How will you look in your later years if your drinking, eating and other habits continue? Channel 4-led innovation fund 4iP is investing a five-figure sum in to MirrorMe, a Facebook app that will show you, with potentially embarrassing consequences.
Like the BBC show Honey We’re Killing The Kids TV show, MirrorMe, which only launched this week and was created by Middlesbrough studio Ideonic, requires a number of inputs detailing users’ lifestyle.
But, unlike merely watching the show, MirrorMe users can see the effects on themselves by uploading a photograph. The resulting mugshot may be wrinkly, haggered or overweight – and placed right in your Facebook profile for friends to see. The deal will be announced Friday.
The amount of 4iP’s investment isn’t known, though 4iP isn’t taking equity. This one involves sharing revenue Ideonic makes from the idea – a pay-for iPhone app is coming soon and they think they can white-label the service to health products, magazines etc. The mobile app will also share to Facebook, Bebo and MySpace.
Channel 4’s investment, like others through 4iP, is being matched by a regional media development agency – this time, Northern Film and Media, which recently topped up its North East Content Fund to £2.4 million.
It fits 4iP’s socially-conscious investing ethos, which, in health, it’s calling “MOT Your Life”. And there’s integration potential with 4’s own health/lifestyle shows Ten Years Younger and Embarrassing Bodies, which on Sunday included cross-promotion with MirrorMe.
“If you like, this is a great example of 4iP taking the web to do stuff that telly just couldn’t do at scale,” said 4iP investment commissioner Ewan McIntosh, whose own future self doesn’t look half bad…
