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?
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!
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!
I'm working on upgrading the architecture of Refynr, and am trying to decide on the new primary database platform, specifically for large volumes of Tweets, which I plan to store as JSON from the Twitter API.
At the moment I'm using mySQL with nearly 4 Million tweets stored.
The new requirements will be:
I have my own ideas what to use, but don't want to sway your opinion, so am asking the open-ended question:
What would you use? What is your experience with your recommendation? And what are your reasons?
This is actually the way I've been improving the quickest with everything related to my startup: fail fast, and let embarrassment drive improvement. More on that later.
First, the bad pitch video:
The feedback I got via my blog, Twitter, and 2 Startup Groups on Facebook told me how bad it was, even though I worked 5 hours on it and thought it showed off Refynr.com pretty well (shows what I know) -
Now, the much improved video:
The new video could still be more polished and professional, could be shorter, etc. But it's way better than the first one, and I'm quitting while I'm ahead for now. It wasn't scripted because I tried that and it always came off as *fake*. It's my best foot forward for now, but I'll revise it if I get inspired again.But the main point here is that when you have a challenge in your start-up that you don't know how to solve yourself, just do something the best you know how, put it out there and get honest feedback. Tell people you want to the brutal truth, and they will give it to you. Check your ego at the door, which is hard to do 100%, but mainly just really listen, respond, and make the effort to improve. There's no point defending yourself, because you wouldn't be asking if you knew the best way in the first place, right? This doesn't just work for videos and your pitch, but also:
