An AI page reposted my side project. What I’ve learned building it
I'm building Pijnhol solo. You pick people, teams or topics you care about, and it texts you a short line when something actually happens. No feed, nothing to download.
I reckon it's a good alternative to newsletters like TLDR. TLDR is great if you want a daily roundup of everything in tech. But most days I only care about a handful of things, and I'd rather get one text when one of them actually happens than skim a whole email hoping it's in there.
Progress this month:
Live in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and NZ. Getting a number approved to text in the US took a few rounds, and it's finally done.
I posted it in a couple of subs, and an AI/tech Instagram page found the post and turned it into a reel. Small page, but it's the first time someone I don't know shared it without me asking.
Lessons so far:
Sending less was the fix. Early versions texted too much and it felt like spam within a day. Now it only sends when a story clears a bar and there's a daily cap. Fewer texts made people keep it on.
"New" is harder than "relevant". Finding stories about a topic is easy. Knowing whether this is actually new or just the same story reworded by 15 outlets is most of the work.
Short beats clever. Texts got better once I cut them to one line on what happened plus a link. Anything longer people skipped.
Trust is the real signup hurdle. People are wary of handing over a phone number. The first thing commenters said on an early post was "this looks like a scam". The product matters less than looking legit.
Where I'd love feedback:
What would you actually want texted to you? Some topics work far better than others and I'm still figuring out which.
If you saw this, what would make you trust it enough to give it your number?
Link in comments if anyone wants to try it.