Why we made Pools
There's a lot more we might share with people if there were better places to put it.
Group chats are good for back-and-forth, but things get buried, and sending something feels like asking for attention right now. Social media has its own problems, and it encourages us to share with audiences instead of people. Both influence what we choose to share in the first place.
Think about how often you decide not to share something.
Maybe it’s an article you read on Wednesday morning, but it’ll get buried in the group chat before anyone gets around to reading it. Or a movie you just watched that you want to recommend. Or a little update you’d like a few friends to see, but don’t feel like pinging them about it with a text.
They’re small, but they add up, and we just end up sharing less.
We made Pools to give those things somewhere to go. You can create different spaces for different people and purposes, share without interrupting anyone, and let people catch up when they want to.
There’s another reason we built Pools the way we did.
We’ve ended up with an internet where a handful of companies control our data, connections, and how we interact with one another. Their apps are difficult to leave, and many of their business models depend on keeping us engaged as long as possible. Some of these problems sit beneath the apps, in the architecture and incentives that shape how they work.
Pools is the first app built on Bonafide, a new decentralized and distributed protocol where people own their data and connections, independently of the apps they use.
That means your data and connections aren’t stuck in Pools. As other Bonafide apps are built, you’ll be able to switch to one you like better without starting over. You and your friends won’t even need to use the same app.
Here are some of the ideas and decisions behind Pools.
Give things somewhere to live.
Some things are worth keeping around. Photos from a trip, updates on a project, a running collection of recommendations, or the little things a family shares over time.
Pools lets you keep related things together, and you can return to them without digging through months of unrelated messages. Conversations can happen, but replies stay attached to the original post instead of burying it.
Some Pools might be for a particular moment in time, while others could keep growing for years.
Stop doing audience math.
You have different relationships with different people. It makes sense that you’d share different things with them.
In Pools, you choose who’s in each Pool, so you control who sees which post. Your family, friends, and coworkers don’t all need to see the same things.
And when you do want to share something with people from different parts of your life, you can. They can see the same post without automatically becoming visible to each other.
Be boring.
Most of life might not be interesting enough to share publicly, but that ordinary stuff is often what the people who care about you actually want to see.
A photo from your garden, a little update, something you found funny. These things don’t need to be polished or interesting enough for a public audience.
We wanted to make more room for the sort of sharing that naturally happens between people who know each other.
A nice, clean stream.
There’s no global feed in Pools. When you first get the app, your Stream is empty. It fills up with updates from the Pools you’re part of.
That’s it. No suggested posts, no promoted content, no strangers. No recommendation algorithm deciding what you’ll see next.
You can stop when you're done.
A lot of apps are designed to make stopping difficult. There’s always something else to see, something about to expire, and you need to come back.
Pools has a natural stopping point. Once you’ve seen what’s new, you’re caught up.
There are no streaks to maintain, no disappearing posts you need to catch before they’re gone, and no endless stream of suggested content.
With no ads, we don’t have a reason to keep you in the app longer than you want to be.
Privacy shouldn't be homework.
You shouldn’t have to navigate a bunch of buried settings to make your personal sharing private.
Every Pool starts out private, and you control who’s invited. People can’t browse your Pools or see what you’re sharing unless you’ve given them access.
Nobody can look you up, and you can choose which profile you use when you connect with each person or join a Pool.
You don’t need to hunt down complicated settings later. Privacy and control is just built into how Pools works.
If you can't leave, it's not really yours.
Lock-in changes the relationship between an app and the people who use it.
When leaving means losing your history, connections, and everything you’ve built up over the years, companies have a lot more freedom to make decisions you might otherwise walk away from.
Lock-in has become a crutch for a lot of apps, and we think it’s making them worse.
Bonafide is designed to change that. Your data and connections belong to you, independently of Pools. As more Bonafide apps are built, you’ll be able to switch to one you like better without losing your data and connections or starting over. You and your friends won’t even need to use the same app.
That puts more pressure on companies like us to make apps people actually want to keep using.
Pools should have to keep earning your trust. It doesn’t get to trap you.