(2023-06-01) Ziade Ford Why Were Building Aboard

Rich Ziade and Paul Ford: Why We're Building Aboard. We’re building a product that deep inside we think, for those who use it and commit to it, will make a better internet.

I have a theory, that the popularity behind like to do list apps

the reason [00:01:00] people like them is cause they’re quiet and they’re safe, but it turns out to do just about anything, you gotta open a browser.

the pinnacle of Annoyingness is navigating the internet plus browser notifications

So wait, what’s the problem?

, it’s slow. It’s just slow. The internet is slow because when you go to read the article, like a bunch of uninvited guests are in your computer

So it’s slow, another related point is that it feels creepy

The web browser has become a bureaucracy.

all of these constraints and systems have been built into the web browser and into the web as a platform.

I was looking for a screen recording software for my Mac, and you end up on these lists, top five screen recording software. And all of the lists are published by screen recording software companies that put their product at number one

So this is web marketing today. I mean, we used to do this at the agency, right?

if you could give me the web cleansed of all that manipulation and all the gaming

This was the motivation for the product we built, which is called Aboard, aboard.com, et cetera.

Yes, and, and I guess what we’re – aboard is sort of going back to to-do lists, which are, you know, quiet places (cozyweb). What’s nice about, like, apps, there was this trend at one point where if you wanted to write, your whole screen went white and it, and it just snowed in the background.

those kinds of tools is that they’re just quiet. Like it’s away from the mayhem of the web.

I’ve been a fan of Andy Baio for...and he kindly tweeted out, uh, and shared on his, his, his feed, his RSS feed, bless his heart, it still works. Um, that, you know, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade, [00:17:00] released a social bookmarking tool.

you and I looked at each other as like, uh oh, like, what? Is that all we are? Um, so what are we

Okay, so what are we? Well actually, there isn’t an exact category for what we [00:18:00] are because you could look at us and you could say, oh, they’re low code. Oh, they’re data management. Oh, they’re spreadsheet plus. Oh, it’s social bookmarking. It brings in the web. You can add cards, make cards. (card deck)

Aboard doesn’t have a bias towards what you’re bringing into it, but it wants to look at the web differently. It wants to let you pluck what you find valuable, bring it to another place, and then invite others in to talk about it, to get some things done, to work on things and whatnot.

we wanted to build something that made it really easy to, uh, bring information in and then be productive because people skipped the bring in, bring information in.