🍱 📄 bento.me & read.cv

THE new tools on the block

If you haven’t heard about bento.me or read.cv, don’t fret, but get on board now! They’re THE new tools on the block. Both are great for creatives and not-so-creatives alike.

Think of Bento as a better Linktree, with more flexibility, 🤌 visual design, and something that can also function as a quick portfolio site. Read.cv is an alternate to not just your pdf resume but also—this might be a slightly long stretch—LinkedIn. Again 🫶 visual design (it also allows you to export your resume/cv as a PDF), has a job board, and a minimalist “pages” feature that lets you share projects on the website itself.

Both are currently free to use, and you can check out what others are making here and here. They have many similarities, not in feature sets, although there might be a slight overlap, but in their approach to building the product.

The teams

Bento is being built by a team of four – Sélim, Mugeeb, Valerie, and Eike, while Read.cv has a team of three — Andy, Mehdi, and Shen. Both are very lean teams. 

They have Discord servers where they respond to feedback and even brainstorm ideas with some of the most active users. They also engage with the Twitter community, not just via their official accounts, but also each of the members of the founding teams actively participating in conversations. 

This sort of engagement has been exemplified by Figma and its advocates. The personal touch converts users to advocates and goes a long way. I love to share my love for new products and can see the effect of their community-first approach on my behavior.

Community management

There are many similarities in how Figma, Framer, Coda, Notion, Bento, and Read.cv (my favorites, but there are many more examples) interact with their Tweeps (noun: a person’s followers on Twitter). They are friendly, active listeners and don’t appear to be selling you stuff. And they use GIFs generously.

Community management might not be that new, but I have increasingly noticed it. While some companies have community managers (I recently interviewed at two places for the position), others are more organic in their approach and have multiple employees/teams playing the role. Some put it at the center of their effort to build a user base.

How is it different from social media management?
Social media managers focus on content, while community managers work on engagement. They develop communities and build loyalty. Community managers connect with the audience on a more personal level and are seen as their advocates for the brand. Social media managers act as the voice of the brand (ref). Both these roles are vital and work in tandem.

Umm… that’s all. Until next time 👋