This is slick. Being able to share content so quickly is awesome. Been using it with co-workers... "Point it to me" has replaced "email it to me". Also love the highlight text feature... hopefully this can reduce the strain on my email inbox!
Hey PH! I'm one of the guys working on Point.
For the curious, we started building Point to solve one of our personal frustrations -- we were constantly sharing links throughout the day with our friends (mostly via email + group threads), and wanted a simpler, more effective way to do this.
What we've designed (so far) is a plugin for your browser that gives you a quick way to privately share & discuss directly from the page you're on.
We're still in our early stages and in beta, but would love to hear what you all think about it!
@eriktorenberg haha thanks Erik!
Without mentioning Delicious specifically (I think it was an awesome platform) -- one thing we've been careful to do is keep the product core to a single use case: here, privately sharing & talking about links with your friends. It's a behavior that we already do with pretty heavy frequency (think of how often you might email or chat links to a close group of friends), and we're just trying to deliver a bit more speed and simplicity here.
There's a danger in overcomplicating a platform or service, so we're constantly working to keep our marketing, messaging and core product interactions simple and focused.
@Shwinnabego This is great, we've started using Point today for link sharing and will continue to use it - easier than pasting links into a Slack room and the in context discussion and highlighting brings a lot of value. Thanks!
@Shwinnabego Hey Ashwinn, our last product was something VERY close to Point ;) www.discobeta.com if you want to see. If you ever want to chat, feel free to reach out.
Our trigger is press and hold of the mouse, we still use it internally as the pain is real for close friends/teams!
Sorry to be negative nancy, but I do want to warn you: any startup whose core premise requires an extension is usually doomed to failure, because it is SO HARD to get regular people to understand extensions, much less install them and use them on a regular basis.
It's a beautiful product, but seriously move quickly away from a Chrome extension as quickly as possible. I have only seen heartbreak, pain, depression and vodka when it comes to extension-based startups.
@benparr definitely! Probably one of our biggest challenges. Thankfully plugins are becoming a bit more commonplace, and the success of them depend on how easily you can get people to understand the app through marketing, onboarding, ongoing explanation, etc. which we are constantly working on.
That said, there is exciting stuff in the works for Point that extends beyond the browser!
@benparr great point and absolutely valid. Someone asked me the other day if I could name one mainstream, largely successful browser extension-based startup. I couldn't. Early adopters and techies will happily install it but it's hard to bridge that gap.
I think I know your answer, but can you share your plans, @Shwinnabego? :)
@rrhoover@benparr To that first point, yup. Even if you look at the most installed extensions you probably see 5-10m installs..but nothing that is massive that exists solely as a browser extension.
@rrhoover -- we want to make sharing and having discussions around web content with your friends as simple as possible. If we look at the problems in content browsing, sharing, and then conversation, it's even more apparent on mobile devices (lots of app switching, not easy or quick). We're onto some interesting things here, and are on the look out for some people to come join us :)
@Shwinnabego@rrhoover@benparr Ben makes a great point and I agree... BUT iOS8 extensions has a chance to change this. It lets Point access a new market and I see users adopting extensions in the form of apps. ie- install the app to get the extension.
This is really neat and well done.
it's like a real-time delicious... I like it.
I really wanted to do something like this with annotated.com (or third voice type service). I just haven't had the time given Inside.com and angel investing!
@ashbhoopathy Nope, not exactly. In the same way that not everyone who owns a car would be in the market for baby seats, not everyone using Chrome would want to use an extension like this. Think of your market as a group of people who share a similar need that your product then helps to fill.
@alirtariq I'd venture to say that most PH readers know the definition of product market fit but a baby seat analogy works :)
The product has clearly struck a chord on PH. Give it time and I'm sure it will find a loyal audience.
I definitely agree that Chrome Extensions narrow your audience but that certainly didn't stop Pinterest.
Very cool! Would love to be able to @ mention friends that aren't yet on point... could prompt me to enter their email address, and then they could have the option to get Point or reply via email. Would ideally save their email so I'd only have to enter once.
Keep up the great work!
@jacobsmith88 Thanks Jacob! Completely agree. This is something we'll be integrating soon. In the meantime, if you logged in with FB (or have connected your FB account in addition to gmail), you can send invites by @ mentioning FB friends and it will send them an inbox message with an invite!
I've been playing with this for a few weeks. You've made the web social, embedding (almost) unavoidable social triggers with on-site annotations and one-to-one/group messaging. Point hasn't become an everyday habit yet but it has a compelling hook that bypasses saturated methods of re-engagement (email, push notifications, etc.). Well done, @Shwinnabego and team.
Also, quick thought: what do you think about this interface trend, using the browser's "new tab" to engage users? Are you exploring this for Point?
@rrhoover Thanks Ryan! Although I'm not sure if that was intentional, or just a function of wanting to make sharing & discussing simpler :)
I've definitely seen that new-tab trend with extensions like Momentum, and it's something we've thought and are thinking about. I think there's a lot of power extensions have over the browsing experience, so we have to be careful that users want to see and interact with us as much as they do!
This is one of the slickest designed Chrome extension I've seen. My only letdown was the requirement for my friends to also have it installed in order for me to share links. I feel like this will be a point of friction, but I suppose all early stage startups face that chicken-and-egg problem.
@alirtariq thanks Ali! All the fine work there goes to @abhoopathy and @philly__d. Definitely a point of friction, but the upside is that you only need 1 or 2 friends you share with a lot to find the app useful :)
@Shwinnabego totally agree it doesn't take much to make this useful I have been using it with my girlfriend and one co-worker and that has been enough to lock me in.
@Shwinnabego That's a good point. I have a mail list with some close friends where we like to share links together. I'll point them to Point (ugh) and see how that goes! I think it would be a much needed upgrade for us :)
@Shwinnabego (great username btw!) this is really well done. such a hard problem that many people have worked on. it looks really nice!
few questions: how are you guys going to do mobile/cross-platform? are you going to do an app? also, you mention you're trying to get away from email, but you've essentially created an inbox. curious how you will take on the issues that come with it, like search, maintenance, sorting, categorization, etc (maybe you have this..i have to play with it more)
best of luck - this looks really great!
@myoung thanks (on all accounts!). Yup so iOS 8 opens some really interesting opportunities for us, so definitely will be a mobile component to this.
And yup agreed. Didn't mean to suggest email was *bad,* just that we were emailing links all the time, and wanted a quicker way to share & have discussions around them. That said, we have created an 'inbox' of sorts and will be handling the auxiliary & needed features that come with that territory!
@thomasmeagher thanks Thomas! The highlighting feature in Point is designed for those moments you share an article with a friend, and want to talk about a line or paragraph in particular -- think of how you copy and paste text into an email saying "check this part out." So, primarily a better way to talk about a page.
The concept of web annotation itself is really interesting, and a place where RG is kicking ass. I'm a big believer in adding layers of information / commentary to existing text.
Looking forward to trying this out. For those of us with non-US keyboards, and therefore, don't use Shift+2 for the @ sign - I can't seem to get the Point box to trigger. Product looks nice though.
Is this something you're working on full-time or is just a side project?
@jamesepember Thanks james! We're hearing a lot of those issues with the foreign keyboard, which we'll be thinking about. FYI in the meantime you're able to start a point by right clicking on the page and finding "point this" in that menu, or by clicking on our extension icon!
And full-time!
What an excellent onboarding process. It quickly — and easily — led me through a relatively complex flow, distilling it into something memorable and easy to use.
Exciting!
@extremelyn agree. One of the slickest, most effective user onboarding processes I have seen in a long time. Also, one of the only explainer/intro videos I have watched more than 10% of in recent memory. Great work @Shwinnabego & team.
Love this product. Would be even more awesome if there were a way to point to a group of people. At work there's a distro for sharing links - would be interesting to be able to point to that distro and have everyone be able to receive the point and participate.
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