Social media is great for sharing and finding links. Probably it’s too great for its own good, because with great features comes great clutter! You post something that you come across online–say about the ongoing cricket world cup–and it gets pushed to the news stream of even those who have never heard of the game! Moreover, the word is social media “stream” not social media “digest” – the links are not grouped by similarity of content and instead appear as disjointed noise.
With Handpick you can show that you are mindful of your friend’s interests and value their time by sending the right links to the right people at the right (scheduled) time!
Alvin Lai used to email links to his girlfriend who preferred them to be grouped together, like a digest. Lai ended up marrying her and created Handpick! He is no stranger to creating such thoughtful software solutions having made mac apps like Screendocs for publishing screenshots as HTML webpage using Dropbox.
Handpick is available as an extension for Google Chrome or as a simple bookmarklet that lets you collect links, add comments and create a curated digest. You can then mail it out to selected people manually or at a scheduled day and time. Everything can be intelligently automated like immediate delivery of time sensitive links or quantity based delivery (eg. send only 10 links per email).
“While mainstream social media has its place in advertising, communication and broadcasting, I think Handpick provides a cleaner alternative for sharing knowledge and content amongst close-knit groups of people over a platform that is more universally used than any other social media – Email”, says Lai. As such, the real competition the service faces is from the mindset that views email as an archaic medium associated with spams and inbox overload. “I am sure that with time, people will realize that an personalized email crafted with care and consideration is better worth your time and attention.”
Handpick is a subscription service where you can activate or deactivate your account anytime with no fuss.
