Why I built Smashing
I decided to build Smashing because I believe the ways we discover things to read online are broken and do not serve readers well. I’ve been waiting a dozen years, ever since Google Reader died, for someone to step up and build a truly great content discovery app for the web. I spent a lot of time after I stepped down from Goodreads in 2019 playing with every article and news product I could find and was ultimately dissatisfied—I knew that with today’s technology something better could be built for avid readers. I was deeply influenced by Tristan Harris’ notion that Time Well Spent, not popularity, is the right metric for content. However, despite the huge advancements in LLMs and AI, the only way to know if an article is in fact worth your time is to ask knowledgeable readers who have already read it. Thus was born the Worthwhile Vote, the core way of curating on Smashing. And not all votes are equal—reputation matters in curation. This was something I learned at Goodreads and have started to build into the design of Smashing. That brings us to Smashing—a way to discover worthwhile articles, curated into your interests. A place where the community decides what is Worthwhile, and an AI helps match the right content to the right reader. A product that if successful will help, I hope, everyone be more informed about their interests. I think it is a recipe for something special, and this is only the beginning. Knowledge is power, and power is best shared among readers.
