Not burying the lede: Today is the Friends and Family launch of something that we have been working on for a while. It is called Scoopy, a new take on rss news readers. Now that we have the big news out of the way I’d like to go into story time, and then some more information.
The Beginning
A little less than three years ago I sent a post out to Flipboard on Mastodon asking them if they had any plans to make a “Flipboard Premium” or similar. The idea was that I enjoyed the unique way Flipboard presented my RSS feed, but they were completely powered by ads and it essentially ruined the service (a tale which we hear far too often about otherwise great products). Less than a month later, after not getting any response at all, I started to test the waters to find out if I was capable of building what I wanted myself.
Part One
I was way out of my comfort zone, but I pushed forward because I saw the final product in my mind and I had to make it a reality. It was slow going at first, and so I asked Stephen Parke to help me build this thing. He very nicely said yes, and we made a lot of progress but eventually we hit a wall. I just could not make what was in my mind come to life.
The Pause
From around the beginning of 2024 until November 2025 the idea was essentially on hold. It was built enough that I still used it every day for my own personal needs, but the idea that it could expand beyond one user seemed like it would never come to pass, not to mention the performance issues and bugs that would never be squashed.
Part Two
In October 2025 Adam Edelen approached me with an idea for something new. The specifics of that project will be shared at a later date, but an unexpected thing happened when I started diving into that workstream. It used a tech stack that was entirely foreign to me. This stack of Go, Templ, and HTMX first confused and frustrated me, but after a while it began to unlock something in my brain.
That project hit a momentary lull, but with my desire to keep pushing on these new skills, I decided to see how easy it would be to make an approximation of my RSS reader idea. The results were staggering. In about two weeks I had a ground-up project that could already accomplish the majority of what that initial prototype could do. In a few months it was well beyond anything we ever managed in the original project.
Part Three
With these two separate ideas burning a hole into Adam’s and my brain, we decided we needed to act. After some discussion, we created an LLC (and all that entails) and got to work on our respective projects, helping each other out along the way. After a certain point, it became clear that Scoopy was going to be launch-ready sooner than the other idea, so we focused all our attention on that singular goal.
Today
That brings us to today. Today we are launching the Friends and Family beta of Scoopy.Zone. Scoopy is so much more than the original idea of “what if flipboard but no ads”. Scoopy is a new way to experience the websites, videos, and posts you already love to follow. It emphasizes discovery over inbox zero. There is no timeline, and there is no infinite scrolling. It supports articles, videos, podcasts, social posts, and more.
I believe we built something really special, and I’m so excited for each of you to experience it.
Some Notes
Now, with all the pomp and circumstance out of the way, there are some things to keep in mind. Some of this will be repeated elsewhere, but it is important enough I think it needs to be said here as well. This is a beta. And I mean Beta-ass-beta. Things will break. Data will be lost. But if you are okay with a rocky journey, then please climb aboard and help us test this thing.
Some things to keep in mind:
- Your data while in the beta isn’t guaranteed to carry over into the prod release (or even carry over into the next week of the beta if I’m being honest).
- There is no tutorial yet. If you have questions, please ask us directly. This helps us because we want you to understand how this all works, but also because it helps us know what questions we should answer when we do eventually build a tutorial.
- In order to build your scoop (the term we use for your personal set of sources) you have to know the exact .rss feed urls for news and social sources. We know this is annoying, and we have it on our to do list to improve. For YouTube you can simply paste the channel url.
- Scoopy works best with at least 40 sources, and ideally a mix of news, video, and social sources. It will work if you don’t fill out these requirements, but it’s good to keep in mind.
- This is a web-native product. That means it is a website. On mobile, it is what is known as a “Progressive Web App” (or PWA for short). That means on Android and iOS you can save it to your home screen, and it will behave very similar to a native application. We want to eventually build native apps, but that is way out of scope for the beta, and even the initial public launch.
- For any bugs or issues you may find, please contact us in the method we mentioned when you gained access to the beta. In addition, you will find a bug icon on articles you have popped open. If something looks wrong, and you want to bring it to our attention, click that bug and it will notify us to take a look in the future.
- Have fun and enjoy!
