When One App Rules Them All: The Case of WeChat and Mobile in China
This post is all about WeChat, but it’s also about more than just WeChat. While seemingly just a messaging app, WeChat is actually more of a portal, a platform, and even a mobile operating system…
More from a16z
Choosing Your North Star Metric
How to decide the guiding metrics for every type of business, based on a survey of employees at over 40 of today's most successful growth-stage companies.
«By maintaining a laser focus on a single metric for too long, teams risk short-term thinking, missing new opportunities, and sacrificing the user experience.»
The Power of Product Thinking
In many design, product management, engineering, or even venture capital interviews and pitches, you’ll be assessed on a dimension called “product thinking,” sometimes also called “product sense.” If…
«The simplest way to define product thinking is that it is the skill of knowing what makes a product useful — and loved — by people»
You May Also Like
The Big [Censored] Theory
A case study on how the government censors TV in China.
«These removals reflect the government’s objective of encouraging particular identities and behaviors by eliminating mentions of any others.»
Revealed: Documents Show How Roblox Planned to Bend to Chinese Censorship
Filtering games. Blocking maps with Taiwan. Handling "historical facts." Roblox was prepared to go all in on Chinese censorship, according to newly released internal documents.
The end of the system of the world
A critical point has been reached; decoupling is for real this time.
TikTok May Be A Chinese Superweapon
A weapon of mass distraction
The end of the American internet — Benedict Evans
For its first two decades, the consumer internet was American - American companies, products, attitudes and laws set the agenda. That’s not so true anymore - there are more smartphones in China than…
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks 5 links from around the web for every user, tailored to the user’s interests. Picking only a handful of links means focusing on what’s relevant and useful. We favor timeless pieces—links with long shelf-lives, articles that are still relevant one month, one year, or even ten years from now. These lists of the best resources on any topic are the result of years of careful curation.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
- In addition, our users save links from around the web using our Save buttons and our extensions.
- Our algorithm processes 100k+ new links every day and uses external signals to find the most relevant ones, focusing on timeless pieces.
- Our community of active users gets 5 links every day, tailored to their interests. They provide feedback via implicit and explicit signals: open, read, listen, share, add to reading list, save to «Made me smarter», «More/less like this», etc.
- Our algorithm uses these internal signals to refine the selection.
- In addition, we have expert curators who manually curate niche topics.
The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
How does Refind detect «timeless» pieces?
We focus on pieces with long shelf-lives—not news. We determine «timelessness» via a number of metrics, for example, the consumption pattern of links over time.
How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Can I submit a link?
Indirectly, by using Refind and saving links from outside (e.g., via our extensions).
How can I report a problem?
When you’re logged-in, you can flag any link via the «More» (...) menu. You can also report problems via email to hello@refind.com
Who uses Refind?
200k+ smart people start their day with Refind. To learn something new. To get inspired. To move forward. Our apps have a 4.9/5 rating.
Is Refind free?
Yes, it’s free!
How can I sign up?
Head over to our homepage and sign up by email or with your Twitter or Google account.