Learnings from building reread.io

https://medium.com/jolly-good-notes/learnings-from-building-reread-io-46f57871e124#.p95p10kgd

by winstonyw • 11 years ago

48 19 11 years ago

Sujan2• 11 years ago

Could someone please build something like that for my local Firefox bookmarks? Make it a gamelike "Discover my bookmarks" or something ;)

winstonyw6• 11 years ago

It works now if you push all your Firefox bookmarks to Pocket. :)

placeybordeaux• 11 years ago

It is sounding more and more like an FOSS project more and more. That kind of answer to a potential customer is only really useful to people that are fine with solving their own problems.

Sujan2• 11 years ago

Is there an easy way for that with hundreds of bookmarks?

jnoland• 11 years ago

That really is a great idea! I would want that too. Adding gamification would certainly be a fun MMO-like experience.

eterm• 11 years ago

A good read overall, it's interesting to see projects that might not have a huge number of users but does have good engagement levels.

As for the marketing, if someone reached out to me over twitter I'd rather not know that it was something they "built over the weekend". That might sound great for the HN crowd but as a consumer I'd like to know services are solid, stable, reliable and will still be here tomorrow.

winstonyw6• 11 years ago

Thanks! Didn't expect that "built over the weekend" might send the wrong vibes. True that it doesn't add value in explaining the idea. Will definitely take note.

giancarlostoro2• 11 years ago

Maybe if it supported other services as well it would gain a little more traction? I would love to reread my HN saved links, and as someone else mentioned old bookmarks, or at least find out if I still want to read them again. I guess pocket is a good start, but maybe it could go a bit further?

winstonyw6• 11 years ago

Yep. Some folks suggested Instapaper too. Personally, I am only on Pocket and hence I started with that.

Where do you store your HN saved links though?

giancarlostoro2• 11 years ago

HN stores them for me, and I thought it had an API, not sure how much the API reveals though...

Pranz• 11 years ago

This may only be me but I found the color scheme on your site a horrible eye-strain. There's a reason red text is used for error messages.

neilgrey2• 11 years ago

It's blinding. I get that it's supposed to imply the pocket connection, but if you go to pocket's website they only use that pink/red color in their logo and for accents like on buttons.

winstonyw6• 11 years ago

I agree. It's becoming a strain the more I work on it. "Redesign" will be going into the backlog. :)

kamaal• 11 years ago

>reread.io is a service which sends you an email containing your forgotten Pocket links (with many config options).

And those emails will either be conveniently ignored or will land in spam folders after a while.

If you don't have the time/discipline/motivation to read a article which is in your pant pocket, reminding you about it is hardly going to help your laziness/lack of motivation.

rgbrgb• 11 years ago

The usage data disagrees (see his open and click-through rates).

neilgrey2• 11 years ago

On this front -- I hate email. I'm tempted to do a pull request that creates todoist tasks for you each day. If you don't complete them it puts them back into the pool for a future date -- the last thing I need is my todo list guilt tripping me :p.

winstonyw6• 11 years ago

For me, it's the Inbox-Zero-Guilt, but I guess everyone has a different guilt that they are trying to avoid.

winstonyw6• 11 years ago

If you don't have the time/discipline/motivation to read a article which is in your pant pocket, reminding you about it is hardly going to help your laziness/lack of motivation.

You might be right. But there's also the use case of it being just a timehop for your bookmarks vs. a read your unreads tool.

robbiemitchell• 11 years ago

I applaud the OP's effort to build and market this from scratch -- then write about it!

I will say, though, there's a reason marketing is an entire function led by separate people. It's hard, uses different strengths and experience, and requires consistent effort -- not variations on "post it and they will come."

Learnings from building reread.io

Related Stories