By: Julie Munro
Normally I’d be a little embarrassed to broadcast to the world that I haven’t left my house in three full days. But, with the COVID-19 pandemic upon us, I’m screaming it from (underneath) the rooftops and, thanks to Zenly, all over social media.
I use Zenly to find out what my friends are up to and get quick directions to meet up with them. But in the midst of “Shelter in place” mandates everywhere from India to California, the team behind Zenly is showing the global power of their platform to convince people to stay home. And I’m here for it. Zenly’s response to COVID-19 has a few facets:
Turn staying home into a competition
Zenly is helping users to stay safe through its new Stay at Home Challenge leaderboard that tracks time spent at home for users and their friends. In addition to getting tips from the World Health Organization about how to stop the spread of Coronavirus (wash! those! hands!), you can view the 3-day leaderboard of who among your friends is staying at home the most. Happy to see Mapbox’s CEO Eric leading by example👌!
I’ve also been taking maximum advantage of sharing my Zenly “at home” cards on Snapchat and Instagram each day. It’s been very encouraging to receive supportive responses back from friends.
#StayAtHome around the world
While I’ve been sharing quarantine stories and sending support to my immediate community, I’ve also been — well, very anxiously — tracking what’s happening abroad. News stories have my emotions changing on a minute by minute basis, but it’s challenging to grasp the level of focus that people my age in other countries are putting on sheltering in place. Zenly just built a “World Effort” map lens that helps track the movement to stay at home. This visualization, built with the Mapbox SDK for iOS, compares the rate at which Zenly users in given countries chose to stay at home, starting January 24. Virtual high five to my friends in Argentina.
There are so many things to be worried about right now, but we’re truly seeing the best of our communities — and that definitely includes the Mapbox customer community. Zenly’s Stay at Home Challenge is a prime example of what I’ve seen so much of over the past few weeks — teams pulling long hours and using the best available data and tooling in the interest of securing a better future for everyone. I’m proud to work with their team. Hope to see you all on the leaderboard.
Julie Munro - Director, Customer Success - Mapbox | LinkedIn
Maps feature data from Mapbox and OpenStreetMap and their data partners.
Zenly’s #StayAtHome challenge was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.