SaaS Review #001: Heyday
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Review #001: Heyday
Hot Tip: With Heyday, you really can close all of your tabs. No really...you don't need to keep the tabs in your brain open anymore. You're welcome (not that I can take credit).
Rating: I have to turn it up to 11. This may be my favorite app ever.
Why I like it:
I can't oversell this workflow hack enough. I am not being glib when I say I am obsessed.
I beta test the crap out of everything. If only people would pay me! (I heard there's an app for that. It's on my to-do list.)
If I had one productivity tool to use for the rest of my days, and you made me get rid of all my others I would be fine. Heyday is my number one go-to SaaS winner of the year. This may get my vote for the best app ever invented, as long as they keep the features I love.😉
Granted the plug in in chrome is what is making my life easier, but it's the fact that it's working anytime I am behind the scenes. It makes me feel like I have a research assistant, something my neurodivergent brain desperately needed before I found Heyday. Fun facts: I was almost afraid to share this app because it's like my secret weapon/brain hack. And then I was like, that is ridiculous, and also not how I work...at all! I am an over-sharer, especially with great tools and resources. When I find something I love I am a brand ambassador and tell everyone I can about your amazing biz.
Me wanting to keep it for myself tells you just how enamored I am with Heyday XYZ; it was that precious to me when I started using it last summer. I shared about it in the first few issues of the HOT LIST (launched back in December).
I couldn't just tweet about it. My fave tool deserves a full on Em report. So, here my verbose, yet engaging thorough design and user feedback long-form review of Heyday.
What is Heyday?
Meet Heyday, your research helping hand.
Heyday automatically saves your research, and resurfaces it when you need it.
Our lawyers told us we can’t say that it gives you a photographic memory. ;)
Heyday (originally called Journal app) is a SaaS browser plug-in, desktop, and mobile app that that when installed saves everything you look at and click on. It has a powerful search index; as a researcher and internet spelunker I feel was so needed, with how much Google's sucks these days.
Along the way, they have added some new features like article summaries, youtube video summaries (so rad!) and highlights so share quotes and remember stuff without having to copy/paste to other docs (though, I still do for now).
For a while, these guys started out with a combo of a browser organizer and notion documentation and it had a cool motion visual: every time you opened a new browser window a linear bubble would prompt you to breathe (and it really worked on me since I hold my breath constantly). That said, it took up way too much memory, but was a really nice change from the boring Google search bar.
They moved away from a journal app and embraced the thing they're really good at: saving your content so you can find it later. In previous versions, you could create different views and add documents or notes-like Notion Lite, but the whole experience has been simplified, and while I was hesitant to see features go, they made the right call.
You can grow your body of sources around subjects and themes and assign them "topics" (previous versions called it Spaces, but it's basically the same except simplified for faster, easier assigning/tagging via topic.
The best "new" feature that showed up late in their beta/early in the paid version is this handy reminder when using Google search! You get to see what you already found on the subject. The first time this happened, I think I fainted.🤯
Google something and see what you already found on the subject! Forgot you were already looking at that last week?
Heyday didn't.
Is it for me?
How to know if this App is right for you. (This checklist also applies to The HOT LIST, our members-only newsletter created just for creators, founders, and solopreneurs who want all the info and have none of the time.)
When you do research, do you save your deep dives?
Do you look at a variety of sources or always go to the same 3 websites/news outlets?
What defines "content" and how do you track it?
Ever want to share an article your read last month, but you have a more visual memory and can only remember the header image?
Do you save data sets or screenshots and have folders in disarray?
700 tabs every day? Afraid to close them?
Love sorting things into buckets (what I call them) or groups, themes?
Think Google Search sucks now?
Are you a connector with ideas and information, (this is how we build neural pathways and remember/learn things btw), finding the thread and connections between someone's post from today and a tweet from last summer?
The Founders:
Samiur Rahman and Sam DeBrule are super nice and approachable...but also totally buttoned up.
Creator Economy
Community: The co-founders and their way of building this product with the community are rad. They have a good tag team thing going, with Sam on community and Samuir on product. They are listening and meeting with those who are highly invested in their beta.
They are into highlighting and connecting creators with a growing Slack. Not super active but not dead and Sam keeps updates around the product coming. It's clear everyone that's a deep fan is rooting for them. The sentiment got more serious since they went to a paid version and the community doubled.
On their Slack, "Every week top creators join our community for AMAs." They past ones are organized and easy to find -how on brand ;). You can read about every creator so far and join their community (if you love the app) here.
Besides the AMAs and Sam's Twitter stream, it's still a nascent, fast-growing group. From like 100 to ~4000 in the few months since I joined.
The shares and posts are getting a bit heavy on bros but I have not even jumped in much yet. For now, I am a lurker.
Note to HQ: Please create community guidelines so that one channel isn't 2 "creators" sharing all their Medium posts. And so you can ensure it's more than a help desk with griping beta testers. Need help? I might know who can help with that. ;)
Follow Sam here for solid creator-economy and tech tweets in storytelling format.
Personally, the workspaces channel don't resonate like they do with the majority of the community. I am old, I have kids. My workspaces are often not my own. People love sharing photos of their home setups and it's sweet to share our "workplaces" but not really relevant to the product and there are probably additional ways to engage with this ND crowd.
Brand Design/Voice: Their new branding is fire! I love the green on twitter-very ownable and unique. Love the hands and color palette. Feels very versatile and fun and just an all-around strong brand ID for a startup that does not feel like everyone else's in SV. Big fan of the lighthearted, personable brand voice. Doesn't feel overly gendered, academic, or SV tech bro.
Performance/ Productivity: When Heyday was still called Journal, it had this awesome feature. When you loaded a new browser page it had nature imagery and encouraged you to breathe. It was awesome BUT ironically, it made my fan go 24/7. For me it was not a deal breaker. I really need a new macbook anyway.
If Heyday could prevent me from still opening 2 dozen tabs, then they’d be brain hackers and I might be scared. They're not magicians.
What the app did do however was prevent me from freaking out if I have to close them all at once, if my computer dies because I forgot to charge it, or if I want to remember that one article about that one thing and cannot remember anything but the source, writer, or imagery.
For my brain, cleaning before starting a new project is not only necessary, but a ritual. Now, I can try and get through all my open work, but if I have to start fresh, I force quit Chrome and voila.
For me productivity in a capitalist sense is NOT the goal. But in a I didn't lose that thing because I forgot where I put it, I do care and HeyDay very much fixes that problem.
Inclusion: Co-founder Samuir is neurodivergent; they created this tool and modified based on how ADHD brains work and because filing your research sucks.
Side Note: Completely off topic, but not for me...I went DEEP on the design studio they hired to do their branding. Evidently, it was the same studio that did Hillary's campaign H➡️. Know what else I found out? The agency is two white guys. Not that their work is not the bomb or notable; it is! But this is your reminder to hire diverse creatives and studios! Especially if your Hillary Clinton, but also if you're a startup. Lift each other's boats!
Challenges:
The features I love in beta are not all carrying over as they shift directions. That said, this is not a problem really. They are focused on doing one thing very well and I would concur that is where they, and most product platforms and SaaS should focus.
The features I love are the part this app saves you from anyway! The tedious tasks of folders and tags and organizing are not necessary for you to find stuff. (I really liked spaces and they just changed that to Topics which I am less jazzed about. The jury is out there but so far their product decisions have been solid.)
I wish I could escape Google’s g.d. grips but the chrome extensions are lifesavers. And Heyday’s hits it out of the park!! They do have them on other search engines, as Fast Co was quick to point out.
NOT to be confused with Heyday.ai which is something else entirely. (Reminder to SaaS founders to do a deep dive on your handles and urls/naming).
I wish I could sync it to Gitbook and Canva like I do Google Docs. THEN I’d really have a record of my brain.
Final Thoughts about Heyday
My motives are not always 100% altruistic in promoting new tech platforms and businesses.
With so many new SaaS tools for creators being released daily, there are a lot of opportunities to change tech for the better.
Occasionally when I beta test or dig into a company, I end up finding more synergy. This is the case with Heyday but it is not why I chose to highlight them first.
I chose them because it's coFLOWco's freaking mission:
Our mission* is to achieve equal opportunity and economic empowerment by amplifying the strengths, voices, and creative ideas of diverse leaders.
I chose them because the founders didn't send me an email to eff off because I had some feedback and offered to share it.
HeyDay is truly a game-changer, especially for creators, writers, and educators who love to share knowledge, tools, and tips with their creator communities (like me)! Happy searching.
This app is the Future of Work.
It’s a relief to know that wherever I talk with others (Slack, email), the notes of our convos or some part of my research will take me less than 5 minutes to find, if that. I don’t need to tag or file it or worry where it lives, but if I do…even better.
For now, I can die happy searching, reading, and jumping around the web with wild abandon till the sun comes up. There's always more to learn...but first, a nap.
🔥Hot Tip: Use this link when you sign up, and we both get 1 month free.
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