I first launched Sill in public beta over 18 months ago. Since then, thousands of people have tried Sill, opting in for a better way to get news from social media. Sill users regularly report that it helps them develop healthier social media habits and keeps them from doomscrolling too much on their phone.
I'm proud of what Sill has become. A few weeks ago I was honored to receive one of the inaugural Open Social Awards from for Sill. It was an incredible vote of confidence from the emerging open social community and the encouragement I needed to take Sill to the next level.
Last month, I launched Sill's new appview. Hopefully you've noticed improvements to Sill's core product: aggregating the links in your network. I've observed a significant improvement in how well Sill matches canonical URLs and how quickly it picks up new links in your network. Sill also now listens to activity from across the Atmosphere, including cards, documents, and reviews. With this new appview, Sill is ready to grow with the Atmosphere.
Today, I'm launching a new premium subscription tier today called Sill+:
It's a pay-what-you-want subscription with minimums: $4/month or $40/year.
This subscription helps support the future development of Sill and gives you access to exclusive features going forward.
Today, that exclusive feature is beta access to the forthcoming iOS app. More exclusive features are in development.
You will receive a link to join the iOS beta test group via your order confirmation email.
The iOS beta
Sill for iOS is a completely native replica of Sill's web client with near feature parity. It leans into Apple's design paradigm, but if you use Sill regularly you'll recognize many of the patterns from how Sill has always worked. You can view the trending links in your network, as well as every post in your network about that link. You can filter and search through those links. Global trending feeds, bookmarks, daily digest, and notification settings are all here too.
The iOS app also comes with a few extras. There is a home screen widget that can show you your top link from either the last 24 hours or the last 3 hours. You can configure what happens when you tap the widget, either opening the link in Sill so you can see the conversation, or opening the link directly in your web browser so you can start reading.
The iOS app also comes with a share target for bookmarks. With the iOS app, you can bookmark a URL from anywhere else on your phone.
Finally, if you use Sill's custom notifications, you can have the notifications come via push instead of email or RSS. For example, you can get a push notification whenever 10 or more people share the same link in your network.
By becoming a Sill+ supporter, you can help me test this app out. I've been using it for the past few months as my primary way to get news from social media. I'd love to know how it works for you and what more you'd like for the app to do.
Why a premium subscription tier?
This year's Reuters Digital News Report found that social media is the "single most widely used way of accessing online news." But our social media tools aren't designed for news consumption. We need better tools that respect our time and help us process a complicated world.
I'm not here to present Sill as the single solution to the world's news consumption problems. No one tool could ever promise that; distrust those that do. But I do believe that building together on the open social web, we can build a better ecosystem of tools that make for healthier news habits. I want Sill to play a part in that world.
That's why the core features of Sill, aggregating links in your network and reaching you where you are, will remain free. I want everyone to be able to access a slower, calmer way of getting news from social media. For open social to win, we have to prove we can do things a different way.
For me to spend serious time improving and maintaining Sill, I need to make some revenue from it. The best way is to build features on top of that core feature set that are worth paying for. With a specialized appview powering Sill, there are a lot more questions I can answer about your network.
It can be hard to see your network from a top-level view. If you're looking to improve your information network, you want to look at it from a few different perspectives:
Breadth: How many sources are you hearing from? I reject the idea that we all need to read equally from the "left" and the "right" so that we might find some mythical "center", but it's worth getting multiple perspectives in your information network. Sill+ could help you find people discussing similar news to your network, but don't exist in the same share clusters, in hopes of finding you a different perspective on the news you care about.
Depth: In your area of expertise, you want to hear everything. But it can be hard to find the right people to follow. Sill+ could help by showing you accounts your network frequently reposts or comments on.
Signal-to-noise: Who is posting the most links to your network? How quality are those links?1 Sill+ could help you filter out the noisiness from your network and lock in on the more valuable signal.
Over the next few months, I'll be building some premium features in this direction. If this interests you, please let me know what views you'd like to see on your information network. I'm excited about the future of Sill, and I hope you'll join me in improving our information tooling on the open social web by signing up for Sill+.