Walk With Someone: Trail Buddies, and an Invitation That Finally Works

← All posts

For most of this year, TrailQuest had an “Invite a friend” button that didn’t work.

Not in an obvious way. The button worked. The link was created and shared. And then, from the middle of June, it opened a page that no longer existed. The reward for the person who sent it, a badge tier for every friend who walked a full week, was never paid out to anyone. Not once.

Version 1.3.5 fixes that. And because a fixed button is not much of a reason to press it, it also starts something new: Trail Buddies, a season of walking with friends that runs until 31 December.

The Only Invitation That “Worked”

When I went through the data to find out what had gone wrong, I found exactly one invitation that had done what invitations are for. A friend had sent it, the account had joined, and that account had walked well beyond a week.

That account was mine.

And it hadn’t been sent to bring me into TrailQuest. I was already there. It was simply the quickest way my friend could find to become friends with me in the app.

That told me two things. The invitation had to be repaired properly, on the server, where nobody’s phone can get in its way. And it had to mean something people could understand: one link that does the right thing whoever opens it.

So now every user has one personal link. Someone new joins TrailQuest through it, and you walk together from day one. Someone who already uses TrailQuest opens it, and the two of you simply become friends. You’ll find it under Social → Friends → Your TrailQuest link.

Why Walking With Someone Works

There’s a reason I care about this beyond fixing a bug.

In 2013, a team at Coventry University pooled 19 studies of walking groups, with 4,572 people between them. Their conclusion was blunt: interventions that get people walking together increase how much they move, and the effect was medium-sized, which in this kind of research is a lot.¹

Six years later, the STEP UP trial at the University of Pennsylvania gave 602 adults a step tracker and a goal, then split them into four groups: on their own, with a supporter, in a team, or in a small competition. Over six months, the competition group walked about 920 more steps a day than the people on their own. Support and teamwork helped too, by about 650 to 700 steps. But when the game was switched off, only the competition group kept walking more.²

I walked my Camino alone, and I wouldn’t change that. But walking alone for six weeks is one thing. Going for a walk every single evening after work, when nobody would notice if you didn’t, is something else, and that is where company matters most.

There’s one more number, from TrailQuest itself, that I find hard to look at. Almost half of the people who install the app never reach their daily goal, not even once. The people who get to three days in a row mostly keep going, and about half of them reach seven. The cliff is at the very beginning.

Trail Buddies is aimed at that cliff.

How Trail Buddies Works

Invite friends who are new to TrailQuest. Every day counts from the moment they join. For each friend, you get:

When your friend…	You get
joins with your link	20 Ŧ
reaches a 3-day streak	50 Ŧ + Trail Wind (×1.2 for 24 hours)
reaches a 5-day streak	100 Ŧ
reaches a 7-day streak	150 Ŧ + a Streak Shield + a tier of the Trailblazer Inviter badge

Your friend gets a head start:

When they…	They get
join with your link	a Streak Shield + 50 Ŧ
reach 3 days	50 Ŧ + Swift Feet (×1.3 for 24 hours)
reach 7 days	100 Ŧ

The Streak Shield is deliberate. It means their first streak survives one bad day, right where most people give up. And when someone joins through a link, the app suggests a gentler first goal of 5,000 steps. They can change it in a second, but the first streak should be one they can actually make. (If you’re wondering why not 10,000, here’s why.)

You can help. Next to every friend there’s now a 👏 Cheer button: once a day, it sends them a nudge, worded for where they are. One more day to their 3-day streak, go for today’s goal, or a high five if they’ve already made it. Cheer isn’t only for the season. It works for every friend, all year.

All rewards arrive in your inbox, and you claim them there.

The Ranking and the Prizes

The Trail Buddies panel under Social → Friends shows how your friends are doing, and the top 10.

The ranking counts one thing: how many of your friends reached a 3-day streak. Ties go to whoever has more friends at 7 days, then to whoever got there first. No points to decode.

On 1 January 2027:

• 1st place: 2,027 Trail Coins. Your 2027 starts with 2,027.
• 2nd to 4th: any paid trail of your choice: Everest Base Camp, Trilho dos Pescadores, Der Traumpfad or Cesta hrdinov SNP+. If you already own them all, 1,623 Ŧ instead.
• 5th to 10th: a Streak Shield, or 300 Ŧ if you already hold three.

A place needs at least one friend at three days. I’ll look over the top ten myself before the prizes go out. We’re a small community, and I’d rather know who’s walking than trust a number blindly.

The season ends on 31 December. Only days walked up to and including that day count. So if you’re going to invite someone, do it by 28 December, so they still have three days.

What Else Is in 1.3.5

• Your inbox speaks your language. Trail Buddies messages and badge notifications are now in all six of the app’s languages, not only English.
• “Goal reached” in your language, and the groundwork for reading your steps in the background, so your progress no longer depends on opening the app. That part needs Google’s approval and is coming in the next version.
• Your phone’s step counter now puts steps into the right part of the day.
• Pop-up sheets no longer slide under the phone’s navigation bar, so you can read the last line.

1. Kassavou A., Turner A., French D. P. (2013). Do interventions to promote walking in groups increase physical activity? A meta-analysis. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 10:18.

2. Patel M. S. et al. (2019). Effectiveness of Behaviorally Designed Gamification Interventions With Social Incentives for Increasing Physical Activity Among Overweight and Obese Adults Across the United States: The STEP UP Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Internal Medicine 179(12):1624–1632. Penn Medicine summary.