How refind.com fixed a problem I didn’t know I had
by Niklaus Gerber
also appeared on my personal mailing list.
Refind is a new service made by Dominik Grolimund, Kaspar Schiess and Florian Hanke. These clever guys took on the task to make bookmarking, read-later and social media services a better experience.
I think of myself as an organized person. I went completely paperless and have all my documents in Evernote. I curate a polished bookmark library on Raindrop.io and have my visual scrapbook on Pintrest. So far I think I had it all figured out.
Nevertheless never felt comfortable with all the tagging and managing of my bookmark library. Just storing a site was some curating effort. It is working great but it is not an easy task. A few weeks ago I got access to Refind. This new service promises to help you deal with push and cut through the noise. That is one big promise. But since I like trying any kind of new service or tool I committed myself to it.
So far I stored over 3'000 links on Refind and I think I have a good idea how it works by now. So why is it different?
First of all, adding a new site is a breeze. You just click the browser extension. That is it.
- No pressing of a submit button
- No fields to fill out
- You just click that button
Since Refind is a social service it usually pre-populates tags for you. And because people curate the tags they are filled well. If you like you can add tags to any link save. Also you have the option to mark the link as read later.
So now you have all the bookmarks sucked into a dark hole and they will never resurface. That is at least what I thought. The experience was a lot more pleasant.
I realized that I now look more often for sites I had visited. The search is powerful and the design and architecture of Refind is polished. In a strange way it is a messy bookmark collection that is well organized. It just feels right.
Combined with the social component of Refind it is a pleasant experience. There are no private links. Everything is open and public and I discovered more quality content over my few weeks at Refind than I discovered on any other platform I used so far. And I used them all.
I can now only hope that Refind will stay for the long haul because I can’t imagine how messy an export would be. If you have a chance to give it a try I recommend it. Currently Refind is invite only. All Medium Readers can use this invite link: https://refind.com/niklausgerber/invites/HSQxLEEaLD
And for Refind, Dominik Grolimund and his crew. Make this service profitable and see that you stick around. I trust you with all my bookmarks.
Niklaus Gerber is the Product Manager Apps @NZZ, problem solver & digital architect seeking to make the complex clear & beautiful.
