@dominikg This is a great idea, could see this coming in handy. Idea: Is it possible to import subscribers from elsewhere—say, MailChimp? It would be nice to offer a secondary option for readers of my main newsletter (http://tedium.co) who want a more curated thing than the essayish style I lean for. Refind is a longtime fave, BTW.
@shortformernie No import options yet. But you could add the link to your profile page (https://refind.com/ShortFormErnie) in your next MailChimp newsletter? Have a look in Incognito/Private Mode to see how people see it who are not logged in. The "Subscribe" button is front and center.
@dominikg Will see how I can work it in. Want to be careful about integration and such. I think it would be nice to do a Tedium-specific link roundup, rather than the stuff I tweet about. Thanks!
Report
Great job @dominikg and team!
I am new to Refind, just signed up. I really like the interface and discovering content on it. My only suggestion/feedback so far would be to not auto-follow all my Twitter followers when I first sign up. Refind automatically added 150+ people on 'auto follow' which includes a whole bunch of people who I'm not interested in the types of links they are posting.
My recommendation would be to not do auto-follow and instead create a step during the onboarding process which shows a list of Twitter users I follow that are on Refind and lets me manually follow them one by one, showing their last 3 or 5 links they posted... so I can get a taste for what they are sharing.
Otherwise, it feels like I was forced into following a bunch of people and my feed is already cluttered with some links I'm not interested in so I have to now spend time unfollowing them.
Other than that, awesome service! I see myself using it often.
Report
@dominikg Is there any way to see 'trending' or 'most popular' content based on # of saves? That would be very powerful to be able to see the top most saved content for the day, week, month, etc.
@chad_fullerton Thanks for your feedback! Since Refind is still small, we decided to let new users automatically follow all friends of their inviter – in that case me. However, there is a one-click opt-out on your /following page. If you click that, all auto-followed friends are unfollowed and you can start fresh, building up a network of people you're interested in. We're even thinking of a feature "Who to Unfollow" because we really want you to follow only people you're interested in. It's all about signal over noise.
@chad_fullerton Your feed is ranked by an algorithm that takes time and #saves into account (among others)... similar to HN, Reddit, etc. There's no absolute view – however, the email digest ranks strictly by #saves in that period (day/week) for now.
Report
@dominikg Great. Thanks! I have clicked that link and reset my follows so I can start fresh :) I'm excited to start over and begin following based on interests. Exciting!
Report
@dominikg Cool. Thanks! The feature I was mentioning was more of a 'global' feature, that isn't just my feed of who I'm following. If there was a 'global most saved' page that updates daily, it would be really useful for me to discover new people to follow who I am not following, and content that I might have missed as being popular, but outside of my network of people. Just a thought ;)
This is a clever addition to Refind - lets you very easily create and distribute simple curated newsletters with all the links you come across. Especially like that there a weekly digest option.
Report
Just love refind and the things happening there. <3
@stoweboyd Thanks for the input. We're still looking for the best way to introduce comments (low-effort but still personalized), but that's on our list!
Hey @dominikg@refind - congrats on the new side product, really digging it! I've got a few questions and some feedback for you:
If i'm sending a weekly newsletter with Refind and i've saved 30 links in total for this week, I understand that you will be choosing the top 10 links which have the most amount of "saves" from the 30. I'm assuming the counted "saves" are saves from other Refind users? I understand that doing this automatically provides the value of making the compilation of the newsletter fairly easy and straight forward, but is the trade-off worth it? If someone is going to trust you to send them a newsletter they'd want you to make sure that the links are "hand-picked". If a link that I really wanted to send out on the newsletter isn't one of the top 10 most saved links from the 30, what solution are you provided me with to make sure that I can include it in the newsletter?
I'm really trying to understand your thinking behind doing it this way. The branding is awesome, "Save great links, we take care of the rest". I don't mind this being the default option, but why not give users the extra option of choosing which links to include in the newsletter? Im very interested in newsletter platforms and i've been experimenting with Revue and Curated. Both of these platforms provide the option to chose which links you want to include in your newsletter, and this is a key feature for me personally.
Also the subscriber has the option to chose whether to receive a daily or weekly newsletter. But what if I wanted to only send a daily? Again it seems that you did all this for the sake of "automating" the whole process which is great, but these should be features that add value vs limiting the way one can use Refind.
Also the one thing that newsletter platforms lack is deep layout customizations. I can't stress how important it is to be able to truly customize the look and feel of a newsletter. I'm not saying to go all crazy with it, because simple design is usually best (especially on mobile) but layout customization is another big differentiating factor when choosing a newsletter platform imo.
@madebyildi Wow, thanks a lot for your detailed and helpful feedback! I'd love to tell you more about our design decisions, but keep in mind that is v1 and we're happy to listen to what users say to improve it.
Re: automatic selection:
Yes, you're absolutely correct: it takes up to the top 10 links from that period (daily or weekly) according to the number of saves globally. As you said, we do it this way because we believe this adds value to people who want to have their own link newsletter but don’t have the time to curate it all manually.
At the bottom of each newsletter, there's a "View all" link to the user's links so the other links are still accessible (by anyone) – they just didn't make the cut for the newsletter.
There are a number of products our there that help you create a manual newsletter where you can select links individually and write text. It's not our aim to compete with them – Refind is not a pure newsletter product, but rather, this is a side product that IMO fits nicely into Refind's concept (of saving great links – for you and for others). On the other end of the spectrum, you can also use MailChimp & Co. and do it all manually of course.
Having said that, if we get the feature request of choosing links manually a lot, we might add an option to explicitly “remove” links from your newsletter (or use tags, as suggested earlier here).
Re: subscribers choosing daily/weekly:
We made this decision from the point of view of a subscriber. I personally like to choose the frequency of newsletters I subscribe to, and since we rank the top 10 for whatever period the subscriber chooses (daily/weekly) I believe this works quite well here.
Re: customization:
Absolutely! We try to have minimal Refind branding (there's no Refind logo, just one text link in the footer (“Curated by X with Refind") that points to Refind. After all, this is your newsletter. So far you can set a title, a description, a link to your website, an optional background color, and your (Twitter) photo of course.
Hope this answers some of your questions. If not, please reach out and I’m happy to explain more.
Report
@dominikg Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions!
What happens when the links you share are not shared by anyone else on Refind? How do you then choose which 10 links to send in the newsletter?
I think this was mentioned somewhere in the comments, but a "global feed" of the most popular links shared on Refind by all users would be useful. An option to filter this feed by most popular links shared daily, weekly, monthly would also be nice. Maybe you can tweak it even more and have a what's "trending now" filter. Filtering by popular topics would also be nice as well. Currently you solve this by allowing users to follow topics which i'm assuming injects articles about those topics in a users personal feed.
I really like what you and the team have built so far. Kudos for the iOS and Android mobile apps as well! There's so much greatness on the internet, we need more products that help with filtering the noise and identifying the gems.
I'm really happy that I came across both Refind and this new feature. I already use Pocket for reading and saving my favorite articles, but wanted a way to make a mini-newsletter. Well, now I have one!
@desmondduggan2 Since Refind is still small, we decided to let new users automatically follow all friends of their inviter – in that case me. However, there is a one-click opt-out on your /following page. If you click that, all auto-followed friends are unfollowed and you can start fresh, building up a network of people you're interested in.
Replies
&udm=14
Relevance Coin
&udm=14
Relevance Coin
Relevance Coin
Movetodon
Community Canvas
Relevance Coin
Streetfies
Relevance Coin
Relevance Coin
This Is Not Allowed
Relevance Coin
Relevance Coin