Big Picture - Natively Upcoming Features (2023-2024)

I was thinking the latter, but the former is an interesting idea too! Although perhaps might get a bit noisy. We do have the activity feed review filter to cover that use case

3 Likes

Any idea what type of features you’d put behind premium (besides advanced recommendations) and what kind of cost?

4 Likes

Advanced recommendations & stats are the most obvious. Frequency & configurability of recommendations as well. Advanced Notifications could also be something that’s premium… like sales (free on kindle, bookwalker).

In general, I want them to feel like nice addons for personal benefit, but not blockers to the community as a whole. So stuff like paywalling access to other users content is an obvious no-go.

As for cost, I’d probably follow Storygraph and do $5 a month through Patreon.

I haven’t really specced this out fully of course, but that’s the thinking.

16 Likes

Apologies for responding to this a month late! I’m curious on whether the Web Novel / Web Comic will be how something like Satori Reader gets incorporated / what’s the current idea for implementation?

I’m assuming it will be similar to how the series work at the moment? e.g. a series can be made up of many pages in the same way a series can be made up of many books correct?

Also thank you as always for your hard work! Honestly the ideas for premium sound great but being honest I’ll probably pay just to support your hard work so far! :smiley:

6 Likes

I was thinking of just one page per web novel? And then progress tracking is done via chapters.

If there are multiple arcs to a web novel / series and it makes sense to have separate pages, then I could see having separate pages all housed under one series, but I won’t be having a separate entry per chapter I don’t think.

Well, you can always start the patreon now!! :laughing:

3 Likes

Your approach is what I’d prefer. I was just unsure how much you wanted to tie back to the URL (e.g. entry = URL in my original post). That seems unrealistic though since in the case of Satori, a number of URLs could be paywalled. I appreciate the explanation!

Being absentminded sometimes I actually didn’t realise it was there so done. :joy:

3 Likes

Hi @brandon! Just curious how things are going here. Book Providers seems like it’s pretty much wrapped up by this point. Have you been looking at content tags, or has the schedule shifted a bit?

7 Likes

So, yeah I definitely fell off the wagon a bit unfortunately :confused:

Hoping to get back on the wagon this week and start Content Tags.

Book Providers is done imo, but watch providers could use a bit more work (cull down the number of providers, allow for better country filtering / multi filtering). However, i’m a bit burned out on watch providers, so will probably move onto something shiny like Content Tags and maybe comeback later.

Good news is that I forgot about October in that timeline, so I have some flex room, but not much!

Tangent on time management

On a more personal note, I do find that I struggle making progress on the 3 important things in my life rn simultaneously (Natively, Korean, Social life / experiencing Korea). It’s usually only pick two :joy: :cry:.

Product development in my experience is just really hard and you have to be obsessive about, which tends to dominate your life and push out everything else. Startups have a reputation for long hours for a reason!

In any case, I enjoy doing all of it so it’s not really an issue! But product releases may have a few lull periods here and there unless I improve my time management. If anyone has advice on that, would love to hear :slightly_smiling_face:

16 Likes
Time management

I have many, many thoughts on this and things I’ve found to work for me, but ultimately some of it comes down to your own personality traits :sweat_smile: Pomodoro technique, habit chaining, setting time budgets, making explicit work/social life time boundaries, etc.

You can have all 3 of the things you listed, but you only have so many hours in the day, and per week, and so giving equal time to each means each will grow slower, but consistently, which frankly isn’t as emotionally satisfying (to many people, probably not all) as seeing one make leaps and bounds.

7 Likes

Appreciate that! Yeah I’ve tried all of these to varying degrees, but nothing has quite stuck… they are good recommendations maybe are worth reattempting.

You’re spot on. It’s one of those things where I get very excited about either development or learning Korean and then when I get to the office, I ask, why would I not use that passion to work on whatever it is i’m feeling - that feels most efficient and I care about them all. :slight_smile:

It’s not entirely ideal as then your life is less under your control, but as long as you’re making progress, doesn’t really matter terribly much. However, these past few weeks I probably should’ve reevaluated and tried to do more Natively work.

To be totally blunt too, this is probably why most people do not recommend starting a business and trying to learn a language living in a foreign country, but you gotta live life at some point.

Anyway, there’s no time like the present, let’s do some content tags :muscle:

16 Likes

I don’t have any particular time management advice, but when I’m tired or unmotivated, I usually think “What’s the easiest task I can complete?” - starting with the low-hanging fruit usually gets the ball rolling, and the small wins often encourage me to tackle the more difficult tasks. Even if it doesn’t, at least I’ve done something, which is better than nothing. :smiling_face:

Just want to say all your hard work is really appreciated! You’ve created an amazing site which I (and many others) find incredibly useful. Please don’t feel like you have to rush or put too much pressure on yourself - we’re grateful for everything you’ve done so far! Take as much time as you need to rest and recharge. :face_holding_back_tears: :two_hearts:

14 Likes

Personally, I have found starting the day with the thing I least want to do and finishing the day with something I love (for example: reading, playing a game, …), works best.

Getting a task off my list that I dread, takes a load off my brain and makes me already feel accomplished and productive and good about my work first thing in the morning and ending the day with something “fun” helps me unwind and calm down at the end of the day.

10 Likes

Updated timeline mentioned in product update thread.

4 Likes

Any updates on when Spanish will be added? I went on a book shopping spree today, so I’ll be ready to add lots of books whenever it comes.

5 Likes

Heh, go for it! I just turned it on :slight_smile:

12 Likes

:tada: :tada: :tada:

4 Likes

Congrats on Spanish. :partying_face: :partying_face: :partying_face:

Question for the future (potential premium feature?):

Does the amazon API show KU status? I.e. would it be potentially possible to implement something like “Alert user if something on their wishlist becomes available on kindle unlimited”? :eyes: :eyes: :eyes:

(same would be interesting for 聞き放題 [audible/audiobook.jp] and bookwalker 読み放題 stuff)

Edit: a “is on sale right now” alert might be interesting, too :thinking:

14 Likes

And to add to those notifications, new books from series you wishlisted / read

9 Likes

These would definitely be interesting ideas for premium! :slight_smile:

I’m not entirely sure it’s easy to do, i’ll have to see. But it’s definitely worth a thought :smiling_face:

7 Likes

Just wanted to update you all on big picture planning. Things have changed a bit with the new year as I alluded to in my 1/19 blog post - “Growth has become a larger priority this year due to (a tiny bit) of competitive pressure, so the roadmap is liable to change faster than normal.”

This won’t change things too much, as Growth always was a priority, but unfortunately, I think Book Editions & Rewatch/Reread functionality will be pushed back slightly.

Road Map:

  • Amazon Auto-Upload process for Japanese (Nov/Early Dec)
  • 1-2 more Languages (Dec) - Spanish, German, French
  • Lists (new addition)
  • Community Editable Book Synopsis ( Jan ?)
  • Improvements in Discovery (Jan ?) - improved Book & Series pages. Swimlanes in search. Hover over widget for items showcasing descriptions while browsing.
  • Add Native Language setting & English (Early Feb ?)
  • Add Video Games & Visual Novel (Feb ?) - this actually seems very easy
  • Web Novel / Web Comic (Late Feb, March ?)
  • Book Club Support (March ?)
  • Book Edition Handling (April?)
  • Rereads / Rewatch (April?)
  • Recommendations & Premium(May?)
  • Notifications System (??)

As you can see, Book Edition & Rereads & Rewatch are the major victims. I know rewatch is the top-voted request :confused:. I’ll try to work fast and get to it!

But I think this roadmap is very exciting and will enable a lot of growth! Video Games / Visual Novels / Web comics will expand our user base and Book Clubs will get people really engaged! :smiling_face:

Let me know your thoughts~

13 Likes