As a curious teenager, I was always daring people to do things that I am probably not proud of saying now. On the flip side, I was also willing to take part in some crazy challenges myself; I fed off competition and loved to be a part of a great adventure. It’s what us boys do. There is something inside of us, call it pride or whatever you want, but deep down, whether we know it or not, there is a longing in our heart for competition or an adventure.
To help with this longing of ours, the developers of ChallengeLoop came out with an iPhone app that will hopefully help us fulfill some of our wildest adventures. Out of the blue one day, I received an email from them asking me if I wanted to check the app out. Reluctantly, I told them I would, even though at first glance I was a little skeptical. Now that I have had some time to play with it a bit, I can definitely see its potential and how fun it can be.
Creating Your Challenge
The whole premise of the app is to create challenges for you and your friends, to compete, post your results and brag to your friends when you win. When you are ready to add a challenge you can either create one for just yourself or against other people. Challenges can be anything, ranging from personal goals like losing ten lbs over the next three months, to crazy and fun competitions against your friends.
Homepage
When setting it up, you decide who you want in this competition with you. People from your contact list and Facebook can be added to your challenge, and you can also invite people through email. Lastly, a contest isn’t complete without a prize for the winner, even if it’s just a slap on the back. In this case, you get to pick the prize and indicate it as you are creating your challenge. When you are done creating your event, you can then share it out with your friends on Facebook, Twitter and email.
Creating a Challenge
Making Challenges Fun and Interactive
We all know that competition is even more exciting when we have people rooting for us or encouraging us on. ChallengeLoop does a really good job of making these contests fun and interactive by giving you and your friends a variety of tools to use. You can make comments to encourage or smack talk other people that are in the challenge with you. People can also post pictures and videos from the challenge itself and there is another feature where you can choose to “root” for someone. All of these social interactions show up in a feed below your challenge and they can be “liked” and/or commented on.
Social interaction from within the app
As in most cases, ChallengeLoop works best if you have other friends that you know that are also using the app. But let’s say you are the only one using it and you don’t necessarily want to create your own challenge, or you just are looking for some inspiration for a new one. There is a whole section named Challenge Ideas where you can find a competition for yourself. Businesses such as Reebok and Subway have come up with their own challenges, and there are a variety of others out there for you to choose from as well.
Finding a challenge for yourself
It All Makes Sense
At first glance, ChallengeLoop actually threw me for a loop and I really didn’t understand the concept behind it. It wasn’t anything that they did or didn’t do in the app, I just merely saw it as an app to create a competition and that was it. But the more I used it and the more I got into it, the more I started to see all of the different uses for it. It can be an easy way for you to create and communicate with your friends to set up a competition. For example, lets say you want to get a group of people for a good ole game of adult dodgeball. Instead of having to call everyone and tell them about it, you can just create the event on ChallengeLoop and then send it out to all of them. They can then RSVP by commenting on the event from within in the app. You and your friends can post pictures and videos from the epic dodgeball game you had and then the winners can have their bragging rights.
Maybe competition with others is not your thing, but you still long for a good contest. Great — you can create challenges for yourself, whether it be losing weight, or reading five books this summer, the sky is the limit. Think of it as your personal bucket list, if you will. It can also be a great way to keep a log or journal of all the amazing things that you have been able to accomplish, and if you want you can show your kids some day that you were able to do some amazing things.
Conclusion
Once I realized and understood the potential of this app and all the things it could do around competition, the more I thought that ChallengeLoop is a great idea. I love that the app can be so flexible and can be used in so many different ways. Overall, it seemed to work well for me and I didn’t run into any problems when I used it. I would love to see this app evolve, and I can potentially see some cool features for this in the future.
ChallengeLoop is free so you should definitely go and check it out. I do hope in the future they come out with a web and iPad app as I can see how the bigger screen can be helpful. If you do get the app, leave us a comment below with your favorite challenge that you have created.