Shared Reading List
Hey everyone!
What do all of you think about a Chrome extension which creates shared reading lists?
You can follow and keep up with what other people are reading.
It is essentially the bookmarks/collections section of the browser but with an additional feature of being able to follow a person's bookmarks.
See https://kern.al/signup-follow
"Crystal Widjaja, Sequoia Scout, EIR at Reforge, ex-SVP Growth/BI at Gojek, Latest Idea:
Save, discover, and browse someone's bookmarked content"
And of course she gives the requisite Elon Musk example: "People are always asking for my reading list, content about marketplaces, network effects, and growth in general. Most people have a running list of books, blog posts, and Twitter threads in their head, or on their web bookmark bar, but what if you could find out what Elon Musk has read recently or bookmarked under "Space Exploration"?"
Thanks for the comments, Michael. In the early wireframes I have started making, I was thinking of allowing users to create different lists (based on different areas, for ex : space exploration, tunnels, electric cars)
With that the user can control which of the lists are public and private.
And one more thing I was experimenting with was the user types in the lists : there can be collaborators who have access to add articles and subscribers who follow the list.
I love the analogy of the shared Pinterest board, now I think of the whole concept as Pinterest for reading.
The plug-in seems more like a tool to make it easier for users to capture the articles and pages.
I wonder if you can make it an actual pinterest plugin or something. Because I do think it's true that browser links are really just menu items. Chrome does a lot to make them easy to use and modify, but still they are menu items. So perhaps bridging that gap between menu and page in a slick way can make you stand out.
And yes, I also feel the comments and upvotes make it easy for both the list creator to understand how their audience is consuming content + helps readers to get to the most engaging content first
All sounds good.
There used to be a service called Delicious for social bookmarking : https://www.failory.com/cemetery/delicious
Also learned that twitter is working on bookmark collections.
Yeah it does seem like a general sort of idea, and Twitter is the thing that follows people who have interesting ideas, so it makes sense for Twitter. But maybe if you can be early and have a cool interface, you can win, at least partly.
I think the main question to ask is what you would offer than people don't get from goodreads.com.
Thanks for the question. This is more focused on all the different articles, blogs, newsletter pieces that are available on the internet rather than just books
Sorry I missed that. I saw the words "reading list" and I got books in my mind. For bookmarks of web pages, here are the thoughts that come to mind:
(1) If I were sharing my bookmarks with others automatically, I would want it to be restricted to certain lists/folders with some clear visual or other distinction, so when I'm researching hemorrhoid treatments those links don't get into the mix.
(2) To me it feels like mini, siloed versions Hacker News, in the sense that it's a shared pool of interesting things to read, as chosen by a certain group of people. And I would likely want to include up and down rankings like in Hacker News.
I think it's a good idea. Maybe for programmers Hacker News covers some of the need, but for other communities, or more specific programmer communities, this would be useful.
It also feels like a shared pinterest board. (I don't know pinterest well enough to know if that has shared boards, with ranking/voting to bubble things to the top?) But as I imagine it, I would probably like it to populate a web page instead of just a bookmarks menu. So, yeah, I want it to be a website where I can be with others interested in a certain topic, and I can see all the links (that people had bookmarked) laid out with nice preview graphics, and a certain amount of commentary by others in the group to help me decide what really to read.
So I think it could operate on two levels -- pure browser bookmark sharing for those who want that, but in parallel automatic population of a web page for those who want the previews and comments.
Going back to your original description, I see that the idea was just to follow one person's bookmarks. Again my main thought is that the person wants privacy for many/most of their bookmarks. So it's not just a passive thing where suddenly I'm seeing everything Elon Musk bookmarks. It's more like instead of tweeting the person "posts" a link in the shared bookmark folder. That makes it feel a lot like twitter. What's the real difference between following bookmark "posts" vs. following tweets, if both are things the interesting person has to think consciously about sharing? So for me the (focused) community webpage with previews, voting, bubbling, and commentary makes it more interesting.
This is great ^