Timehop - Memories Then & Now

A few years ago, I accidentally lost over 7500 digital ph. pictures. Remember when Google decided to stop offering unlimited storage and had a deadline to purchase more from them, store them elsewhere, or lose them? Somehow, I missed hearing anything about all that until it was too late. After trying everything I knew to recover them, I broken heartedly resigned myself to accept it and move on. I was truly physically sick. These were pictures of members of my family who had since passed away, baby pictures of my children who now had children of their own, beloved friends, pets, places, and things … all lost. Than someone showed me this awesome app called “Timehop”. Oh my gosh, I couldn’t believe it! Every day it gives you a whole group of pictures from the past! I was seeing so many of my lost pictures popping up everyday. They truly were, and still are, gifts from above. Even though, they’re only available to view for 24 hrs…I have rarely miss seeing them and saving them again to my ph, and the cloud. I can’t say enough good things about Timehop. It’s a safeguard and, even if you haven’t lost pics, everyday it brings up a random group of pics taken at least a yr or several yrs ago, and brings back a few smiles and lovely memories. Thank you, Timehop!

Timehop used to be one of my favorite apps. Now I’m experiencing 4 issues. The first one being that none of my memories from a year ago load anymore, unless they’re just pictures I took on my phone; no Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram won’t show those memories from a year ago, but have no issues with showing multiple years prior. I have removed apps from the connection of timehop and put them back in, in hopes of fixing the issue, but to no avail. The second issue, which I have seen reviews that everyone is experiencing, is the increase in ads. It makes the app interface a little tacky the way they’re placed, and sometimes can be a little tricky to just swipe pass them seamlessly. The third issue is that a lot of times when I would click on the memory to get redirected to the original source, when I would click back into Timehop, the whole thing resets from the beginning as if I had just opened the app anew. It’s very annoying, especially when I’m about 7-8 years’ worth of memories deep, only for the app to go back to the beginning as if I had just opened it. The 4th and final issue is the amount of notifications I get per day to check it. One notification is enough to send, and it’s super annoying when I’ve already checked it for the day and I get two more notifications telling me to check it before the day ends. Please fix these issues. This app used to be very useful, but the minor issues make it a bit tacky.

I'm sorry team, I know you are excited and you wanted to ship, but I don't think any users were asking for this update. At least not enough to outweigh the fact that many of the features that your users like and consider an important part of the app, are missing now. I know you'll be adding back some later, but as of right now it's frustrating that I can't do things I used to be able to, all for a design update that I honestly don't consider an upgrade. I don't care how hip my tweets look or that my photos are now in frames. I can't access my original tweets any longer or click on the links within them. I can't really scroll past large photo sets, or easily past whole years like I used to be able to. You put design over function and now your users are upset and potentially permanently lost. I know I'll keep using for a little while because I'm addicted to myself, but that won't last forever if every time I try to use the app, the features that I got the most utility out of aren't there, and the experience is negative each time instead. Did you survey your users about what mattered most to them? Did you look at metrics on what features were most used? Did you do any user testing with actual loyal users? Maybe you did all of this, but for someone who got this update out of the blue, I am both not happy and am passionate enough to write this, but how much I care for your app won't last long. --user since it was just a daily email back in 2012.