HyperTexting isn't just for text

You might be wondering why HyperTexting has hitched its proverbial branding wagon to "text" in a world dominated by video platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Are HyperTexting news feeds just an endless wall of text? No! Here's what it looks like to scroll your timeline using HyperTexting.

Pretty cool, right? 😎

We don't think of HyperTexting as a first-class podcast app because there are already plenty of amazing apps that are focused 100% on podcasting (h/t @overcast.fm 🐐). However, feeds containing audio and video posts are first-class citizens in HyperTexting. You shouldn't see a post about a new episode from that podcast you follow in your timeline, and then have to switch over to your podcast app to start listening. 🙅🏻‍♀️ Just tap on the audio or video and start listening. This is the HyperTexting way. 👌

What about videos?

You can keep browsing your timeline and listen while media plays in the background, or watch videos using picture-in-picture while you continue to scroll.

Why "HyperTexting"?

It should come as no surprise that HyperTexting was heavily influenced by the underlying technologies that make the internet tick. In fact, you have to look back even further than the invention of the world wide web to find the origin of the term "hypertext". The word hypertext was coined by Ted Nelson in 1963, and published in 1965. Nelson also invented the term "hypermedia". By the time Tim Berners-Lee wrote the original 1989 thesis that led to the November 1990 proposal for the world wide web, hypertext was recommended as "a way to link and access information". Even in 1989, Berners-Lee recognized the potential of hypertext when he said "I will use the word 'Hypermedia' to indicate that one is not bound to text."

In the early days of the web, beginning with the first "website" ever created, most of the information being linked to was text. Today hypertext is more relevant than ever before because hyperlinks are more relevant than ever before, thanks to the endless stream of hypermedia that we can link to. The web is quite literally a series of hypertext documents, laid out using the hypertext markup language, delivering rich hypermedia over the hypertext transfer protocol.

The web is all hypertext all the way down 🕳️

When you type h-t-t-p or h-t-t-p-s in Safari or Chrome – for example, to visit https://www.google.com – you are invoking the HyperText Transfer Protocol, or HTTP (Wikipedia). Even when you use the YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok apps instead of visiting their websites, they utilize the HyperText Transfer Protocol behind the scenes to download videos and other content (e.g. see TikTok's "HTTP-based APIs").

When you visit the @youtube.com, @instagram.com, or @tiktok.com websites, you are not only using the HyperText Transfer Protocol, you are also viewing hypertext documents. A hypertext document is created using the HyperText Markup Language, or HTML (Wikipedia). These days most websites omit the .html extension in their links, but you will still periodically find websites with URLs like this:

https://example.com/support.html

If you didn't know, now you know! 👨🏽‍🏫

We also love the name HyperTexting because it calls to mind something that over 5 billion people do every day: send "text" messages. It started as plain text, but if your messages look anything like mine, they are full of links, images, audio, video, and more. Texting is easy. And making it easy to @makehypertext.com is the mission statement that inspired us to create HyperTexting. 📱

Hypertext is the thing that makes the internet magical. Texting is something almost every human does every day. Put them together and that's how HyperTexting got its name.

Hypertext + texting = HyperTexting ✨

If you enjoyed this preview, you'll like HyperTexting even more when it's your feed minus the ads, algorithms, and AI-generated slop. 🤌🏽

📱 Pre-order on the App Store →
👩🏻‍🔬 Download on TestFlight →
💬 Join the HyperTexting Community →