The link I don't send
Say I'm out with a friend and I'm telling him about Rory Scovel's new standup special. He hasn't seen it. We talk about it for a few minutes and move on.
Later that evening I'm at home and pull up the link. He'd probably like the special, and I want to hear what he thinks.
Now I have a small decision to make. I can text him the link, but it'll interrupt whatever he's doing for something that didn't need doing tonight. A text also carries some kind of an expectation, even if it's subtle, that he'll answer. If he doesn't look right then, it slides up the screen under everything else that arrives, and it's gone. Sometimes I send it anyway, when it's good enough to be worth the interruption, but often I don't.
A group chat has its own version of this. If I post a longer video, or an article that's better with coffee on the weekend, it's surely getting buried under everything else in that chat, and nobody sees it. What ends up happening is that I share less than I'd like to. I think of these things all the time.
The reason could be that a message does two things at once. It delivers something, and it asks for attention now. When something is urgent, I want both. For a link I want a friend to see eventually, I only want the first, and I can't have it without the second.
A Pool lets you separate them. A Pool is a private space where you decide what it's for, who's invited, and who can post. You put the link in and nobody is notified. Your friend sees it the next time they open the app, which might be tonight or in two weeks. You could make a Pool for them that only you post to, or one that you both post to. You can make as many as you like. One per friend, or for a group, or by subject, so the streams are separate.
When your friend does get to the link, they can comment on it. That conversation stays attached to the post, so the thing and the discussion about it are in one place, and a reply doesn't push the article down the way it would in a chat.
The way we do notifications in a Pool is sort of backwards. It doesn't send one when you post, but a comment does, and so does a reaction. If I post something and don't expect a look for two weeks, and two weeks later I find out he reacted to it, that feels nice. We plan to add an option to turn these off, for people who would rather not know.
The next time I come across something he’d like, I won’t have to decide whether it’s worth interrupting him. I can put it in the Pool and move on. Maybe I’ll hear back soon, or maybe not for two weeks, after I’ve forgotten I sent it.