Hello from Mexico City, where I’m sitting in the coffee shop where I wrote most of the code for Moonlight.
Here’s what is new with Booklet . . .
What’s Booklet?
Booklet is a better Google Groups. It enables threaded discussions and a member directory for groups, and works primarily over email. It’s built for calmness and simplicity - you get one email summary of everything that happens each day. It’s designed for social groups, professional networks, and even companies.
Today people use Slack, Google Groups, or Facebook Groups as ad-hoc community tools. Slack groups are hard to keep up with. Google Groups are powerful, but hard to use. And, Facebook groups are built to keep you on looking at ads.
What’s new since the last update?
Well . . . a lot is new!
Members Directory and Member Profiles
See who else is in the group, what they’ve posted, and even email them:
Invitations
Invite new members with their email address, and Booklet sends them access to your group:
Comments
Reply to posts, including slick inline editing and deletion:
Real-time comments
Not only can you comment, but you get updates and see new comments in real-time:
Daily Summary Email
Get one email per day with all new posts. (I plan to overhaul the design soon 🙈 But, it works!)
Other updates
I updated the sidebar to be a little smoother
Posts can be edited inline (instead of going to a separate editing page)
Importnat notifications are now sent as toasts in the corner of the screen. (There are a few in the demos in this post!)
I added a loading state to buttons that upload images (and felt a little slow without any feedback)
I set up email subscriptions and one-click unsubscribe links
What’s next?
Some refinements to how comments work - so that people who want to follow a discussion get the right emails.
Refinements to the summary email to incorporate comments and active discussions
I want Groups and Members to have short descriptions
Allowing groups to be public, and making it clear how they work
Moving this blog to a group 🤗
How you can help ⬇️
Want to make a group? You can try it right now at https://bookl.et/ . This is a secret low-key launch at the end of the newsletter for people who finished reading it 😜
I plan to move this newsletter to a Booklet group, but I want the “Public group” feature done before I do that. I take privacy seriously, and I don’t want anybody’s profiles or comments to suddenly appear on the internet if that’s not their expecation.
Other thoughts ☁️
I’m intentionally avoiding any kind of status or presence indicator on Booklet because I want to encourage asynchronous, thoughtful communication instead of real-time back-and-forth. Jason Fried published a great article about the downsides of presence indicators in “The Presence Prison”.
Thanks 🙏