The internet, sorted smarter.

Sift is a next-generation search and content sharing platform that delivers the results and information you want to see, from people just like you. It combines the best parts of search engines and social media platforms in a new way to create a unique, user-driven experience.

Join to share content, comment, and build your community.

Content discovery made personal.

Who would you rather trust to give you a good restaurant recommendation – a complete stranger, or someone who shares your love for sushi? It’s common sense that people who like the same things as you are more likely to give good recommendations about new things to try.

Sift applies this same model to help you discover new content tailored to your preferences, based on the recommendations of users with similar interests.

Finding your way around Sift

Explore

The Explore tab is your main feed of (hopefully) interesting content and discussions. Tell us how good or bad the recommendations are and we will use that information to help refine what we show you and others.

There are three options for focusing your feed on what you want to see:

  • The arrow buttons below the tags tell us what topics you want to see more (or less) of. Upvote or downvote to refine your feed.
  • Upvoting or downvoting an item will influence how much you see other items like that. It also provides a useful signal so we know if that is something others like you might want to see.
  • You can click on a user’s name and follow them from their user page. When you follow a user you’re much more likely to see content they have upvoted (and not that they have downvoted), so follow those with good taste to refine your feed.

Tag Search

You can search for specific topics in the search bar on the upper right. Simply type in your search term and see top voted content tagged with that term. By default, we search within tags and ignore capitalization, so food will also match Comfort Food. If you don’t want this, say for a tag like ai (artificial intelligence), you can quote the tag "ai" to search only for exact matches. If you include multiple tags separated by commas (food,boston), sift will search for links tagged with both. If you want to share a list of links, search them up and share the page url (address).

In the top left, there are buttons to select sorting order: Hot (recent items with good scores), Best (highest scoring items of all time) and New (most recently submitted items). There is also an toggle (looks like a bookmark icon) which gives you the option to have the feed show you only new items (ones you did not submit or vote on)

User

The User tab is where you go to see what a specific user has submitted and upvoted on Sift and any information they want to share about themselves. Use this to determine if they are a user you want to follow to improve your search and feed, and when you find someone you like, click the follow button at the top.

Your own user page has everything you’ve interacted with and a filter to help you find the one you are trying to recall. If your opinion changes, you can also update it here. We hope you’ll find or submit links to Sift that you want to go back to.

Optionally you can also use our Pandoc flavored markdown to create a custom header and sidebar that other users will see when they land on your user page.

Submit

Use the Submit tab to tell us about something good (i.e., a news article, a website, a restaurant, a product, a TV show) you would recommend to your friends. Please consider adding tags to describe its topic, location, or other qualities. It’s also fine if you don’t since Sift lets you and other users add tags later. An (optional) submission comment can be used to add context.

You can also post your own thoughts or content in text through the submit tab. This does not need a link, and can be for starting a discussion or just sharing with the Sift community.

Comments

Sift has threaded comments with voting and Pandoc flavored markdown support.

Joining Sift

Sift is currently invite only as we work on scaling. If you know someone with a Sift account you can request an invite from them if you do not please click here (button) to join the queue for when we send out the next batch of invites.

Feedback

Last but not least there is the Feedback button at the bottom of the page. We’re trying to make Sift as useful as we can, but more perspectives are always helpful. Please use this to tell us about things you do or don’t like, features you wish we’d develop, or to report bugs. We check this on a regular basis and will address your feedback accordingly.