Social media has become increasingly homogeneous, displaying everything from text to short videos across platforms, where algorithms often overwhelm your creativity. In this all-encompassing environment, it’s harder than ever to get a real sense of someone’s vibe before deciding to follow them.
Enters shelfAn app that lets you create a personalized “face” for your media habits, then connect with others based on the movies, shows, books, games, and music they consume. It also lets you track progress while reading your favorite book or watching a popular show.
“If you look at the culture in general on the internet, it’s gone from posting selfies to posting what I’m reading and watching, screenshots of my movie reviews, etc. It’s basically going deeper into a person’s life, trying to understand what they’re doing… That’s the essence of Shelf,” said Jad Esber, founder and CEO of Koodos Labs, the startup behind Shelf, in an interview.
Esber grew up writing poetry anonymously online, then spent the early years of his career at YouTube in London from 2015 to 2018. During this time, he worked on the creative side of Google, helping people create content, grow their audience, and monetize their work. This was as YouTube grew its creative ecosystem in several emerging markets outside the United States.
After spending more than three years at Google, the Cambridge Masters graduate returned to academia, joining Harvard University to research consumer internet trends and study the internet academically. This ultimately helped him envision Shelf in a market filled with social media apps with millions and billions of users.
“We built many, many products, and none of them worked until Shelf came along, and Shelf came along as a result of those lessons,” Esber told TechCrunch.
How does it work?
The Shelf app, available on iOS and coming to Android, lets you link your media-related accounts, including Apple Music, Goodreads, Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube, and then create a customizable “storefront” web page that automatically updates based on your consumption progress. You can also manually add links to any other internet service to your virtual shelf — even links to your YouTube account. Favorite TechCrunch Articleswhich you can display to your followers.
The New York-based startup also plans to expand the list of supported services, including Steam for gamers.
“As humans and people on the internet, we are multi-skilled. We don’t just care about music and movies and software and all that stuff. Adding support for certain categories will expand the user base, but at the same time deepen the use case for existing users,” Esper said.
You can choose the URL of the digital shelf based on your preferences. Similarly, the app allows you to customize the interface by changing the background color and moving elements as per your taste.
Koodos plans to monetize Shelf by offering new customization options. It could also explore monetization ideas the app offers, Esber told TechCrunch.
Unlike apps that call data using APIs, Shelf works regardless of whether a platform has a third-party API. Typically, when users select a third-party service like Spotify or Apple Music from the Shelf UI, they are logged in (either via a redirect to that app, or via a pop-up screen). Once a user is logged in, Esber can pull all of that user’s media consumption information directly from the app.
Esper also added that the startup does not use the data Shelf gets from the list of service users on the app to train the AI, which is becoming common practice among online platforms these days.
This data exchange is based on a technology called DataMover, and Koodos has worked with other apps to scale this solution as well (though Esber didn’t mention which ones). He compares DataMover to fintech company Plaid’s data transfer network.
“In a similar way (to Plaid), we provide that user with access to data for other apps as well,” he said.
Special experience in testing
In addition to letting users create their own storefronts for the public, Shelf has started testing a private experience for some users, who just want to track their media consumption without sharing it.
“We intend it to be a fun tool that anyone can use over time. Everyone has a bookshelf in their living room or at home. So why can’t everyone have a bookshelf?” Esper said.
Shelf launched publicly this summer after a beta test late last year, and its users have added half a billion items. Esber declined to share user numbers but said the number of shelves on the app is growing 40% month-over-month and that users visit Shelf an average of five times a week to check out their own digital shelves, update theirs, or keep up with others’.
Koodos has raised a total of $7 million from investors including First Round Capital, M13, Blockchain Capital, and IDEO, as well as founders of companies including Zynga and VSCO. The company also counts Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp, Dubsmash co-founder (now Reddit VP) Suchit Dash, and Harvard University market design pioneers Professors John Deighton and Scott Kominers as advisors.
