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Timehop partners with USA Today for news from the past

3

on January 25th, 2013

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One of my favorite apps, Timehop, has partnered with USA Today to offer news tidbits from the past that fit in perfectly with the context of Timehop.

The news tidbits highlight a news item from today at some point in the past, be it a major story or something that barely even registered at the time but appears larger in hindsight. The most interesting part is that each story is tied to something relevant now. Today’s news, for instance, highlights the landing NASA’s Opportunity rover on Mars, which ties in to a current story about the Curiosity rover.

USA Today provides the stories and links to a story on their website. They’ve also been publicizing the partnership on their social media properties today. It’s a huge win for the relatively tiny Timehop team.

In addition to the USA Today partnership, Timehop has added “Friendversaries” to the app to alert you on the anniversary of your first time meeting a new friend. You can post on their Facebook wall to celebrate.

Timehop began at a Foursquare hackathon in February 2011 as 4squareand7yearsago, which sent a daily email of your check-ins from that day the year before. It grew into Timehop emails that added Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and then into the Timehop app that delves further into your social history.

What do you think of the new Timehop features? What’s your favorite day of the year to look at Timehop?

  • http://twitter.com/pseudoprime Jon

    Timehop needs to add the ability to look more than one year in the past. I guess that’s available on the app, but for those of us outside the Apple ecosystem, it’s frustrating. I recently got a couple of emails from them of pictures of my wife from 4 years ago (one at the inauguration was cool) encouraging me to share with her, but otherwise, I have no way to engage the more distant past through Timehop.

    • chrisirmo

      My impression is that the emails are a legacy product right now with no intent to be developed further. All the development (including more years in the past) is happening on the app side. I don’t know if they’re working on an Android app or not, but I think they’d be crazy not to.

  • http://robert.aitchison.org raitchison

    Timehop needs to bring back the ability to participate without a Facebook account. Of course their increasing focus on iOS (to exclusion of the majority of smartphone users) seems like another problem completely.

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