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Wildcard 2.0 — Beautifully designed and curated news
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@brianmwang thanks Brian. on 1) we look much more at Twitter and Facebook and Google than we do Circa or Yahoo News...circa did a lot of cool things and definitely inspired small features in this experience (like getting notified when stories you read have new developments), but we don't write or rewrite news...for us it's about an incredible discovery, browse, and read/watch/listen experience for users. I don't think anyone has really applied this level of design and technology thought to the space...and we'll just stay committed to that and our users.
on 2) I think 2.0 is about focus for us. 1.0 was a great proof of concept, but not a full fledge experience. Ultimately all parts of our business will be more successful if we represent a substantial user base...so we're going to triple down on building that and controlling our destiny. Our SDK is awesome, and it's going to be a big part of Wildcard longer term, but this next year you're going to see us really focussing on building out the consumer side of Wildcard.
Love the new version! Why did you focus on reading and Content and not on other use cases like shopping?
@_anupg thanks Anup...short version is...we were great at news and media and that's what our users liked doing in 1.0...people didn't really want to buy stuff...so we tripled down on delighting our users with this focus...= a little further out you'll start to see some more dynamic content and information in Wildcard ;)
@ninthart thanks Brad. Really appreciate the kind words. Hope it finds a way into your free moments :)
Hey all, I'm a founder at Wildcard. Here all day long to talk about 2.0 and answer any questions. Wildcard 2.0 is a completely new experience. We really focussed on news and media in 2.0 and tried to create a best in class experience to help you stay update throughout the day on what's happening in the whole world and your world in a beautifully designed, carefully curated feed that filters out the junk, and surfaces the most interesting, highest quality stuff you'll want to see. Collections are a really big part of the 2.0 experience...whether it's a top headline of the day, or simply an interesting story that you might not have seen in Facebook or Twitter, collections provide a range of articles, video, images from sources across the web, and organize all the information into one cohesive view that's super easy to both glance at or dive deep into from a mobile device. We put a ton of love into designing an experience which offers the maximum amount of information and choice of what to read, where to read it from, and how deep to go while honoring the mobile context and small screen size of your phone. I'm really proud of what we've accomplished with this brand new app and I'm excited to discuss here in Product Hunt.
@jordancooper Congrats on the launch of 2.0. Really nice design touches and features all around, especially the onboarding flow and integration with Twitter. Two questions:
(1) Who writes your push notifications? Are these automated or is a human behind them?
(2) What determines checking the box re" stories you read have new developments" - scrolling to the bottom? Time spent?
Excited to start using the app more regularly!
@noahchestnut @jordancooper thanks Noah. on 1) combination depending on the type of update...our current push setup is one of what I think will be many future experiments to figure out what's most appreciated by our users. 2) interesting question...i actually need to check what the rule is currently...my instinct that it's a relative measurement based on the broader behavior in the app..
@jordancooper Thanks for all the Product Hunt love yesterday. Just want to mention that with launch behind us, it's time to grow our team here at Wildcard. If you'd like to come work with us on IOS development, front end, or dev ops...we are growing our engineering team a bit. Just ping me at jordan.cooper@gmail.com.
I've been using the beta for a few weeks and so far I like the experience. As a startup with limited resources, how do you decide how much time/energy/money to focus on the consumer discovery product vs. the enterprise card adoption product? What's the future of Wildcard?
@jeremyberm awesome to hear and thanks for being a part of the beta! We are laser focussed on the consumer product for the next year or so...we invested really heavily in the underlying infrastructure that powers Wildcard and our B2B offerings, but we want to control our own destiny and build a relationship with a large user base. I think you'll see some of the enterprise stuff come through when we relaunch our Publisher offering, but we want to get this experience right first...focus focus focus. The future of Wildcard is to deliver the all of the webs content to your phone natively...and that means being dynamic and having multiple touch points to the consumer, some of which might be through other businesses and apps, but the next year of Wildcard is all about building a best in class user experience for as many people as possible.
I tried the new Wildcard app today and was really impressed. Kudos to the team! The onboarding is pretty fantastic, the design is gorgeous and the app surfaced quality articles from sources I wouldn't normally come across. I did think the interaction used as cards 'bumped' into each other as they traveled down the stream was too much and the opposite feel of the 'fast' and streamlined approach that is advertised. That's just a minor interaction detail though. As a mobile news reader, I prefer the execution to Circa, and most definitely to Inside.com. I suspect a mobile news reader isn't the endgame for Wildcard though, rather a really well done proof of concept app to demonstrate the cards infrastructure they've built.
Jordan - with the recent demise of Circa, general difficulty to monetize by others in the space and institutions like The Economist and the NYTimes both rolling out free apps with shortened content (Espresso and NYT Now respectively) from outlets that aren't just their own. Who ends up winning this space aka short form/condensed news? Does it all get amalgamated into Apple News? Does Wildcard ever integrate into Apple News?
Sorry for the divergent questions, it does seem like the short form news space is diverging though and predicting it's future is tougher than it ever has been
@allisonveronica thanks so much for checking it out Allison. I hope that it delights and informs you in your free moments :)
Hey @jordancooper, the app is just incredible:
- The onboarding process is excellent
- The use of Halftone effects instead of the blur effect is such a brilliant move
- The "x cards inside" for a given news-item is another awesome idea.
Oh BTW, this article from Khoi Vinh is equally good - http://www.subtraction.com/2015/...
Its going to be very very difficult to un-install your app. Great job done. Thank you for this poetry that your team has composed.
@girishhari thanks so much for all the feedback Girish. Very nice to hear that we've built something you value. We'll keep improving it. Definitely send along any feedback or feature requests that come up!
@beckerjs well...our experience is centered around the notion that mobile "cards" are the best format to consume the internet on your phone...hence Wildcard :)
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