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Comment by throwawayswede | Hacker News Reader

I do want something like this actually, just OPML import/ RSS feeds to personal newsletter. Make it without Twitter sign up and I'd pay a few bucks a month even for a clean newsletter of my feeds delivered daily/weekly based on "quantity".

Side note on the design that's sort of a personal opinion, I absolutely despise websites that immediately shove a non-closable modal forcing me to sign up before even seeing anything checking things thoroughly. The idea of having something in the background with modal on top that's not closable just to entice/attract me as a user is a MAJOR signal that some sort of a shady data-selling something is going on in you background, aka service doesn't care-about/respect actual users but just trying to increase the number of signups/gather-more-data. Even if I was ok with signing up with Twitter, this sort of dark pattern is an instant close-tab for me, I wouldn't even bother removing the overlay crap with ublock.

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+1 on the above

This looks super interesting, but before I understand exactly what this is I'm not ready to give it access to my twitter, so maybe allow the modal to be closed so I can check the webpage :-)

I have been thinking about ways to consume twitter in better ways, one idea I had was to feed each follow onto a RSS and there are a few services that can do that(I think). But the problem is that with the advent and heavy use of threads everything is backwards.

If this can make each follow into a separate rss feed and then group threads into posts (the feed can be delayed or update old posts when new comments are added, either would be fine).

Yeah. Tho in all honesty, and I'm not trying to be mean, but looking at the sort other projects from OP I'm getting less and less interested in this. This is the kind of hype around techy/startupy type projects that I stay away from as confidence level goes down the more emoji mixed with dark patterns are being utilized. Your data is shared with an awful number of services to delivery something that's supposed to be as small and simple as a script.

Appreciate the honest feedback, seriously.

To give some context, we indeed make these "side projects" hoping to drive signups and engagements to our core projects (Mailbrew and Typefully), but we always do them with the same care of main project, focusing on utility and user experience.

Typefully itself, now an essential part of our business, was born as a Mailbrew side project.

Even Feeds Mage, while it may appear silly to some people, could actually be further developed to become a great discovery tool for the Twitter social graph. In a way these projects are always also long terms bets for us, even when they're small bets that took 2 weeks to build, like in this case.

> To give some context, we indeed make these "side projects" hoping to drive signups and engagements to our core projects (Mailbrew and Typefully), but we always do them with the same care of main project, focusing on utility and user experience.

Doesn't seem like it's done with the same level of care though. I checked the other projects, and although Typefully for example follows almost the exact same aggressive flyover popup thing that obstructs interaction with the background before getting that number counter to flip one more time via a sign up, it still has the "try instead" link.

FeedMage still does not. For a service that was built in 2 weeks, adding a tiny hide button shouldn't take more than 3 days.

While you're free to do whatever you see fit for your business and brand, I'm just letting you know that people pick up on this. IMO tactics and darkpatterns like this are the root of a lot of awfulness on the web (but that's another matter). To me this is really disrespectful to your company's user base and the fact that it's still (checked as I'm typing this comment) doesn't have a close option sort of proves it. Even those aggressive ads have a tiny albeit hidden "x".

> maybe allow the modal to be closed so I can check the webpage

Great feedback, will surely make this change.

Regarding better ways to consume Twitter, our core product Mailbrew does just that, since it lets you create "digests" of Twitter users and Lists.

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