BeeKind. is an app that should be hard to dislike. I say “should” because an app that focuses on doing good things for others certainly appears to have more value than another fantasy football app or radio station app. But like someone who works at a soup kitchen for a weekend and then won’t shut up about it for months, BeeKind. comes off as more self-serving than helpful to others.
There are three main sections to the app. The first lets you document your own acts of kindness. This is arguably the worst part of the app. Isn’t helping someone it’s own reward, or some other trite saying? Not in BeeKind. Here, you document your story of helping someone, and then you can either keep it to yourself or post it with the tap of a button to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or an email. If I receive a single e-mail about a good deed someone performed, it will be one too many.
The second section of the app is exactly the same as the first, except in this one you express gratitude for a kindness someone paid you. This seems more reasonable. It’s nice to shine a light on acts others perform. The third section ties into this second section, as it’s an RSS feed that broadcasts others’ expressions of gratitude.
On the whole, two-thirds of the app is like a feel-good family movie where you can see the ending coming a mile away — not life-changing, but something to keep in the back of your head on a bad day. But to make the top-most section of the app a place where you can brag on your own helpfulness is so gross and misplaced, the only way it could be worse is if you received Foursquare-style points for your good deeds. Thankfully, no one gets to be the mayor of helping old women cross the street.
If you want to read a nice RSS feed about good deeds people have done, BeeKind. makes for a reasonable app to do just that. If you want to humblebrag your charitable good deeds to the entirety of your social network, please, throw your iPhone into the nearest body of water. Or download this app.
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