🪟WindowSwap

Bored with the same old scenery outside your — probably home, but maybe your company is awful — office window? Swap with someone else somewhere in the world! With about 100,000 users, WindowSwap’s just getting started, so check them out and subscribe ($5 a month!) or buy them a coffee. ☕️ I just did. Their music video shows the value of their service better than I could write about it, so it’s embedded below.

👩🏼‍💻Polywork

If you had asked me when I joined last spring just how quickly Polywork, backed by the co-founders of Twitch, YouTube, and Affirm, who💰 raised $13 million in their series A almost exactly a year ago, would overtake LinkedIn as the professional social network of choice for creatives and developers, I would’ve (wrongly) said, within six months or so. The slick, modern user interface design and intuitive user experience coupled with the collaboration opportunities and feeling of exclusivity created by its initial invite-only status convinced me LinkedIn would be dead to tech folks by now. 

But alas, while growing steadily, adding talented and interesting users, fostering collaborations, and introducing new features on the reg, Polywork hasn’t blown up. I’m not mad about it, just surprised. I’d love it if more of my professional network joined (AHEM, join and follow me), but I’d place a substantial bet on my opinion that Polywork’s Achilles’ heel is its lack of an iOS app and it would double in size in a month if it created one. (Do we need to buy you a coffee, too, Polywork?)

Britsh software developer and blogger Salma Alam-Naylor wrote a spot-on piece about why Polywork is great and LinkedIn sucks. In part, she says,

I don’t really use LinkedIn. I maintain a profile for historical reasons and that’s it. The nature of the seemingly random home feed algorithm — where I’m inundated with excruciating faux-inspirational stories of the constant grind of the corporate machine that an ex-colleague clapped for two months ago — has encouraged me to actively avoid it.

Polywork isn’t just a social media platform, it’s also, like, an actual real thing. Forbes provides a good definition.

Just as cross trainers prevent repetitive use injuries by mixing up activities, polyworkers sample from a variety of careers. A writer might also beta test products, a software analyst could be a part-time filmmaker. Polywork allows you to explore your interests or bolster one skill set with different jobs that satisfy different nuances of a trade.

The concept appeals to me, and I do it, to an extent. I have a full-time job, but also do data analytics and information design consulting on a freelance basis, beta test products that pique my curiosity, create content for other companies here and there, founded and co-mod the Women in Dataviz Discord Server, and dabble in strategy consulting as a subject matter expert in digital health for healthcare technology companies and potential investors with GLG Research. I don’t do any of this for the money — Cart.com pays me a good salary with generous benefits (Except you suck, United Healthcare. I hope you get chronic migraines and need a prior auth for a drug that costs $1,000 per month for fifteen tablets.) — I do it because I am interested in everything and enjoy participating in exciting projects. (I mean, my dogs love the tasty organic treats we get from the Health Mutt, our favorite local natural pet food store and now also a BREWERY, and $50 compressed rawhide bones I order from Raw Paws. Parker, my most spoiled and pickiest treeing walker coonhound family member, rejects literally any other chew now. But Raw Paws is a woman-owned small business, so I feel great about sending them the extra cash I earn from my side hustles.)

I still believe in Polywork, despite the sluggish growth relative to my expectations, but time will tell.

💫 Groove 💫

Speaking of Polywork, I recently found Groove by way of a request on the platform to beta test the product, WHICH ALREADY OFFERS AN IOS APP. 

Groove promises connection for solopreneurs, but cleverly tricks users into getting accountability partners! Their blog impressed me, with content directed specifically toward the neurodiverse among us, and with its anti-hustle culture vibe. Groove is on track to permanently join my ADHD Productivity Stack, but I just started using it, so I’ll keep you posted.