A solo entrepreneur's 1st startup
I'm super stoked to announce that our new website is up!
We've changed Refynr to focus on providing custom filtered Twitter feeds for conferences and events. We already have 2 conferences that have signed up, and more on the way. This type of branded dashboard is a big need, and so we hope to become a go-to source for such services. Here's our first custom dashboard - what do you think?
Hey ColdFusion friends,
Please help me out and vote for me to meet Kevin Rose (Digg, Milk, Oink, etc.), who can help tremendously in my quest to build a successful ColdFusion-powered startup - Refynr.[UPDATE]
Note that the top 5 vote-getters win the meeting with Kevin, so I don't have to be #1 to win this amazing chance of a lifetime.
We decided on this name for this book:
"From 9-to-5 Peon to Living the Dream, A Solo Entrepreneur's Journey"Chapter 1: Can't get no...
https://plus.google.com/102177534078850027729/posts/Jf3suGCJbyHChapter 2: Entrepreneurial spirit
https://plus.google.com/102177534078850027729/posts/FQUJRt7dBAZChapter 3: Quitting my Job and Moving in with the In-laws
https://plus.google.com/102177534078850027729/posts/JiCefKddqZGChapter 4: Deciding on a Startup Idea, and How to do it Cheaply
https://plus.google.com/102177534078850027729/posts/VjtpQLtL192Chapter 5: Finding my Way with the Early Concept
https://plus.google.com/102177534078850027729/posts/3nDwyhjYfxX
Okay, I know you can already use the Google Chrome Refynr app as a near-native desktop app.
So, why put it in Adobe AIR?
What does it look like on my Mac?
Anyone else interested in this? We have a few small bugs to work out, and then the first Beta of Refynr Desktop may be available to test soon!
About 3 months back, I really wanted more feedback about my home page and web app. I knew the home pages and app needed significant improvement in the UI and User Experience.
But I felt that I had asked too much of my 500+ Beta testers already, and needed some fresh perspectives. So, when I came across http://StartupLift.com, I gave it a try. It doesn't cost much :)
So, here's the page where new users gave public feedback via StartupLift on Refynr back in March.
It's hard to be publicly "roasted", but if you stay open minded, don't defend too much, you can learn a lot! I ended up making many of the changes suggested, and the Bounce Rate (as measured by Google Analytics) has gone from 65+% to about 45% now. That's a huge improvement, and I may do it again at some point to try to improve the Bounce Rate another 10-15 points.
A new Refynr customer sent me an email pointing to this great TED talk warning to beware of "filter bubbles", and the user wrote, "I believe you need to do without the filters. I'm not going to be talking about something I don't know about and so some relevant and important tweets will be screened out. ... This TED talk explains why filters screen out the kind of thing that while not of immediate interest - are relevant.", and I replied to defend Refynr:
I love that TED talk, and have tweeted it and shared it with many friends... but I actually think the "filter bubbles" he's referring to are the auto-magic, algorithmic ones like Google search, FB News Feeds, and even smartr. Those tools are only *guessing* at what you want to see. Refynr puts you in control. If one week, you want to filter out everything about the "royal wedding" or "Opra", you can do that. If one day, you want to make sure you don't miss anything about a certain football match, add that to your Include filters. If you want to mute a certain @user or #stupidConference, just add it to your Exclusions ;-) Some people don't want filters at all, some want an algorithm to do the filtering for them, but I want to be able to explicitly filter whatever I want at any given time - so that's what I created Refynr.
Another friend on Facebook sent me the following question, and also referred me to the TED talk: "Is Refynr a bad idea?" I replied:
that's a great TED talk. I've seen it and have been thinking about it a fair amount... I think the talk is more referring to Google, FB, and other services that are auto-curating content without your permission, thus removing the control from you. That's the biggest problem, but there's also the problem where people are putting their head in the sand, creating those "filter bubbles" for themselves.Refynr, or similar explicit filter systems, I believe are essential for people or businesses who are very active on Twitter... once you follow more than 50-100 people, the information overload becomes just too much. People can go too far, and filter out everything except that which is in their comfort zone. It's my hope that people will not filter *that* much, but will create filters in such a way that they still learn new things, especially information that is important for people to know about the world.Too information is a bad idea.
Over-filtering is a bad idea.
Auto-filtering, without consent, is a bad idea.For the most part, people use Refynr to intelligently filter the info overload, so I think it's a good idea.
So, now I want to know: what do you think?
Here is an update we are very excited about. As of today you can start Buffering tweets from inside Refynr.
Refynr is a web app that allows you to filter out the clutter of your Social Media stream and save your most valuable tweets for later. So you get a new “refyned” feed of tweets.
You can create this personalized stream by setting up keywords you want to include, such as “Twitter”, “Social Media” and “Startups” in my case.
What has happened?
This awesome clutterless stream has now received a Buffer Button. It means you can Buffer those tweets right from inside Refynr.
Once you click the Buffer Button, the usual Buffer Box will appear and you can add the tweet to your Buffer. That’s it.
Why did we do it?
Joel and me have set out to start collaborations with many different Twitter tools to make publishing the great content you come across each day easy and effortless.
It was fantastic to collaborate with Aaron from Refynr to kick off a (hopefully) long series of further integrations.
We are currently involved in some great talks with other Apps and hope to surprise you with more integrations in the future soon.
Any more Apps you want Buffer to be integrated in?
For the meantime, do you have any other Apps you would like to see Buffer integrated in? Please share them with us below and we will try our best to work something out.
Check out Refynr here.
@LeoWid
Tags: Refynr, Scheduled Tweets, Tool Integration, Tweet scheduling
It's been an honor and a lot of fun to work with Leo & Joel to make this integration happen!
For over a month now, I've been using the BufferApp bookmarklets in all my browsers to Buffer my tweets, so that I don't have "blasts" of tweets (10 within 5 minutes), but can nicely space the articles I read into well-timed tweets. Much less chance of annoying my followers this way.
I tweeted to the @BufferApp Twitter guys that it would be great to be able to Buffer tweets from within Refynr. Joel worked his magic, and within a very short time we worked through the technicalities and now you can Buffer your ReTweets. It's very useful, to me at least, so hope you like it.
Me too!
So, I added the functionality for you. And you can help me test it.
But first, you may ask, "What's the problem with Twitter Search?". Easy: spam!
Let's take this twitter search as an example: coldfusion OR railo OR CFML OR OpenBD
I put it in HootSuite, and here's what I get:
As you can see, many tweets are spam, but there are also quite a few good ones in there. Sure, you can do some negative filters with the built-in Twitter search, but you only have a total of 140 characters for your positive and negative filters combined. That ain't gonna work.
Refynr gives you up to 20 negative filters! With Refynr Filters, you can enter your Twitter Search string (all positive if you want), and let Refynr help with the negative (Exclusion filters). The Refynr filters also can filter out usernames (no @ sign needed) and #hashtags. Here's my sample Refynr Filter List for the CFML search:
And here's what the results look like in the Refynr web app interface. Remember, there's a mobile version, too (via jQuery Mobile):
A special thanks to Matt Gifford for adding Twitter Search API capabilities to MonkehTweet (http://monkehtweet.riaforge.org/), which a great, easy-to-use CFC library for Twitter API interaction. I love it!
Want to test it?
Next up?
Honored to be on the home page, with a cool review!
A week and a half ago, I finally got out there and met some non-programmers with startups. In Austin.
For the first 8 months of creating my first startup, I've been working out of my inlaws house, practically hiding from the outside world, near Flower Mound, TX.
Hiding was great for keeping focus, but horrible for making *real* contacts - I've made a ton of "friends" on Twitter, Facebook, and via my blog, but it's not the same when you don't talk to them in person.
What did I do, and how did it go?
I was in Austin for 4 days, but found plenty to do!
Anyone else loving the Austin startup scene as much as me? ;-)
