Announcing Clip Better

easily send link previews via email



Some of you may have already heard a little about Clip Better and some of you may have heard a lot about Clip Better and don't need to hear anymore.  But some of you may have yet to have heard about Clip Better, and the first part of this post is mostly for those people.  The last part of the post is for everyone.

Early this year, I came up with an idea to make it easier to share web links via email.  I was frustrated by the fact that when you dump this:

into Facebook, you get this:

without really any work on your part.  You look like a hero; "Oh, this neat concise elegant summary of the webpage that I was trying to share with you?  Yeah, I did that."  Similar story with Twitter, Google+ and other platforms.

Yet, when it comes to email, when you dump this in:

you get this:

Hero factor?  Zero.  And whoever gets that email has to try to decipher the web link, figure out if they want to click on it, figure out if they should click on it now or later (maybe it's NSFW or Not Safe For Work).  And then if they choose to click on it later, when they open the email the next day, they get to look at this again:

So, Clip Better aims to do something about that.  Now, when you start with the above link, Clip Better gives you this:

This is what I'm going to use to motivate my kids to take out the trash! $1 Million Lotto Ticket Found In Trash http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/26/lottery-ti… NORTH ATTLEBOROUGH, Mass. — A Massachusetts couple has won $1 million on a scratch-off lottery ticket they dug out of the trash after inadvertently throwing it away. The state lottery commission says Joseph and Joanne Zagami of North Attleborough b…

Now whoever you are sharing that webpage with knows exactly what they are getting.  They know the exact context and know when they should read it.  And if they put the email to the side, when they read it a day later, the rich preview is right there waiting for them.

And the nice thing about Clip Better is that you can do whatever you want with that clip.  Sure, it's intended for you to paste it in an email, but you can add it to a Word document, a PowerPoint.  Heck, you can even dump it into a blog like I just did.  And it's designed to be pretty lightweight and platform independent.  So, unlike the Facebook preview, you can use it anywhere you want.

Some of you may have already been using Clip Better, but now I'm calling on all of you to use Clip Better.  The easiest way to use it is with a Google Chrome Extension, which was just recently published to the Chrome Web Store.  You can download it in under a minute here.  If you aren't using Chrome as your web browser, I have a version of the product as a bookmarklet that can be installed in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE, Safari on you iPhone, Chrome on your mobile device, and more.  The instructions are a little more complicated, so signup here and I'll email you the welcome letter with instructions.

I can use your help getting the word out too.  Please consider doing any or all of the following:

• Share Clip Better with your friends on Facebook (share this link)
• Tweet about Clip Better on Twitter (share this link)
• Download the Extension from the Chrome Web Store
• Add a review for Clip Better in the Chrome Web Store
• Recommend Clip Better on Google+ (go here and click on the "G+1" icon on the right side of the screen)
• Signup for Clip Better
• Share this post with friends via email, Facebook, or Twitter
• Follow @ClipBetter on Twitter
• And, of course, use Clip Better to share your web links.

Thanks for helping out.  I appreciate all the support.

Tod Cole
Founder, Clip Better