Finding a focus - Chirpmark Devlog #2

Last week I opened up Chirpmark to select people. My goal was to start getting feedback on where the app was, what people liked, and what could be improved on. Overall, the feedback was positive and I got some great insights into where I should be focusing. I also learned that it’s not quite ready for a full launch.

This feedback also helped me understand where Chirpmark actually was in terms of usability. While it works, and currently does a little more than Twitter Blue, there isn’t a whole lot of incentive to hop over to another platform. Chirpmark needs more to set it apart.

My friend Paul and I talked at length about this. My original idea for the platform was to have it be a place for managing bookmarks and making them useful. The result would have been a combination of content creation and curation. There are a ton of tools that exist already for creating content on Twitter and most of them do exactly what Chirpmark would have done. Giving it some thought, I believe that building Chirpmark around the idea of focused content curation and consumption is the best path forward.

Changing focus to content curation

With the shift to curation, most of Chirpmark’s core features would stay the same. Bookmarks are still the backbone of the whole app and drive the experience. Some of the more social features I had in mind, like allowing people to share their collections with others via Twitter DM, will also remain on the roadmap. However, things like retweeting, thread building and schedule will be removed for the foreseeable future.

Instead, I will focus on focus on adding features that will make curation and consumption easier. For one thing, it should be incredibly easy to search through bookmarks. Through a combination of tags, filters, and search, you should be able to find the Tweet you’re looking for quickly. You also shouldn’t have to copy and paste a URL in or have to click a button every time you want to sync your bookmarks. One of the new features I want to add is auto-syncing your bookmarks between Twitter and Chirpmark.

For content curation, I want to make Chirpmark a collaborative place where users can come and look at what other people are inspired by. Think about it like a “Spotify for Tweets”. You can build your collections and share them with others, view and save public collections, collaborate on collections, and so much more.

This shift also represents a change in perspective on what Chirpmark is as well. Initially I wanted to build a place for people to manage their bookmarks. And while bookmarks are still the foundation of the application, the scope has changed from just making bookmarks more useful to making Twitter content more useful.

Going forward

As I mentioned earlier, Chirpmark is not quite ready for a full launch. There were a few bugs that were brought to my attention that I’m working on, as well as fine-tuning some of the basic functionality. Most of my work last week revolved around adding new functionality to the UI and some layout tweaks.

My goal for this week is to finish my UI cleanup and get searching working on the ‘My bookmarks’ page. I also would like to start integrating sharing functionality, as well as sharing collections. Alonside that, I will be expanding actual bookmark functionality by upgrading how tags work and allowing users to add notes to bookmarks.

While I don’t have a formal release date anymore, I will be allowing access to those who ask and want to give feedback on Chirpmark. If you’re interested in getting access, you can reach out to me on Twitter @brockherion and I can help get you set up.