Rebuilding the mobile app, Internet Phone Book, and news from the community
Hi,
It’s hot this morning. Some of us are from the south, so this not entirely unwelcome. It has the feeling of home, but also vacation?
We’re listening to deep gtr by Pavel Milyakov and thinking about Indra’s Net.
What are you listening to? What have you been thinking about?
Product
Last month, we revealed that we have been working on rebuilding the mobile app in a Sander-like fashion. That is still going on and likely will be for the next little while. Like we said last time, the nice thing about it is that mobile web is where we validate some of our design ideas, so you can start to see hints of what the app will be like there.
Some of the rough parts of the old app have been fixed on mobile web. For example, have you ever wanted to upload multiple images at the same time from your phone 🙃? That is possible and nice on mobile web.
A few other little updates in the meantime:
- hex color blocks have been re-implemented (thank you Elliott for the push)
- there is now a privacy filter on profile index view (which helps with channel-cleaning
New on Are.na Editorial
![[A process image showing the call for submissions for the Internet Phone Book from April 4, 2024 on one side, and a photo of the printed book from April 7, 2025 on the other. A twisty-turny arrow points from the earlier image to the latter, illustrating the passage of time.]](https://assets.buttondown.email/images/639c4b54-0b0c-435c-abb8-e966fc6c5a87.png?w=960&fit=max)
We spoke with Kristoffer Tjalve and Elliott Cost on their recently published Internet Phone Book, a directory to the poetic web. The publication gathers together the people making intimate, experimental, and expressive websites — and while the first edition sold out in our store less than 24 hours, you can still read the interview on Are.na Editorial.
Speaking of the poetic web, we also ran an essay by Omayeli Arenyeka on why she gave up making websites for writing poetry, and how she found her way back. You might also read her Grief Found Me web-poem on Crawlspace.
Meandering Through the Sites of Naive Yearly
Vida Rucli from Robida Collective closed out our series with Naive Yearly with a piece about the spatial design of the conference.
And we ended the month with a re-pub from the last Are.na Annual — an essay by Yeaye on bodies as documents and Raven Jackson’s film *All Dirt Roads Taste of
Are.na Annual Submissions
Thank you to everyone who submitted a pitch for the forthcoming Are.na Annual, themed “pool.” We received nearly 400 submissions, and are extremely impressed by how many of them are sharp, interesting, thoughtful…we’re working our way through them now and are aiming to let people know, either way, before June
Community News
Summer is slow, as it should be, but we have a few things to report from the community:
The latest Blacks of Are.na member highlight is photographer Max Hemphill, which you can read on their excellent Substack. The newsletter is also the best way to be first to know about an upcoming collaboration we’re doing with B.O.A. in celebration of Juneteenth…
This Friday, June 6, there’s an Are.na meet-up in Prospect Park in Brooklyn at 6:30pm. If you’re in the area, you should go:
(Reminder that you can always find and post Are.na meet-ups in this channel.)
And Laurel Schwulst has opened a new school called Ultralight School with three classes running this summer. You can also follow along with their Are.na channels here.
If you have any news you’d like to share, don’t hesitate to add it to the Community News channel.
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.
The Are.na Team