Can You Measure Happiness? Freehap App Aims to Do So

Wanna be happy? There’s an app for that. Well not exactly, but an app with the ambitious goal of making the world a happier place has just launched: Freehap.

The app, developed in Bangkok by two college buddies from the Faculty of Economics at Thailand’s prestigious Chulalongkorn University, allows users to update their happiness level on a 5-point scale (very happy, happy, so-so, sad, very sad) and broadcast that to other users in their area.

Users can then add “special ones” and be alerted when those people are sad (so they can give them a pick-me-up call or message) and also check the entire country’s happiness level collated with data from Freehap. Right now I see that “Thailand’s happiness level is 58 percent today, up 3 percent from yesterday.”

Besides their happiness levels, users can post citizen news reports with the “I Report” button; make recommendations of books, movies, music, and more with the “I Recommend” feature; and put stuff for sale with the “Selling” button. They can also call for help (whatever the problem may be) with the “Help Me!” icon, and an aspiring Clark Kent in the locality can make himself or herself available by hitting “I Help” within the app. Plus, users must submit their blood types upon registration because there is a function of the app that allows a user to put out a call for blood donations in the event of an emergency.

The app is completely integrated with Facebook – better than nearly any app around, say founders Natee Jarayabhand and Khanit Aramkitpota. You must sign in with Facebook, so all your friends in the social network become your friends on the app, and when, for example, someone likes your happiness update through Freehap, that “like” will show up on a Facebook post.

Natee and Khanit hatched the idea while they were doing unfulfilling office jobs after university and read a study about low happiness levels in developed countries. “We wanted to try to make a platform for people to live a happier life. There’s no other app with the mission of making the world happier,” Natee claims.

The pair took their idea to the Global Social Ventures Competition at UC Berkeley in California in 2010. They didn’t win the contest but they say they got a lot of good feedback, especially from judge Paul Herman, founder of socially responsible Silicon Valley investment firm HIP Investor. “He said that in the future he thinks that the trend will move towards reporting happiness indexes, rather than stock market indexes,” says Natee.

So they came back to Thailand, raised some money from their friends and family, and put a team together to fully develop Freehap. The app finally went live – on Google Play for Android, and in iTunes for iPhone – last week and is currently only available in Thailand, Singapore, and Hong Kong. They plan on testing and tweaking the product with user feedback from these markets before trying to launch it globally. They’re also looking for new funding. In future versions they’d like to launch a real-time map of people’s happiness status updates, amongst other improvements.

Refreshingly for the Asian tech ecosystem where entrepreneurs seem to be too focused on monetization too early, the Freehap team is focusing only on improving the app (and people’s happiness, in theory) for the foreseeable future. They do have some ideas about how to monetize when the time is right, including sponsored “happiness campaigns,” premium emoticons, and advertising. But ultimately, says Natee, “We believe that if we can improve happiness for people, then money will follow.”

Here’s a demo video made by the startup:

[Direct video link for mobile readers]