Show IH: a newsletter reader for Gmail (roasting required!)
Hi friends,
This is my first post to IH, but I love the community, and it beats my morning coffee to get me out of bed and keep my spirits up.
I'm making a Gmail addon to discover the best newsletters, without clogging your inbox.
⚡️ I'd really appreciate you roasting my launch vid at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0SsoHMJbXU
Honest is good; brutal is better!
I'd be honoured to roast yours in return (only if you wish) 👀
How this came about
A few years ago, I became convinced there were loads more newsletters than I knew about. That I was missing out on all the best stuff that the cool kids had. The feeling intensified over summer as I watched lots of you launch on IH.
But all the directories I found were out of date and overwhelming.
So I thought, wouldn't it be neat if there was a community tool to measure our engagement in Gmail, to calculate and rank the genuinely brilliant newsletters. A Gmail discovery engine.
Naturally, being a geek, that rapidly expanded in scope (naughty). I went a bit crazy coding for many weeks (naughtier). And the result is in the video.
What's in the future
This is a side project for me, I just want to help grow newsletters as a medium. To make them a destination, like Reddit/HN/IH/etc.
I don't know if it'll be monetised. Or open sourced. Everything's on the table. All I know is I'd like to do it alongside newsletters writers.
(Other than genuine curiosity about the best newsletters, my 2nd motivating 'why' is a bit more mercenary... my main business now has to pay Google $15k a year to use their API, pay Facebook to advertise to my own group, etc. etc.. I want to support the open medium.)
For the curious...
The addon is built in TypeScript, React (at least partially - that's actually not great for integrating in Gmail), using the InboxSDK. There's no server component yet, but I've got a great idea for protecting privacy - and maybe even handling analytics securely without requiring an account (I'll write this up if I succeed).
To the roast!
Introducing Breef: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0SsoHMJbXU
Here are my honest thoughts:
Are you talking about the fact that some people sign-up to 100s of newsletters? Those are just data hoarders.
I personally just have a folder, in Gmail, called "newsletters" where I drag the ones I sign-up for and there's also a filter function that I have that makes them go in that folder every day.
Then - at night, usually before bed I skim through them. 30 min whenever I am not too tired to watch netflix.
I disagree that attention is the most valuable asset, I would say it's time.
And guess what...after that slide, your number 1 bulletpoint is, indeed, time.
Keep calm and focused. Really? How does it make me keep calm? You mean, rather, helps me stay organized and focused on newsletters that are juicy?
You then show me some kind of drop-down that categorizes the newsletters by topic. That's definitely about organization rather than calm.
Who categorizes the newsletters?
I really like the glide function, but usually a summary of what's inside the email would be sufficient. The problem with emails is that subjects are usually and mostly clickbaits. The real good stuff is hidden inside. I think glide could work, but i havent tried it so idk really.
How do you know what's the best of the week? Why didn't you explain that feature better?
I don't get the 5. point, be first in line?
I'd join the renaissance, heck I'd join the revolution too but what about data-privacy? Do you read my inbox? what data gets shared? yeah....I dont know if I trust it.
@orliesaurus, this is wonderfully surgical, thank you.
Answering your questions...
No! Nor does it ask for permission to.
The basic data, to identify great newsletters, is "how long does a newsletter get read?".
To capture that, Breef generates an anonymous ID (deletable at any time), and uploads it with time metrics and an encrypted hash of the newsletter sender+subject.
No PII goes to our server. Our server cannot read your email. Breef basically rearranges the Gmail UI and captures some timing data to infer recommendations.
Breef calculates quality based on how much engagement time each newsletter issue gets.
So, if you missed a newsletter that everyone else in the community thought was amazing, it makes sure you see it.
I agree, and Breef's quality data should be able to identify which newsletters led to disappointment, and warn you before you open it.
And like Medium (or Kindle), to help you skim to the best bits, it might be able to show you what the community highlighted in an email (a future feature).
The problem, for both readers & writers, is there's no App Store for newsletters.
So if a new expert in your favourite topic starts a newsletter, it's really hard for you to find them. And an immense slog for them to get found.
Breef's community data should be really powerful for discovery. E.g. if it detects that 5 people really like a new newsletter, it considers "well, what if 10 people like it...", and recommends it, and keeps recommending it if people keep responding.
Breef could lead to a newsletter exploding in subscribers, if the demand is there.
You're right, this is a muddy benefit.
In talking to people, I found the world splits neatly in two:
Those of us in camp two are the reason Unroll.me and Clean.Email are a success; but you've made me realise...
That's not what I see as Breef's niche. It's probably just creating noise in the video.
I think it’s great. It tells me about the benefits of your product and the video looks very clean.
I would suggest you also make a shorter version under 30 seconds for fun. This could be placed on your website or anywhere else.
Overall, good job. I think I’ll get it this afternoon :D
Thank you Brayden.
I'm going to try to hit that goal of 30 seconds in the next try, but I'm the worst judge of what to cut. (At least this video doesn't include me speaking... comparing to an earlier version, a good friend concluded "you not speaking" is the biggest improvement I've made to date :-p ).
It's in private beta at the moment, but I'd love to make you a tester. My email is on my profile.
That’s very true. I think that would be more important to work on.
Best of wishes!
I like the video, it does make me interested to try the product !
I do think it could be shorter, with an emphasis on the demo of the product and the main value prop "Get a better way to read newsletters because attention is your most valuable asset"
Thanks Monique - that's really helpful of you to point out the core message (I can no longer see the forest for the trees after making the video!).