Yoooo PH! Just wanted to add a little color on how we approached some of these new features from the design side... Before I do that, quick note on our team composition: I'm primarily design + prototyping, Andy jams both design + engineering, and Mehdi is full eng ripper with great design sensibilities. Since our team is so small, nothing really happens without us all touching it so our process is almost closer to that of a band than a traditional tech outfit — Andy takes the baseline for a walk, Mehdi rides the bell, I'll slide in and tickle the ivories, and ideally after a bit of riffing we have a track we can toss up on Soundcloud (or in this case, Product Hunt). So back to the product... what we really focused on with this release was finding a way to fold in a number of social features while maintaining the integrity of what people really loved about previous versions of the product. "Why social?" It was clear to us after seeing the first wave of read.cv OG profiles that we wanted to make connections, keep tabs on awesome people, and most importantly let the kings, queens, and non-binary royal court of read.cv go off and get some distro for their extremely rad work to inspire others. "Got it. Well, aren't you just LinkedIn then?" Not quite! Well, not at all actually. It might be easier to explain how we ended up where we did by outlining the three points we repeated to ourselves as we were chipping away at the product: 1) No gnarly clout chasing: no big counts that make you do stuff you wouldn't normally do to make a number go up. THAT SAID... there's a category of un-gnarly clout chasing that we actually dig which is dropping big heaters in the project, side project, volunteering, sections of your profile and having other people see that and get inspired to create more exciting things. That's the good stuff. That's how we made Front Page. 2) Real talk. The last thing we need in 2021 is another inbox and the second to last thing we need in 2021 is more crazy outreach about random stuff flooding whatever existing inboxes we have. Enter the private Replies product. So, you actually can't just fire up a message and ping anyone on the network. First, you have to have had an account for 24 hours before you can message anyone (no burner accounts flaming people) and second, you can only reply to someone as a response to something they've created. We thought this would really drive more thoughtful outreach and hopefully more interesting conversation if everything was grounded in something someone created. And MOST importantly... 3) No one, including us, can muck up your profile. No one can endorse you for random stuff, no upsells to try and get people to visit your old colleagues profiles, no banner ads for 3 day workshops on blockchain for Erlang developers... you get the point. If read.cv is going to work, you're going to need to be able to send anyone your profile and know exactly what they're going to see — so that's something we have and will always preserve at all costs. So, from those lines of thinking, Front Page, private Replies, and Following without fear were born. We hope you enjoy these updates and are looking forward to your feedback so we can continue to deliver on what we've promised and what the community needs!

Hi Product Hunt! A lot has happened since we released https://read.cv as a side project last November. We've fostered an amazing community, grown our team 300% (from 1 to 3 people 😌), and went from side project to real company when we raised a small seed round in February. @mehdi_mulani, @wjosephflynn, and I are building https://read.cv because existing professional platforms don't do a good job of telling your professional story — instead, they are optimized for data acquisition to sell to recruiters and advertisers. We're building the best self publishing tools to tell your professional story on your terms, without upsells, vanity metrics, and ads plastered on your profile. Up until this point we've been focused on building great single player experiences, with profiles and pages. Today we're excited to announce a new social layer with three new features: * Front Page — the new front page serves as a community hub, showcasing the most interesting projects and experiences from around the platform. What's featured are experiences, not posts — it's a celebration of what you've done, not content optimized for likes and comments. * Replies — Leave a reply on any experience, page, or status update to kick off a conversation. Replies are all sent privately so you don't have to worry about something unsavory being posted on your profile. * Following — Stay up to date with friends and collaborators by smashing that follow button. Profile updates from people you follow will show up in your Following tab. Don't worry, we don't show any follower counts in the app. We hope these features will really set the tone for the platform and allow people to connect in a way that feels more natural than LinkedIn. And if what we're building sounds interesting to you please join up and let us know what you think!

linked who?

Very useful tool for those who have difficulty in creating a professional CV. Tks

This is great. I don't think I've ever build a resume faster. And prettier.

This looks really nice, LinkedIn has become such a humble grab self congratulatory chamber that we need something a new approach to professional networks

Needed this!

I've been using read.cv for the last week and absolutely *love* it!

As a designer who a) hates updating his portfolio & resume and b) doesn’t have time to do it anyway, Read.cv is the perfect product for me to create & maintain a professional presence. It’s lightweight to manage, feels representative & true to the work I’ve done, and is way better-designed than what I’d likely come up with myself if I actually did build a new portfolio myself. Kudos @wjosephflynn @_andychung & @mehdi_mulani

Glad you launched Andy. I was waiting for this moment to upvote this products 🎉🎉🎊🎊 I like the new home page but I miss the old one already lol.

Great product. I love the clean design and the simple URL. I have used it for job applications. Whenever I am asked for my resume, I share my Read.cv link.

Love this product and the opportunity for the work to speak for itself - from projects to writing to speaking. It's time to move away from the traditional labels of where someone went to school or a big company they worked at. Thanks for providing a beautiful way to showcase the real work -- and the collaborators. Love the new features too!

Giving it a spin, it looks really clean. Congrats on moving over full-time.

Professional storytelling is fundamental for the brand! Congrats!

love me some cv! bangin' updates!

A professional network without spam - amazing!

This is absolutely phenomenal - was about to buckle down and try and build a website for my research portfolio, but decided to do it on read.cv and I couldn't be happier!

It's my new portfolio / LinkedIn page. Excited to see where Andy and the team take this!

Congrats on the launch @_andychung ! Been following read.cv since its launch. It has been cool to see you grow. What's your plan for monetization?

seeing read.cv evolve into what it is today has been SO cool and the new features really bring it to a whole new level!! it's clear to see that a lot of work goes on behind the scenes.. can't wait to see what comes next!!