TL;DR
- Oura has introduced Oura Circles, the company’s first-ever social feature.
- Oura Circles allow members to share personal scores as well as send emoji reactions to others.
- The new social feature arrives alongside improved sleep functionality.
The market’s smallest wearable is making big moves. Today, Oura introduced Oura Circles, the company’s first foray into social engagement. The new feature allows Oura Ring ecosystem users to link up with friends and family to share daily scores and send in-app reactions to others’ data. It’s a significant feature for members interested in achieving health goals with accountability and encouragement.
To start, Oura users can now create or join up to 10 circles in the Oura app. Each circle may include up to 20 members. Within these communities, users can then choose which daily scores they would like to share — Readiness, Sleep, and/or Activity — and customize the frequency of their shares. For example, you can send out your Readiness score daily or as a weekly average. Custom settings can also vary from circle to circle and can be changed at any time.
Once members of your Oura Circle begin sharing scores, you can also send reactions. This allows you to encourage each others’ progress and celebrate achievements. Reactions consist of in-app emojis including a crown, heart, flame, and more. Sent emojis will appear in the Oura app for 24 hours next to the user’s name and stats.
Arriving alongside Oura Circles, Oura also announced its new sleep staging algorithm is now rolling out of Beta. The algorithm uses sleep data sets and reference polysomnography data to provide more accurate estimates of REM sleep, deep sleep, light sleep, latency, and timing. We already found Oura’s sleep tracking highly reliable during our Oura Ring 3 review, and it’s great to see the company continue to tweak and improve its accuracy further.
