This is why we’re building Refind
We live in an era of push but we lack ways to deal with it effectively. To make things worse, a large chunk of what is pushed is noise. We’re building Refind to deal with push and to cut through the noise.
Every day a million shiny attention-grabbing things are pushed in our faces and notifications are coming in constantly. Lots of it is noise, but surely it also includes some signal: great, useful web links that we definitely want to check out — but they just never come at the right time.
What should I do with a great article on term sheets when I’m currently not fundraising? What should I do with a cool Javascript frontend library when I’m coding on the backend? What should I do with an awesome resource on growth when I’m working on retention?
Read it now? Distraction. Save to Read it Later? If you intend to read it soon: yes. But what if it’s not an article? Or what if you’ve read it but you want to keep it so you find it again when you actually need it? Bookmark it, save it to Evernote? Sure — but do you actually find links you’ve stored there when you need them?
Low signal-to-noise adds another dimension to the problem, of course: A great deal of what is pushed is actually not relevant to us, taking time to sift through to discover the good stuff. Reverse-chronological order is not good for handling large volumes, yet it is how most information feeds on the web work today. Note that noise is really a second — maybe even orthogonal — problem: Even if a friend sent 100 links per day, all of them perfectly relevant, we’d still need a way to deal with the volume/push.
Enter Refind
An effective way to handle push
We’re building Refind so you can simply click a button whenever you discover a great link — and then move on. You’ll find it again when you really need it… For example when you later start searching for this topic on Google, Refind inserts your most relevant link directly into Google’s search results.
This is how we handle push. Fire and forget. Refind reminds you when you need it.
More signal, less noise
Discover what interesting people read and save on the web — on the topics that matter to you.
So far we’ve described the single player mode. In addition, Refind has a very powerful multi player mode: Since all links are public, and because you can follow people and topics, you get a feed of relevant links on Refind. And since we don’t simply rank by time, the links on top are most relevant to you.
Our ambition is to make this feed the one feed on the web with the highest signal-to-noise ratio for your (professional) interests — by design: Refind’s unit is the URL, it ranks by importance rather than time, and you can follow interesting people and topics.
How Refind is different
Delicious pioneered social bookmarking in 2003. In 2015, we’re taking up on where they left off. And this is how it fits into today’s landscape:
Do you use Pocket? Refind and Pocket are complementary. Read how we use the two in combination.
What do you think?
The current release is a first step on our journey. If you already have an invite, we’d love to hear what you think ([email protected])! If not, the best way to get one is to ask your friends on Twitter for an invite. Thanks for your interest!