Hi,

Good day to you. Time really marches on doesn’t it? It’s basically the end of the year. How does that feel for you? What have you been thinking about?

Where we’re writing this, it’s cold and frozen outside. Apparently this is the coldest it’s been here in quite some time.

We’re trying to embrace hibernation season, while staying calmly productive. We’re listening to Crossing at the Shallow from the Sons Of album. What are you listening to?

There’s honestly so much to tell you, and this is the last newsletter we’ll send this year. We better get to it.

iOS app coming to the App Store

The iOS app is nearly ready for everyone. In fact, it’s being reviewed (and hopefully approved) by the App Store deciders as we speak.

In the meantime, it continues to swiftly improve. The biggest news is that we now have a home screen widget. The rumor is that we have Christina to thank for pushing Yihui to prioritize it. It’s a good thing she did, because the widget (terrible word) is a game changer. So much, in fact, that Justin Liang made a whole (open) channel for sharing good widget screenshots.

Android app coming to the Play Store

Simultaneously to the iOS app, we’re releasing the brand new Android app. We’re (also) waiting for the Play Store deciders to approve it.

We don’t have widgets yet for Android, but the whole experience is a lot nicer than before and you’ll see a lot more frequent updates.

Now testing new search results with Supporter Tier

You know how the search results on Are.na are generally not that great? Yeah, us too. We finally reached our breaking point and spent the past five months rebuilding the backend for search ENTIRELY FROM SCRATCH.

It’s now in a place where we’re able to test it with members in the Supporter tier. The best part is that you still get weird results, they are just much more relevant and much higher quality. It adds a whole new dimension to the “getting lost on Are.na” experience.

If you’re on the Supporter tier, try a search today and see how its working for you. If you can’t stand the current search any longer and you’d like test the new one, consider upgrading to a Supporter tier membership?

New API in the works

The other thing we’ve spent the past multiple months rebuilding from scratch is our API. If you’re just learning about this stuff, our API (Application Programming Interface) is the way a person might build their own application using data and functionality from Are.na. Think HTML on MySpace pages, but way more powerful.

If you’re one of the amazing people building websites and applications using the Are.na API and are interested in testing the new API, email us at engineering@are.na or come chat with us in #dev-lounge on the Discord.

Are.na Annual vol 7 now shipping

This year’s Are.na Annual is here! This is the seventh volume of our printed book series that collects writing by the people on Are.na, with each piece beginning with an Are.na channel. This time the theme is “pool,” as in a quiet place in a stream; a gathering of people, resources, liquid, or light; to contribute to a common effort; a game of billiards; a place for swimming.

Maya Man designed the cover, which is perfect. Sara Magenheimer made the beautiful poster that’s inserted inside the book. Leslie Liu designed the interior, as always. And Amirio Freeman edited the book alongside Meg Miller this year, lending a major hand in shaping it. We are very proud of this book and everyone involved — find the full list of our brilliant contributors here.

Last week, we celebrated the release with a (pool) party at Index Space in New York. Here are some photos as proof. Thanks for everyone who made it out, we loved seeing you!

We sold out of the early copies of the book at the event — but you can still buy the book in the Are.na store, where they are now shipping. For anyone who pre-ordered, your books are on their way.

Pool hoodie

We also had some Annual merch at the event — in collaboration with Maya Man, we made a hoodie with a screenprint of her cover design. The cover image is a still from a generated video of sun glitter reflecting across the surface of a body of water. Are.na and Maya Man are printed in blue on the bottom of the left sleeve.

These sweatshirts are a really nice, heavy fleece in light gray and screenprinted in Brooklyn by FUNHOUSE Studio, who did a beautiful job. These went fast at the event, but we just stocked the Gift Store — get it while you can!

Are.na Annual pieces online

If you want to get an idea of what’s inside the Annual before you order, or while you wait for it to arrive, you can read a couple of select pieces online:

PIN-UP magazine co-published Nora Chellew’s essay from the book, a fascinating design history of honeymoon hotels and heart-shaped pools. Nora’s photos of these abandoned hotels look excellent blown up in this layout.

On Are.na Editorial, we published Extra Practice’s beautiful meditation on pooling resources, sharing a studio, and, ultimately, deciding how to live. “How do you stay afloat together? As you mature, as life expands, as people peel off toward other shores?” <3

Are.na in the press

Thank you to Dazed for including us in a write-up on alternate pockets of community online.

We were also excited to see that we were mentioned in a paper on “hypertext friction” and resisting the seamlessness and flattening of algorithmic systems.

Are.na exemplifies hypertextual authorship: traceable and emergent. Its interface mirrors the logic of intertwingularity, enabling nonlinear thinking and meaning-making through a mesh of visible, overlapping connections. Like a digital sketchbook or garden, Are.na enables world-building through trails of thought.

Community news

Korede Aderele published a really nice primer for using Are.na for an archival practice on their Substack SURU LERE. Korede writes:

My practice has grown in size, scope and sophistication over the years, partly inspired by the rigor and consistency by which other community members practice. My timeline and interactions on Are.na strongly reflect the development of my multi-disciplinary interests, and also my synthesis of this perspective.

Elan Ullendorff did a great interview with food writer Alicia Kennedy for his newsletter Escape the Algorithm about navigating publishing online and the marketplace of attention. Alicia says:

I just want to cultivate the space that I actually want in the world. Whether people are into that or not is up to them. The challenge is figuring out how to make it enticing without giving my soul up to the algorithm gods.

Claire Player created a braided essay called “The web I dance,” comprising blocks from an Are.na channel of the same name, for their Substack Being in Motion. We love it.

Emily Segal and Martti Kalliala of Nemesis published a short essay on Mutant Tetrads.

By the way, Are.na is now on Substack – you can also follow us there for updates.

Roadmap

As always, you can check out our roadmap page which goes into the features we're building, our long-term goals, and our current numbers.

There are so many places you can spend your attention, and we’re touched that you spent it reading this letter.

Eschewing obfuscation,

The Are.na Team