wait how is Snowball different from Instagram?

Open Instagram. You see someone's perfect vacation, someone's relationship highlight reel, an ad, a meme, another ad.

Open Snowball. You see: John went climbing. Sarah read a book. Mike cooked dinner. Your friend tried painting for the first time. Your sister went for a walk.

Feel the difference? It's small but it changes everything about how you use the app.

Keep reading.

The Reverse Dopamine Loop

Most social apps are built around this slot-machine-like loop:

The core of this design lies in the unpredictability of the content. Much like a gambler does not know when they will hit the jackpot, a social media user does not know when the next scroll will yield an exciting post, a funny video, or a new "like" or comment.

Snowball is built around a different loop.

Sometimes, you open the app when you want to log something you did.

Other times, you open it because you are bored.

Instead of feeding you slop to keep you swiping, you will find yourself inspired to get off the app and do something. Because the feed is just people doing real things. And your profile are things you have done. So, you would naturally ask yourself: "What can I do today that's worth logging?"

Scrolling on the feed makes you go "Hmm, it's been a while since I went running" or "Oh, I've been wanting to try that."

Over time, your profile fills up with more rings, more activities, more variety. And that motivates you to keep going.

Everything else about how Snowball works is designed to support this loop.

Don't create content. Just pick the activity.

Instagram is image-first. TikTok is video-first. Snowball is activity-first.

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When you log on Snowball, the only required field is the activity tag. Images, text and everything else is optional. This means you have to be intentional. It's something you did, not a meme you found or news you're sharing.

Even if you attach a photo, it takes up less space than the activity itself. Because what you did is the main thing. Not how pretty you can make it look.

The posts themselves are smaller too. You can see 2-3 logs in a single scroll. They're not trying to command your attention or compete for ad revenue. Just records of what people did.

Your Profile = Your Progress

Your Instagram profile: your best photos, your best angles, your best moments.

Your Snowball profile: you've run 47 times this year, read 12 books, tried cooking 8 new recipes, and haven't played guitar in 3 weeks, played pickleball today

One is careful curation where you are posting for others. The other is just the truth where you are posting for yourself.

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As you log more, each activity in your profile grows more rings. You can see your journey with each thing you do... running, cooking, reading, whatever matters to you.

That's why your Snowball profile feels a lot more meaningful. It's your identity based on what you really do.

No Vanity Metrics

Instead of likes and follower counts, we use emoji reactions. Each person can react multiple times to a single log.

This breaks the 1:1 correlation between reactions and social validation. You can't easily convert reactions into "how many people liked this." It's intentionally fuzzy.

You also don't see who reacted. You get the little dopamine hit of "someone saw my log," but without the anxiety of "why didn't Sarah react?" or keeping track of who engages with your stuff.

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You also get to choose the visibility of each log: public, friends only, or private. This means you'll probably only add people who are actually your friends instead of trying to rack up follower counts for the sake of it.

You're really just logging for yourself. The social part is there for accountability and motivation, not performance.

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TLDR

On literally every other social media app out there, you are creating content for an audience. But on Snowball, you're really just keeping a record for yourself.

The design doesn't reward performative behavior. There's no algorithm pushing your logs to thousands of strangers. No influencer economy. No reason to curate a perfect image.

Just: what did you do today?

That's how we have designed Snowball so far. Calm, refreshing and inspiring.

Let me know what you think! I would love to chat: sindhu@snowball.day