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2025-08-20 19:00:00| Fast Company

The top free app in Apple’s App Store right now is a passion project from Hank Green that includes a sentient bean, knitted socks, and home decorating. Its entire goal is to get you to put your phone down. The app, called Focus Friend, was made through a collaboration between Greenan author, YouTuber, and science educatorand Bria Sullivan, founder of the mobile game studio Honey B Games. Sullivan describes the app as a gamified focus timer, built with the primary goal of encouraging users not to doomscroll on social media. So far, its working shockingly well: After soft-launching in late July, the app has risen all the way to the top of the App Store in the U.S., Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, amassing 740,000 downloads as of this writing.  For years, solutions to smartphone addictionlike the pared-down dumbphonehave been gaining popularity. Now, Focus Friend is demonstrating that theres a broadening market for more creative solutions to our reliance on the scrolling-induced dopamine rush. [Images: Focus Friend] What is Focus Friend? Focus Friend centers around an adorable animated bean who loves to knit and decorate his room. When the user sets a timer in the app, the bean is able to knit in peaceas long as no other apps are opened. Once the time is complete, he produces knit goods (such as socks) that can be used to purchase quaint little decorations. If hes interrupted, though, his knitting is ruined and he becomes visibly sad. The apps entire premise revolves around users desire to avoid disappointing the bean at all costs. Currently, Focus Friend has a free mode and a pro subscription tier. To get the benefits of the apps free version, users need to turn on deep focus mode. This setting allows Focus Friend to block almost every other app while a focus timer is on, except for essentials like messages and calls.  With the pro tier, users earn socks faster, gain access to premium decorations, and are able to personally edit the list of apps that are blocked by Focus Friend. The subscription costs $1.99 per month, $14.99 per year, or $29.99 for a lifetime. So far, Sullivan says, the lifetime option is proving most popular. The massive response to Focus Friend has come as a shock to both Sullivan and Green. Hank and I thought this was going to be a niche, cute little app,” Sullivan says. “We were hoping that some people would like it, and thought his super loyal fans would probably be the ones who were interested in it. I don’t think we really had a sense of it getting to where it is right now. [Images: Focus Friend] A cute mascot for the tech-weary The idea for Focus Friend started during a casual conversation over dinner. Sullivan mentioned to Green that she had been thinking about how the mobile app could be the next frontier of merch for creators. Green later followed up with Sullivan about the comment, launching them into a monthslong ideation process for the app. Since Green specializes in educational content, Sullivan suggested a focus timer as a good format for an app that his audience might enjoy. Green liked the idea, but found that the focus apps hed already tested werent always effective at keeping him from scrolling. That insight led them to develop a central character to lightly guilt-trip users into sticking with the timer. It’s somewhat akin to a character like Duo, Duolingos cute green owl who convinces users to keep up with their language lessons, or the little bird on Finch, the self-care app that helps people tackle their to-do lists by nurturing an avian creature. Green fronted the costs for Sullivan to hire a few contract employees, including animator Noelle Brandmier, composer Samantha van der Sluis, and artist @euaruu, but he didnt actually commission its development. Instead, Sullivan says, the work was purely a passion project for the two of them. Most of the time, she was the only person building the app. This was just something that he and I have been working on for the past year and a half, and we did it out of the love of wanting to see something like this come to fruition, Sullivan says. [Image: Focus Friend] While Focus Friend takes a unique approach, the desire for tools like it isnt new. For the past several years, the dumbphoneor 90s-inspired phones with pared-back featureshave been gaining traction in the mainstream. But many people find that its just not realistic to give up smartphones and social media altogether, leaving focus tools to fill that gap.  Theres been the Brick app, a physical device that temporarily removes distrcting apps and notifications from your phone; Aperture, a phone case that turns your screen into a series of minimal widgets; and Touch Grass, an app that will make you literally touch grass before you can doomscroll on TikTok. Focus Friends true innovation is combining this middle-of-the-road approach with the human desire to please a cute character. At first, it was just going to be about taking care of the character, but that turned into whatever the Bean was knitting would break, Sullivan says. I don’t think we realized how bad people didn’t want to disappoint this little bean.


Category: E-Commerce

 

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2025-08-20 17:58:14| Fast Company

Impressing everyone when you’re handed the aux in the car to play DJ just got easier. Spotify now offers the option to listen to playlists with seamless transitions between songs, plus the user interface to mix them yourself if you want. Spotify released the beta version of a new “Mix” mode for its Premium subscriber tier Tuesday. The feature shows up as a “Mix” button above a playlist track list that can be toggled on or off. Listeners can either opt-in to auto-transitions between songs, or they can mix their own transitions instead with pre-set options like “Fade” or “Rise,” and settings for volume, EQ, and effects. The feature is perfect for fitness instructors who want to program a playlist for a class or for anyone hoping to create a low-effort, high-impact soundtrack for a party. Mixing for beginners Spotify designed the Mix mode UI to make things simple for beginners. After tapping “Mix,” the app shows each song’s key and beats per minute to make track ordering simple, and visualized waveform and beat data help when finding the best part of a track to drop in a transition. Spotify advises newbies to choose songs with similar tempos and keys, consider the energy they’re trying to capture with a playlist, and start with genres that are transition-friendly, since mixing “works best with music produced for seamless transitions. Dance genres like house and techno tend to blend more smoothly.” Spotify’s new feature comes two months after Apple Music announced its own “AutoMix” option for a seamlessly mixed listening experience. Spotify takes the idea of automatic mixing and makes it customizable and shareable with the ability to swap and collaborate on playlists. There’s also exclusive stickers and labels for custom playlist cover art that can only be used with mixed Spotify playlists. The Premium strategy Spotify reached its first full year of profitability in 2024. The company has more than 270 million paying subscribers and reported $4.75 billion in revenue for the second quarter of this year, up 10% year over year. That was lead by Premium revenue, which rose 12% for the quarter. Retaining and growing its paid subscriber base is key for the company’s future growth. Spotify announced a price hike for Premium subscribers in markets outside the U.S. earlier this month, and it’s pursuing a multi-pronged strategy to provide paid subscribers with content beyond just music by growing its video and audiobook offerings. With Mix mode, the Swedish streaming giant shows it’s also finding new ways to offer Premium subscribers a one-of-a-kind music-listening experience that connects them with friends. Spotify’s Mix mode takes something that could have been just for personal listening and makes it social.


Category: E-Commerce

 

2025-08-20 17:45:00| Fast Company

California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has been trolling Donald “TACO” Trump (shorthand for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” as Newsom has repeated) on social media, with the president’s signature ALL-CAPS tweets, for weeks. And not only are Democrats here for it, but the strategy also seems to be working. Newsom’s press office runs the account @GovPressOffice, which has, for all intents and purposes, turned that social media feed into a political parody, mocking Trump and his Republicans allies, and posting hot takes on their GOP initiatives around voting, redistricting, and Ukraine, just to name a fewall the while mimicking the president’s style of lavishly praising himself and insulting, often viciously, those who disagree with him. On Tuesday, the account mocked Fox News host Dana Perino’s meltdown over Newsom’s deliberate mimicry, and Newsom’s post garnered nearly 850,000 views in just a few hours. DANA "DING DONG" PERINO (NEVER HEARD OF HER UNTIL TODAY!) IS MELTING DOWN BECAUSE OF ME, GAVIN C. NEWSOM! FOX HATES THAT I AM AMERICAS MOST FAVORITE GOVERNOR ("RATINGS KING") SAVING AMERICA WHILE TRUMP CANT EVEN CONQUER THE BIG STAIRS ON AIR FORCE ONE ANYMORE!!! TRUMP HAS— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) August 19, 2025 Newsom’s outspoken criticism of Trumpat a time when so few have publicly sparred with the presidentis being praised by Democrats, especially for his tough stances. One such stance is against redistricting, as Republicans are trying to redraw congressional districts in Texas and other states in a way that gerrymanders more seats in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections. On social media, some supporters are joking that Newsom’s press team should get a Nobel Prize. One user wrote on X: “I love you for doing this. I honestly feel a sense of liberation! Finally, a Dem who will dish it out. THANK YOU!! Nobel Peace Prize for the Newsom Press Office!” TRUMP JUST FLED THE PODIUM WITH PUTIN NO QUESTIONS, NOTHING! TOTAL LOW ENERGY. THE MAN LOOKED LIKE HED JUST EATEN 3 BUCKETS OF KFC WITH VLAD. IS HE AFRAID THE PRESS WILL ASK ABOUT ME??? (AMERICAS FAVORITE GOVERNOR) AND THE FACT I "STOLE THE CAMERAS" THIS WEEK WITH THE MAPS?— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) August 15, 2025 Over on Bluesky, user @michaeljstern.bsky.social summed up the sentiment of many posts on the platform when he wrote: “Gavin Newsom is killing it.” Of course, there’s one group that isn’t into it: The trolling has many supporters of the MAGA movement up in arms, and they’ve also taken to social media to register their ire. However, Newsom’s strategy seems to be working, fueling a surge in popularity and questions about whether he’ll be running for president in 2028. (Newsom has not announced his candidacy.) The Governor Newsom Press Office account has gained more than 250,000 followers since August 1 as the parody posts have come out, per Newsom’s office via Politico. It now has 417,900 followers at the time of this writing, while Newsom’s personal X account has some 2.4 million followers. Gavin Newsom’s polling numbers are up Notably, a recent University of California, Irvine, poll found Newsoms approval ratings had improved among California residents, while Trumps were tanking. Californians disapprove of the president by more than a 2:1 ratio, whereas following his standoff with Trump, Newsom has seen positive favorability scores. “There is no mistaking that Newsoms battle with Trump has been good for his standing in the State, certainly among Democrats and also with Independents,” the report read. And that’s not all. An August poll from Echelon Insights found Newsom is also appealing to voters nationwide. According to that Echelon poll, reported by Newsweek, Newsom is currently in second place with 13% support among a list of potential Democratic candidates for president in 2028, behind former Vice President Kamala Harris but ahead of former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)all of whom have been vocal critics of the president’s second term. (The survey polled registered voters from August 14 to 18, with a margin of error of 3.6%.) That’s up from the results of an Emerson College survey from June that showed Newsom at 7% support in a 2028 Democratic primarywhich was up from just 3% in March. Another clue that Newsom’s strategy is working: Polymarket’s betting odds. The online betting website puts his chances of winning the 2028 presidential election at 18% at the time of this writing, up four points in the last four days (though he’s still lagging behind JD Vance’s 28% odds). Polymarket also now gives Newsom a 27% chance, at the time of this writing, of beating Ocasio-Cortez for the Democratic nomination, with a spread of 13 points. His chances are up seven points in the last two days.


Category: E-Commerce

 

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