm also found that the top 10 wellness apps (e.g. mindfulness and meditation) made about 170 percent more revenue worldwide in Q1 2018 than the top 10 wellness apps did in Q1 2017 across both the App Store and Google Play. In the U.S., they made about 167 percent more.
However, a big chunk of self-care apps’ revenue is being claimed by just two apps — Calm and Headspace, both of which focus on mindfulness and meditation. Calm, the top grosser, earned about half the total revenue in the U.S. and worldwide, equating to roughly $8 million in the U.S. and $13.5 million worldwide. Combined with Headspace, the two generated more than 90 percent of the top 10 apps’ revenue last quarter.
Apptopia is also reporting a surge in self-care app revenues and installs, but its numbers don’t agree with Sensor Tower data. (Sensor Tower believes its data is within a couple of percentage points of actual, on the underestimating side.)
Both firms agreed on the top three, however: Calm, followed by Headspace, then 10% Happier: Meditation Daily. Other mindfulness apps appeared on both charts, including The Mindfulness App and Stop, Breathe & Think.
The discrepancies may be attributed to how the companies define “self-care” — as it’s not a specific app store category — as well as data quality.
Apptopia also claimed self-care app installs are up year-over-year, with more new self-care apps arriving every year.
Regardless of which firm is closer to actual, the trend is clear: self-care app adoption is booming.
Apple, for example, pegged self-care as one of its top four breakout trends for 2017, saying “never before have we seen such a surge in apps focused specifically on mental health, mindfulness and stress reduction.”
As to why self-care apps are the latest craze, that’s a bit more complicated.
Some experts say millennials’ use of the informational resources on the internet increased awareness about self-care in general; others would say the always-on news cycle of the web combined with the depressing nature of social media led to a growing need for self-care tools. And, of course, cynics would argue it’s simply because millennials are more self-absorbed than other generations, and this trendy focus on self-care is the proof.
But there are plenty of other factors beyond that. Millennials married later and were slower to buy homes as a result — that may have led them to have more time to remained self-focused, as they may not have had the same set of distracting responsibilities as their parents. (Or the related drains on their extraneous funds!)
Meanwhile, the stigma around mental illness is also on the decline, which aids a self-care app surge.
However, not all self-care apps are a replacement for traditional mental health care, when it comes to more serious matters. Some of the talk therapy apps were found to be ineffective, expensive, inconsistent in the quality of care provided and, at worst, potentially dangerous.
For those problems that can’t be meditated away, please still call a doctor or an emergency hotline.
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