Daily is the Product

BeReal, the social app of the moment, prompts users to make a single post every day.

Wordle, the once-a-day word puzzle, caught the world by storm in the first half of 2022.

Nouns, the web3 project de jour, has a single daily auction for an NFT in its collection.

Why is a single daily activity so powerful?

Daily creates habits. One of the best ways to develop a habit is to perform the smallest unit of the activity but do it every day. This is my 515th daily blog post. When everyday activities are quick to perform, they are easy to do and hard to stop.

Daily also enhances weak network effects. Having all users simultaneously on the app creates a fake (or actual) density previously unavailable to apps that aren’t operating at scale. Whether it’s a social network or an auction, density matters.

Daily mixed with concurrency creates serendipity. Sharing a Wordle score that others instantly understand, starting a conversation from a BeReal moment, or commenting on today’s dropped artwork.

There is an immediacy and an urgency that is amplified by the daily cadence. Daily keeps people coming back. A new day is a new beginning. It’s a reset button that keeps people moving forward.