Spotlight – Discover Great Links
tl;dr: I made a tool that finds cool links from Reddit, Hacker News, and Wikipedia. Launched it on Twitter and Discord. Got 1,000 visitors in 24 hours.
Context:
Last night, on Saturday, August 24th, we at GDG Chennai caught up with community members virtually on Discord. We discussed and shared cool finds like articles, tools, new open-source repositories, free tools, etc.
One of the members asked me how I curate so many links.
I explained that I used to read Hacker News and the “internet is beautiful” sub as my source of info.
We then explored those subreddits and ended our meeting. Later that night, while browsing through the “internet is beautiful” sub, I got curious about creating a website that would display random Hacker News and Reddit posts with their URLs whenever I clicked a button.
I quickly opened my terminal, created a new SvelteKit project, and started working on the API first.
Within an hour, I was able to complete a decent-enough website to launch. As a designer, I naturally wanted to ship a well-designed product, so I spent another 30 minutes polishing the UI and animations.
Everything worked well, so I deployed my app to Cloudflare, updated the readme, and posted a tweet launching it.
Looking for interesting stuff online?
— Sanju (@spikeysanju) August 25, 2024
Try my new tool, Spotlight! It finds cool links from Reddit and Hacker News
Try → https://t.co/pc9RdirMEk pic.twitter.com/1wN6RhsyfL
I also posted it on the GDG Chennai Discord server.
After publishing across different reddit subs, Within a short time, I got over 1,000 visitors! It was fantastic.
After 24hrs launching https://t.co/pc9RdirMEk
— Sanju (@spikeysanju) August 26, 2024
Views: 960
Visits: 705
Visitors: 676
Bounce rate: 77%
Visit duration: 44s pic.twitter.com/JYzZnzif3p
I use this tool whenever I get bored and want to find some cool websites, tools, or articles to read.
After launching, I received many positive comments and feedback.
It’s a win-win! 🎉https://t.co/pc9RdireOM pic.twitter.com/DRdJtqLqVc
— Sanju (@spikeysanju) August 26, 2024
One user who reached out to me sent a 1:50 mins audio feedback. I appreciated it and realized the need for a preference option to select topics before generating suggestions.
It made sense, so after an hour, I added a preference feature and shared a tweet about it.
Update, August 27th: I’ve now added preferences. Previously, spotlight.thisux.com could only get articles from Hacker News or Reddit (r/internetisbeautiful).
Now, I’ve added a preferences tab with many subreddits for different genres. You can choose one and start clicking the button to get suggestions.
Introducing new Spotlight features! ✨
🔄 Now customise your preferences
⌨️ Use keyboard shortcuts
💻Enjoy a cleaner look
🔥 Get faster results
Try → https://t.co/pc9RdirMEk pic.twitter.com/adzaK9KwGB— Sanju (@spikeysanju) August 27, 2024
Update, September 7th: Now you can get support for finding random Wikipedia articles.
just added Wikipedia to Spotlight. game-changer for research.
always reading new stuff from Reddit, Hacker News & wikipedia? then this tool is for you.
check out → https://t.co/pc9RdirMEk pic.twitter.com/tbXCLXEfFL— Sanju (@spikeysanju) September 7, 2024
You can also try spotlight.thisux.com and let me know your thoughts.
It’s open-source Spotlight Repository.
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