When we first started working on Hoop we were keen to launch in a small area so we could test our belief: that families are looking for fun things to do together, but finding them is far too difficult.

We launched the first version of Hoop in Islington back in August and were amazed with the response we had. Countless families told us they to found it far too difficult to find all the wonderful things happening across the borough. They told us what they liked about the app (and what they didn’t) and we responded with seven updates that included a much clearer layout and features such as sharing and filters. We also had a launch party…

The Hoop launch party

Launching in Islington made a lot of sense to us. It’s a wonderfully diverse borough with great events that we’ve experienced first hand. It’s also the home of Hoop HQ. But for a while now we’ve been desperate to give Hoop to the whole of London… and now that day has come.

When you download the update from the App Store or Google Play there is a good chance you won’t notice many changes. The list of events you’re familiar browsing now includes a location search to help you find things to do across the city, but almost everything else remains unchanged.

Everything except the events of course.

Over the past few months, Hoop has had an average of 400 events live in Islington at any one time. Now we’re operating across London that number is closer to 3,500 — an increase of 800%. We’ve gone from covering an area with a population of 200,000 to 3.3 million — more when you include the people who regularly travel to the city.

A map of Hoop’s current coverage — our launch area is highlighted in green

To achieve this has required a huge amount of work on the part of everyone at Hoop. We’ve scoured the city for the venues and organisations that run events, we’ve found new people to join our team of local researchers and we’ve made a bunch of changes to Hula, the internal app that helps us manage everything you see on Hoop— more on that in another post.

The result is an app brimming with things to do. Ready for families across London to explore and find some fun together. We couldn’t be more excited.

Thanks to four year old Victoria who contributed artwork for this post.