Blog
Notes on building txtfeed — product, design, algorithms.
The feed is the product
Why txtfeed has no landing page, no signup wall, and no onboarding — and why that's the only honest way to build a reading platform.
The 30-second personalization problem
Most reading apps take days to learn what you like. Here's why txtfeed calibrates in three votes — and what that means for first-session retention.
Why upvotes beat likes
Likes measure approval. Upvotes measure ranking. The difference reshapes everything downstream — from the algorithm to the comment section.
Why txtfeed has no app
Native apps look like the obvious choice for a reading product. Here's why txtfeed is web-first — and why that's the growth advantage, not a limitation.
What TikTok got right about discovery
Algorithmic discovery without subscriptions is the most important UX innovation of the last decade. Here's why it works — and how txtfeed applies it to text.
The comment section is the product
Most platforms treat comments as the noisy neighbor below the article. txtfeed treats them as core surface area — and the design decisions follow.
The end of the follow graph
For fifteen years, social platforms have been built on follow graphs. They were a workaround for a problem that no longer exists.
Why the source link matters
Aggregators love to obscure where content came from. txtfeed does the opposite — every piece links to the original. Here's why that's a feature, not a concession.
The empty feed problem
Cold start is the hardest UX problem in any personalized product. Here's the playbook txtfeed uses to make a brand-new user's first feed feel handcrafted.
AI search is a distribution channel
ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity now drive meaningful traffic to the open web. The platforms that show up in their answers are the ones that prepared.
The honest share button
Share buttons used to be branding billboards. The most-used share mechanism on the internet is now the copy-link button. Here's why that changed everything.
The 1 million source problem
Curating quality from a few hundred sources is a known problem. Curating from millions is a different problem entirely. Here's how txtfeed scales the pipeline without paying for content.
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