Ethan

Sunsetting 1Feed

Ethan — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After over 5 years, 1Feed will be shutting down on 15th May, 2026.

I unfortunately don’t have the time to continue maintaining it, and with dwindling usage, I’d prefer to shut it down properly rather than leave it in a state which disappoints users who sign up hoping for a great experience.

This post will outline what you should know as a 1Feed user today, as well as what is next for the project (hint: I’ll be releasing the source code).

What’s happening to the 1Feed accounts/brand/domain?

First up, for full transparency — I’ve found another maker who is interested in using the 1Feed brand going forward. This means that there will be a new product called 1Feed, under the same domain and accounts.

While this does mean that the “old” 1Feed will no longer exist, it also means that no data or information about 1Feed users is being sold to anyone, which was very important for me as part of this deal. I know that you all have trusted me with your information and I wanted to make sure that I held up my end of the promise.

I’m a 1Feed user: How does this affect me?

You will no longer be able to sign into 1Feed from 15 May, 2026. This means that you will have to migrate to another feed reader or other method of subscribing to your topics of interest by that date.

The 1feed.app homepage may also disappear/change prior to the sunset date, so to continue using 1Feed, please bookmark the link to the actual app: https://my.1feed.app.

I am happy to provide you with an export of your subscriptions in JSON or OPML format. Please send an email to 1feed@ethan.link from the email you signed up with and what format you would like (there’s few enough users that it’s quicker for me to do it this way than build a self-serve exporter). Please note that only the content sources that use RSS will be able to be imported into another feed reader.

I’m paying for 1Feed Premium, what will happen?

I have not charged any customers since January. All current 1Feed Premium customers will be able to use Premium for free up until the sunset date. All customers on yearly subscriptions currently expire prior to the sunset date.

Feel free to email me if you have any further questions!

Quick list: Alternatives to 1Feed

Here are some options you can consider, straight from the old 1Feed homepage!

Fraidycat is good for desktop users who like a more dense view and a more unique vibe (and is what initially inspired the project)
Mailbrew is good for users who prefer static ‘digests’ rather than a feed they can dip into at any time
Feedly is a more ‘classic’ RSS reader that shows you a feed of posts rather than a feed of people/sites

Releasing the 1Feed source code

I do think 1Feed was a great product, and throughout the years I got various requests to open-source 1Feed. Now that I’m shutting it down, I figure why not open-source it in case someone in the community would like to make something out of it or continue running it under a new name!

What this will look like:

This will just be a “dump” of the source code — I won’t be actively maintaining it, accepting pull requests, etc.
If you would like to run it as an open-source project and be in charge of maintaining it, you are welcome to do so (in your own repo)
If you would like to build a for-profit/closed-source product out of the code, you are also welcome to do so
In either case, you will NOT be allowed to run the project under the 1Feed name or brand, as this has been transferred to the owner of the “new” 1Feed product. I will specify this in the license. You better start thinking of names!
All references to the 1Feed name and logo will be removed from the source code and replaced with something generic

As it will take me some time to remove the 1Feed branding from the source code and get it ready for public release, the open-source release will not happen immediately. It might be a few months away depending on how busy I am.

I will update this post once it’s been released. If you would like to be notified, please email me.

That’s all!

Thanks for reading, and it’s been a pleasure serving you over the years. Hopefully the shutdown doesn’t cause you too much inconvenience and you find a new reader that you’re happy with!

If you have any questions, just email!

Screen time: Treats vs Chores

Ethan — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 08:57:23 GMT

Recently, I’ve been reflecting on how I use technology — more specifically, how I use my phone.

I’ve realised that everything I do on my phone falls into two categories:

Treats: Things I find interesting, fun, or give me dopamine
Chores: Things that I am obligated to do

This is a really good way to categorise my screen time, because it allows me to distinguish between using my phone when I want to vs. using my phone when I have to. Ideally, I’d like to reduce the amount of time I spend on the former.

Interestingly, I’ve found that things which should be chores, for example checking my messages or notifications, have started to become treats — I get a dopamine rush from doing them.

I think if I want to cut down my phone use, I need to start consciously treating these things as chores instead. The only reason I do them should be because I have to do them.

And for everything else? I can recognise that it falls into the treats category, and spend time on better and more fulfilling things than small dopamine rushes instead.

I love 1Feed

Ethan — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 03:52:58 GMT

Maybe I’m biased, but I just love using 1Feed.

Today I’ve heard the first update on Twitter’s decentralisation project in over a year (which I have opinions on btw), seen that Signal has just finished working on version 5.3.0 which brings chat wallpaper support and profile “about” sections, and received a daily update from my state’s health department confirming that we’ve had zero new locally acquired COVID cases for the 5th day in a row.

I probably wouldn’t have known about any of these things for at least a few days, or possibly even not at all, if I wasn’t using 1Feed.

And yet, my information diet feels so much calmer than before I started using 1Feed. I spend so much less time scrolling through endless information than I did before.

Because 1Feed lets me keep up with the most valuable content.

Almost in real time. Without wearing me out.

It’s amazing what you can achieve when your daily content consumption isn’t guided by an algorithm from an ad company :)

P.S. here’s a link to 1Feed if you want to try it out.

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Reflections on 2020

Ethan — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 09:04:38 GMT

Hey everyone! I’ve been a bit less active in the online maker community for the last few months, so I just wanted to share what I’ve been working on, what I’ve been thinking about, and some general reflection on 2020.

You’ve probably noticed that I’m writing this as a blog post, rather than a Twitter thread as I’d normally do. This is because I feel like a blog post is a better format to express myself — more on that later.

This post will probably be pretty long, but if you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to lately and what’s coming next, go grab a coffee or something and read on!

First, here’s an outline if you want to skip to a certain section:

Alright, let’s get into it!

The past few months

Around the beginning of October, I logged out of Twitter and stopped posting. The original reason for this was because I had the HSC coming up in a few weeks.

The HSC is the final exam which you take at the end of high school where I live — it’s a pretty big deal as far as things at school go. I still have one more year of high school, but I’m getting a few subjects out of the way a year early.

During the weeks before the HSC, I got really good at getting myself focused, and into a healthy daily routine. And I wasn’t doing anything online — no Twitter, no Telegram, no email, no programming. This combination of factors caused something really interesting:

I was going through the biggest exams of my life, yet I somehow felt the most calm I’ve felt in ages.

Let me explain.

The HSC ended up giving me a great excuse to disconnect completely, and a taste of what it’s like to live more offline. I didn’t have to stress about emails, because I wasn’t answering emails. I didn’t have to interact with people on Twitter, because I wasn’t logged into Twitter.

This sudden removal of all these online responsibilities I had sitting at the back of my head made me feel a lot freer.

So, once the HSC was over, rather than heading back immediately, I decided to stay offline and reflect more on my choices. None of these things that I had been doing were compulsory. Why was I sacrificing all this mental bandwidth, and did I need to be? The answer was quite simple — I didn’t.

I basically haven’t been active online at all since then. I haven’t been logged into Twitter, and I haven’t been replying to emails except when absolutely necessary.

Am I missing out on opportunities? Yes, probably. Is my business doing somewhat worse because of it? Yes, probably. But I think these trade-offs are worth it. The mental clarity that these things have afforded me is worth it.

During my time offline, I found that social media had been giving me a lot of false positives. And once these false positives went away, I was able to make much better decisions.

Human interaction

First of all, social media gave me the false positive of human interaction.

Everyone has some kind of minimum amount of human interaction that they need to feel satisfied. And if our interaction falls below this, we will actively try to seek it out.

I used to wake up every morning and check Twitter. Often, if I’d posted something recently, I’d be hit by a stream of likes, retweets, and comments.

These things were filling up my human interaction threshold. My brain saw all those comments and was like “cool, we’ve done our human interaction for today”. That’s not to say I wasn’t open to any more interaction for the day, but I felt satisfied already — I didn’t need to seek it out.

Once this was taken away, I initially felt a bit of a void. Suddenly, I didn’t have these small interactions pinging my brain every day. However, as time went on, I felt the need to replace this void with higher quality human interaction: real-life human interaction.

Since spending time off social media, I’ve been able to make much clearer decisions regarding my relationships with people and how I spend my time, making sure I include a lot more human interaction. And I’ve been happier as a result.

Success as a maker

Being constantly connected to the maker community via social media has also given me a false positive about what it means to be a successful maker, and during my time offline, I learned something very profound about my motivations as a maker:

My primary goal was to be a maker, not to make money.

It sounds silly when I say it as simply as that, but I wasn’t even aware of it until I spent time off social media and realised through lots of self-reflection.

It was a trap that I fell into without even knowing I was in there, and I suspect it’s a trap that a fair few other makers might have fallen into as well. Here’s what I mean:

When I wanted to reach $1000 MRR, it wasn’t because I wanted $1000 to go and spend — it was because I wanted to be considered a successful maker.

Of course, this wasn’t a conscious thought, but looking back over my thoughts and actions from the past few years, I’m convinced that’s what was going on.

I think it may partially be because of my age — I started making when I was 15. I felt less pressure to be making money, because I wasn’t expected by society to have a full-time job. Now that I’m closer to being an adult, it’s a lot easier to think about it differently — either I make money building products, or I make money doing something else.

But I also think there’s a bit of a shying away in the online maker community from admitting bluntly that you’re doing something for the money. But I don’t think this is something to be ashamed of — by the looks of it, most, if not all, successful makers are motivated by money, either consciously or subconsciously.

My time away from social media, where I used to see very successful makers every day, helped me clarify these thoughts in my head.

I have a new primary goal now, and it’s to make money. Not so that I can fit into the maker community, but because I want money, to use for things.

As part of this, I’m going to start measuring and keeping track of my revenue in Australian Dollars (AUD). Until now, I’ve been keeping track of my revenue in USD, so that when someone online says “I make $500 MRR”, I can compare it to mine.

But now that my goal isn’t to fit into the maker community, there is no need to compare my MRR — measuring my revenue in AUD, which is what I’m actually going to spend it in, will help re-enforce my new primary goal in my head.

I want MRR so I can make money from doing something I enjoy, not so that I can say I’m a successful maker.

There are many other benefits I observed from spending time off social media, and I might write more about them in future blog posts, but those two are enough for today.

Is it possible to make offline?

I enjoy programming, I love making beautiful web apps for people to use, and I want to be able to make money from it. So just because I’ve realised that I’m so much better off without things like social media doesn’t mean I want to stop making.

For the past half month, I’ve started up working on 1Feed again, but without sharing anything or interacting online. It was a bit of an experiment, to see if I get drained by making — like actually making software — or just spending all day online with the maker community.

The results are in, and I’m happy to say that making offline does work! I’ve been able to start working on 1Feed again, while still enjoying most (if not all) of the benefits I felt while I was offline, due to staying off Twitter and email.

Additionally, I’ve felt more productive, and a lot more focused when it comes to which things I should be working on. Without having the false positives of feedback from the maker community, I’ve been able to make much clearer decisions. A cool-looking feature that doesn’t actually add much value might receive a ton of likes on Twitter, but it’s not what I should be working on.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the maker community — you guys are in no way the problem. In fact, the maker community is the most exciting, smart, helpful and supportive community I’ve ever seen online. The issue is more about how I as a person act due to spending lots of time on social media.

I’ve decided that I am going to stay online and share my progress. But it’s going to be more infrequently, more meaningful, and less dopamine-driven. In fact, you’re reading one such progress update right now! That’s right, I’m going to be posting on my blog from now on.

I may still post on Twitter sometimes, but this will be mostly for marketing reasons for my products — most of my progress updates will happen either here or on the 1Feed blog. I’ll be posting links to all of my blog posts on Twitter though, so if you’re following me, you should receive these. You can also subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed using a feed reader such as 1Feed ;)

I’ve been taking a lot of inspiration from Pat Walls’ blog lately, which I’ve been reading almost daily. He posts a small post on there every day, and it’s often very insightful and makes you think. I want to model my blog off that, although I won’t be posting daily — probably closer to monthly. But what I want to replicate is:

The way he writes honestly and openly, and doesn’t worry about how people will receive his posts
The fact that his barrier to writing a post is so low — I want to be able to jump on here and write a post whenever I have something to say

So yeah, longer-form blogging will be how I’m going to share my progress — you may have noticed I’ve cleaned up the design of articles on this site a lot.

Sharing my thoughts on my own site rather than a data silo also has implications for the health of the internet, but I’ll write about that another time. The main benefit for me is there will be no more dopamine. Just honest and meaningful dialogue, less frequently.

What’s next

This year was pretty scattered in terms of direction. My MRR at the end of the year was lower than it was at the beginning. I started working on three different products, as well as various small sites here and there.

Next year, I’m going to be spending most of my time on 1Feed. My goal is to grow it to $1000 MRR by the end of the year. Not because I want to be considered a successful maker, but because I want $1000 each month from doing something I enjoy. It’s also going to be $1000 AUD, which is about $750 USD.

I’ll be writing more about it either on here or on the 1Feed blog, but I’ve just finished developing a 1Feed Premium plan. It’ll cost $4.99 USD monthly, or $44.99 USD yearly. That means I’m going to need 150 monthly users, or 200 yearly users, to reach my goal. I think this is doable, but we’ll see.

I know that as a person, I’m 100% capable of reaching $1000 MRR. So if it looks like 1Feed isn’t working out, I’m either going to rethink it or work on other products that I think can help me reach my goal.

The only thing stopping me from making these decisions will be my ego — it’s not always easy to admit you could have done things a better way. But I’m going to do it if that’s what I should do. I’ve always been bad at failing fast, but I need to push past that.

So yeah, that’s the plan for 2021! I’m going to be sharing my progress less frequently and spending less time online on places like Twitter and Telegram. But this doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk to you guys ever again! I’ll still be spending some time chatting online, just less.

Also, please don’t be offended if I don’t always reply — it’s nothing personal. As you’ve probably gathered by now, spending less time interacting online has a lot of benefits.

In conclusion

If you were to look at my MRR, you’d think that this year was a complete failure for me. Quite to the contrary, I think this is potentially the most productive year I’ve had as a maker, because I’ve figured out my approach to making. I’ve learned the art of self-reflection, making decisions with clarity, picking apart my motivations, and choosing goals with intention.

As makers, we’re more than just our MRR. While my MRR might not have grown this year, I’ve grown as a person, and that’s even better.

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The start of together.fit

Ethan — Fri, 10 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Hi everyone! This is the first post on my personal blog (I’ve done lots of blogging before at Code The Web, but not here).

A few days ago, I started working on a new project — together.fit. In this post, I’ll tell you a little bit the idea for together.fit, and what to expect soon! This post will also help keep me accountable 😛

Introduction

I came up with the idea of together.fit when I was thinking about the Nike Training App.

Sergio Mattei of Makerlog had gotten me to sign up to it a while back so we could add each other as “friends”. I thought this social element was really cool, but I didn’t want to use Nike’s workouts. This meant that I basically never touched the app, and couldn’t share workout activity other than the Nike app workouts.

I thought it would be really cool if there was a fitness app where it was all about the social aspect — you could share workouts in an app-agnostic way, meaning you could do the workouts in another app, or not use an app at all, and you’d still be able to log them. I had a look and I couldn’t really find anything already out there. The closest I could find was Strava, but that was focused on running, cycling, etc.

So, I started writing down a quick plan of what this app might look like! I also started brainstorming names, and found that the domain together.fit was available! It didn’t even require premium registration, just $4.99 for an awesome domain 😮

I was originally going to go with group.fit, but that cost $4363, even though it was available. But I’ve decided that I like together.fit better anyway!

The idea

So, together.fit will be a mobile app where you can publicly log your workouts, and other people can react and comment to keep you motivated!

I’ll share this screenshot of my progress so far on the main screen of the app to give you a better idea:

I think that together.fit will help keep people motivated for a number of reasons:

The four pillars of motivation with together.fit

The carrot: You get positive social feedback and validation when you complete a workout! This helps make it a strong habit because you get almost-immediate mental rewards, as well as the long-term rewards of being fit.
The stick: You’re held accountable because your friends and other members can see when you haven’t exercised. I might even add feed items in the future like “X hasn’t exercised in a week, click here to remind them”.
The herd mentality: When you open up together.fit and see all your friends and other platform members busy exercising, this will motivate you to exercise as well!
The social activity: It makes fitness more of a fun and social activity, rather than an isolated thing that you do alone. You’ll feel like you’re on this journey with a fun and supportive community instead of on your own.

Pricing plans

I plan to make the base features of together.fit free, so everyone can enjoy a path to better fitness, and so that we have a wonderful and active community.

I’m not going to make the free plan one of those “annoying lack of features to make people upgrade” plans, it will give lots of value in its own right.

Free plan ($0/month)

Unlimited logging of workouts
React to workouts
Comment on workouts
Save workout templates so you can log your workouts quickly if you have certain routines
Get access to the together.fit Telegram channel

Premium plan ($4/month)

Everything from the free plan
Let other platform members “nudge” you to remind you to exercise
Create “challenges” between you and other platform members (I’ll flesh out this concept more later)
Dark mode
Change the app’s theme color
See a GitHub-contributions-like graph of how many exercises you did on each day of the year
Track your streak (unlike Makerlog, I streaks won’t be a core part of the platform to begin with. I might change this later, and if I do, I’ll move it to the free plan)
Get notification reminders to do a workout
Integrate with Apple Health, Google Fit, Fitbit, Garmin, etc.

As you can see, I want to make sure that both plans deliver a lot of value. So the free features are really great, but so are the paid ones!

Gym owner plan (??/user/month)
I was talking with Sébastien Vercammen, and he introduced me to the concept of boutique gyms. Basically, these gyms have a smaller pool of members, and are more about fostering a positive community where everyone knows each other and helps each other stay motivated and fit.
I think the together.fit model would be a really great way of keeping these communities in contact outside of the gym. So in the future, I will look at making a plan for gym owners, where they can get their users onto the platform, and they can interact in a special “group feed” for that gym only, separate from the main feed. I’ll also add some other features for gym owners. This gives me the option to expand into B2B, even though most of this product is B2C.

Friends vs. global feed

Originally, I was planning to make it so that you had to friend-request people to add them to your feed. This way it would be mainly your friends cheering you on. However, I had a great conversation with Sergio of Makerlog, and as someone who operates a similar product in a different market, he talked me out of it.

So for now, I’m going to make it a global feed. This means that you’ll see workouts from everyone on the platform. This is to help together.fit grow in the beginning. Once lots of people are using it, I’ll probably add the ability to make your account private, and to view a feed from people you’re following instead of everyone.

But in the beginning, using a friend/follow model will silo the community too much. I was imagining it as an awesome feed of all your friends cheering you on, but in reality it would be more like the two friends you managed to rope into using the app with you posting once every few weeks. So I think that one big public space for all users makes the most sense to begin with.

The timeline

Here’s a rough estimate of what I plan to have done by when!

January

Get an MVP web frontend and backend done with free features ready for beta use

February

Keep working on beta
Find online beginner-intermediate fitness communities and invite them to try the beta for free, develop and improve with their suggestions
Get together.fit on the iOS and Android app stores (I can generate these from my web code using Capacitor, the assets / submission will the the main part)
Iron out bugs
Start working on premium features

March

Finish ironing out bugs
Get all premium features done
Build landing page

April

Build payment flow with Stripe
Build onboarding

May

Start promoting finished product around the internet to see how people respond and test copy, payment, etc.
Print out flyers and sneakily leave at gyms? (if I’m feeling gutsy 😂)
Reach out to a few small fitness influencers (sorry I used that word haha) and see if they’re interested in trying out my product

June

Launch on Product Hunt and Hacker News (this should NOT be the climax!)

July and after

I can’t really plan this far ahead, depends how things go
Keeping working on together.fit
Keep looking for ways to promote it
Potentially spend a little bit of money on ads to see if the conversion rate and $ earned per site visit makes it an effective thing to do. I think this will help get it outside my bubble

Conclusion

So anyway, that’s my plan for together.fit! I’d love to hear what you think of it!

If you’re interested in using together.fit, please join the Telegram group. Here you’ll be able to meet the together.fit community before it’s even launched, provide feedback on the development of the app, and get early access as soon as it’s ready!

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