Hi friends,
Many of you mistakenly got onboarding emails yesterday. I'm sorry about that. I was tweaking the way emails are sent to new users and accidentally sent it out to everyone. Don't worry, you'll get your weekly digest on Friday as usual. (If you got a message about verifying your email, please do verify yours if you'd like to continue receiving the weekly digests.)
In June, Scour scoured 841,977 articles from 27,356 feeds, and 123 new users signed up. Welcome!
Here's what's new in the product:
🔗 Links Between Articles
Scour now tracks and shows which articles cover other ones so you can find coverage, reactions, and responses to a given story. Under any post, you can see both the stories that the given one links to, and which other sources link to it. A detail I especially like is that the covering sources you tend to like and read are shown first, so you can easily find your favorite commentators' reactions.
Relatedly, there's now a page that shows the most widely covered stories across Scour. If you subscribe to specific feeds, you can also add this as a feed to source content from.
Laurynas Keturakis suggested this over a year ago and after finally implementing it this month, it quickly became one of my favorite Scour features. Thanks Laurynas!
📈 Grow Your Feed After Reading
After you love or like a post, you'll see a small prompt to add more interests similar to that article's content. Adding interests is the best way to hone your feed and make sure Scour surfaces articles you'll like, so I hope this makes it easier to do that.
If you subscribe to individual feeds, that prompt will also include a way to subscribe to the publisher's feed, if you aren't already, so you'll get more content from them.
Similarly, if you dislike a post, you'll see some options to have less of that kind of content appear in the future.
📱 Redesigned Feed User Interface
The Scour feed got a makeover! The new layout should be easier to scan and interact with.
Clicking or tapping a post opens the expanded view:
Also, on mobile, you can swipe articles right or left to quickly like or dislike them.
🗺️ Discover Section
The new Discover section contains all of your personalized interest and feed recommendations, as well as the pages to browse popular posts, interests, and feeds. Head over there if you'd like to build out your feed more, or if you want to see what others are reading on Scour.
🗣️ Better Screen Reader Support
Scour now works far better with assistive technology. Every post is a labeled article whose actions are reachable by screen reader and keyboard, menus support arrow-key navigation, and the things that used to change silently (filter updates, search results, newly loaded posts) are announced as they happen. If you or someone you know reads Scour with assistive tech, I'd love your feedback. See the new Accessibility page for the full picture.
💬 Testimonials on the Homepage
Enjoying Scour? I added testimonials to the homepage and I'd love to include your review! Email me to let me know your thoughts (and of course, constructive feedback is also very welcome).
🔖 Some of My Favorite Posts
Here were some of my favorite articles I found on Scour in June:
- I've been thinking a lot about the ways that AI changes what it feels like to be a software engineer and I especially appreciated these takes:
- Andrew Diamond made a great comparison with historical fiction writers in Software Engineering in the Age of AI.
- Vardan Torosyan pointed out that every engineer is now facing the kind of overload engineering managers have always dealt with: There is Too Much.
- Candost discusses having an ownership mindset in On the Changing Role of Software Engineers.
- And a goofy font that Bill Tarbell made that's readable for humans but not for AI: Souls Only.
Happy Scouring!
- Evan