We are so excited to introduce you to Holopin — the platform for creating and collecting digital badges! Holopin has been in the works for a while, and we are thrilled to finally share it with you.
📣 PSA: Register for Hacktoberfest to receive a Holopin!
Why we built Holopin
As developers, we love collecting things. We have stickers on our laptops, pins on our backpacks, and stats on our GitHub profiles. We love to show off our achievements and share them with others. I couldn't tell you how many times I've been asked, "What's that sticker on your laptop?" or "Wow, that's a cool T-shirt! Where did you get that?!".
But we also know that collecting things can be a lot of work! They take up space, and it's hard to organize them. And don't get me started on what happens when you lose something you've collected. It's a bummer.
At the same time, we recognized that organizations love to reward people! Unfortunately, in an increasingly remote world, it is hard to give out physical things. Not to mention that swag is expensive and not always sustainable.
Digital badges seem like the perfect solution. But the existing platforms are... kind of boring. They are too clunky, formal, and don't provide a great deal of personalization for the end user.
So we built Holopin: a platform that allows you to create and collect digital badges. All in a way that people actually enjoy! 💌
Features
The inspiration for the design came from none other than laptop stickers. We wanted to create a platform that reflected the fun and playful nature of collecting things, while at the same time providing legitimacy and authenticity.
Here are a few sticky Holopin features that we are particularly excited about.
✨ SaaS Platform
Holopin is a dual-sided digital badge platform. It lets organizations create, issue and manage digital badges in a single place, and people to collect and show off their badges across the web.
To create an issuable badge, an organization can upload an image and provide some metadata for it. Badges are sent to users via email.
Our SaaS platform is used by customers ranging from solo-developer startups, all the way to Enterprises, who have many different sub-teams and departments.Holopin organizations can include multiple members with different permission levels.
✨ API Integration
Each organization is able to issue our badges using our API by providing the recipient's email address. This way, the organization can automate the process of issuing badges.
Organizations can set up API triggers in their onboarding flows, training modules, marketing tools etc. to send a Holopin badge to the user when they complete a certain action or click a button.
✨ User badge boards
One of the stickiest features of Holopin is that folks can pin their claimed Holopin badges on a personal badge board. Similarly to how you would stick your favorite stickers on the back of your laptop.
Holopin comes with an editable badge board.
✨ Sharing tools
Holopin badges can be shared and embedded across places where you spend most of your time as a developer: GitHub, GitLab, Twitter and LinkedIn!
Badge boards can be directly embedded on GitHub and GitLab. All you need to do is copy and paste a link on your personal README.md on the respective website, like this:
[](https://holopin.io/@elena)
Users can also directly share each badge on LinkedIn and Twitter. In this way, developers are able to celebrate individual achievements, and organizations get to benefit from an increased brand presence on social media!
What's next?
Our amazing team of four are hard at work at implementing the Open Badges standard, which will allow Holopin badges to be interoperable with other badge platforms and turn Holopins into standard, verifiable digital credentials. We are also working on adding more sharing options, such as Slack and Discord.
For organizations, we're going to offer analytics and reporting tools, so that they can see how their badges are being used. In addition, we're expanding our API to allow for more customization, and for displaying organization-specific badges on personal badge boards. Collections and tags are also on the roadmap!
All of this is to say that we've got exciting times ahead! We are so happy to finally share Holopin with you. We hope you enjoy using it as much as we enjoy building it.
Get a Holopin at Hacktoberfest
This year, DigitalOcean are making Hacktoberfest a million times more fun with Holopin badges that you can earn for various open source contributions throughout the whole month of October.
Register for Hacktoberfest today and claim your first Holopin today.
From all of us at the Holopin team, happy pinning!
Pssst... Tell us on Twitter telling us which developer tool's badges you want to see, and we'll send you a secret badge! ;)
✨🦖✨🦖✨
Top comments (30)
I was hunting for GitHub stickers to stick em on my laptop.
now i got a way to show this cool unique stickers in GitHub and everywhere website ( which is so awsome ). ( and my laptop can from endless stickyness )
Gotta find a way to Collect ( Hunt ) more badges
Aw, yes, that's exactly why we built Holopin! And if you reach out on Twitter, we may be able to give you some pointers for hunting down more badges.
What are the ways to hunt badges @saicharankandukuri
What to do for that texas badge is anyone know?
Hey! Check out the last paragraph of the post :)
i replied with my favorite tools, no secret badge collected =(
Check your message requests or just DM @holopin_! Sometimes we're unable to message folks :)
oh, didnt check message requests, my bad, thank you!
This is very interesting, thanks for sharing! I'll be looking at ways to use this :-)
Looks like I need a new collection. I got the Hacktoberfest badge. The confirmation email was in my spam folder.
Oh no! Which email ended up in spam? Was it just the account email verification, or the badge claim one as well? We're looking into it!
Account verification and then later the early bird. I got the hacktoberfest badge in my inbox once I clicked the link it said invalid token. Then said click to have a badge sent in email. I didn't see an email then.
When you made this post, I tried again and found the emails in spam. Once I found the verification link the HacktoberFest badge and early bird worked.
Its like the stamper our teacher uses in my first class at the basic school to get us working. I wonder that this still works.
Added to my GitHub page 😍
Yes! I don't know why, but I really love badges so Holopin is such a cool idea IMO. 🔥 And never heard of the Open Badges standard, that intrigues me. Need to read up on it too. 🙂
I know what you mean about badges!
And Open Badges is sort of a way to do blockchain without the blockchain. It's a "hardened" badge with some additional metadata about the issuer and what it's earned for. I suspect we'll see it used a lot more in the near future :)
woooow
<3
Would be awesome if the pricing could be seen up front instead of filling out a form before had. I had an ista-nope moment when I clicked on pricing and saw a form.
Will check back in a couple of months if I remember, hopefully I do.
Very cool concept ! Keep it up !
I have completed the hacktoberfest but didn't get the badges. Can you look into please? My username is
arifszn.