Disclaimer: The title link is an affiliate link, which means I get credit if you use it to sign up. Not really why I made this post, but figured why not 🤷♂️
Mailbrew is a service I've been meaning to check out for a while. Because it's a paid service (no free tier) I'm not sure it's something I would invest in right now, but I like the idea so I wanted to try it out. Initial thoughts are that it's simple to use and has some really neat design ideas, but dear lord I wish it allowed bulk editing. I just spent 30 minutes inputting about 20 Twitter feeds to one "brew" (their name for an email) because I had to manually edit each one to set it to be "two columns; two tweets". If I could have just saved that template it would have been perfect.
As it is, the system was still very easy to search for accounts on Twitter, find them, and add them to my own little feed. I also through in an RSS to see how that worked and it was just as simple. I've created a brew that contains all the frontend sources I like, but don't want to commit to subscribing too. That's a lot of people on Twitter, as well as huge feeds like CSS Tricks. I used to use Twitter's own suggested/curated feeds feature to keep up with most of these people, but since they destroyed that system and replaced it with one which is overloaded with spam and meaningless nonsense, I've been wanting something to fill the void. Right now I'll get the feed weekly, but it's the kind of thing which could be handy to check daily. If I like it I may even look into spinning up something similar, just for my own use, as email is a fine-enough delivery method but it's not really my preference. We'll see. For now, I've made the brew public: frontend twitterings.
Update 09/06/20: Having used Mailbrew for the allotted trial period, I've just let it lapse. As a result, I don't think the affiliate link is really worthwhile so I've removed the coded part and just left the homepage URL. I liked the service, but ultimately I found it didn't fit in my routine. I don't actually like newsletters; I prefer content feeds. So I never moved anything from RSS there, it was basically just Twitter accounts that I like but don't want to follow. Unfortunately, what I've discovered is that people's most popular tweets are rarely their best. They tend to be humorous or controversial. Neither is particularly useful. What's more, getting the brew daily was way too much; I don't even check my emails once a day, so it would just build up. Once a week was manageable, but made it feel like a chore (even if I invariably enjoyed reading it when I got around to it). I don't need to pay for a service that gives me chores. So yeah, a decent service but not for me.
