13th Beeminder Buzz Press Roundup

In case you missed our previous 12 press roundups (starting all the way back in 2012!), here they are: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve.

Now that you’ve clicked on each of those and read each article, blog post, blurb, and podcast, we can fill you in on all the buzz in the 7 or so months since our last press roundup!

Actually, we’re as overwhelmed by these lists as you (talk about nice problems to have!) so we’ll break it up. First is the list of things we’ve actually read and endorse, and then a list of everything else plus the kitchen sink. Definitely holler at us if we’ve relegated something of yours to the bottom list! We probably just didn’t get around to more than skimming it yet. Also, any negative press we may get is definitely going in the top list. No cherry picking here!

Actually Curated / Exciting Buzz

1. We’ll start with an article we have major beefs with but that we suppose is a big deal because it’s in New York Magazine and our esteemed CEO was interviewed for it. Unfortunately it gets all sorts of facts wrong so we can’t recommend it too strongly. (Most jarring was the claim that “there’s a pretty big drop-off in users after they’re charged for the first time” when we specifically told the reporter the opposite: There’s a big drop-off before getting charged the first time, and especially before getting serious enough to actually create a goal. But >90% of people stick around after getting charged the first time!)
2. Thomas Frank has a pretty amazing Beeminder testimonial in his video “6 Books That Completely Changed My Life” (the Beeminder-related book, of course, is Nick Winter’s The Motivation Hacker) and in his roundup of 21 apps that force you to be more productive, first and foremost of which is Beeminder. (“It is no exaggeration to say that Beeminder is one of the primary reasons why I have a successful YouTube channel today”)
3. Not as glowing a recommendation, but Seth Godin linking to us in a post on the usefulness of made-up deadlines was also a big deal for us.
4. Speaking of celebrity endorsements, Danny O’Brien, International Director of the EFF and coiner of the term “life hack” has been an avid Beeminder user for many years and had more to say about his beeminding recently (and again later and yet again).
5. Beeminder is on a list of “The 10 Best Productivity Apps that use Gamification in 2018” which includes a nice synopsis of Beeminder (also this site seems to have driven a lot of traffic to Beeminder).
6. Nick Winter sang Beeminder’s praises on Cody McLain’s podcast and we liked it so much we made a highly edited transcript.
7. Professor Rosulek’s guide to starting a PhD is pretty great and includes a brilliant section on Beeminder and commitment devices more generally, including anecdotes from his own beeminding.
8. There was an otherwise unremarkable article mentioning Beeminder that was also published in the Daily Mail and many other places around the internet, including in Spanish, so that turned out to be something of a big deal press-wise.
9. Our esteemed cofounders (who are a married couple) were interviewed for an article about couples setting relationship goals (also includes Nick Winter stories).
10. Maggie Delano had a brilliant presentation at Quantified Self 2018 about how she beeminded her way to completing her PhD: Quantified PhD: Self-Tracking 5000 Pomodoro Sessions

Barely Curated / Fainter Buzz