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A Perfectly Imperfect...Social Network (!?) Share & Ask for Recs, Follow Friends, and more.

the many faces of PI.FYI

TLDR: Perfectly Imperfect built an app + website called PI.FYI … and it’s also a…social network version of this newsletter?

Yeah, I know. That does sound pretty weird to say out loud, but you’ll like it.

And don’t worry, this isn’t some tech industry sell-out bullshit. Peter Thiel doesn’t have his grubby hands on it, and neither do any other shady investors. There’s no trust fund. A 3rd party didn’t swoop in and say “hey you should make an app!”

This project is simply the result of thousands of hours spent coding the entire thing from scratch after I got laid off six months ago. It’s a pure labor of love that I’ve been quietly plotting for two years and it’s completely self-funded from my (rapidly) dwindling savings account.

So, today we’re formally announcing PI.FYI, a place for people to share what they love where it’s truly encouraged and celebrated. Something exciting and true to Perfectly Imperfect’s day 1 goal of helping people discover new things from real human beings, not algorithms or AI— the way things are heading.

where it all went down

The elevator pitch is Letterboxd meets Myspace, but for anything. You can share and ask for recommendations, organize them in lists for later, theme your profile, follow friends, PI guests, & strangers, browse by category, get profiled on our Substack (!), and most importantly, stumble upon something new every time you come back.

The site is completely free. No Perfectly Imperfect membership is required.

However, if you’re a premium Substack subscriber it will automatically sync with PI.FYI. So in addition to our other perks, you’ll now be able to use special themes, search deep into our archive, filter your bookmarks, and more. You can also sign-up for just a PI.FYI membership for a cheaper rate if that’s more your speed.

The site will be ad-free and supported entirely by it’s users. So if you believe in keeping the internet ad-free, democratic, and not dependent on rapid growth or venture capitalists, consider going paid to help us pay for the expensive servers (and ideally my rent too) so we can maintain these values without going broke.

Don’t take my word for it though, Office Magazine created a thread on the site that asked people to share their thoughts. You can read all of the responses here, but these two are personal favorites.

And you can also read about it in The New York Times

“Once upon a time, a self-respecting cultural gatekeeper might aver that, in fact, not everyone’s taste is important. But Mr. Bainbridge, a former Meta engineer, had a different impulse: to build a social network, allowing anyone to make recommendations.

In August, he started coding PI.FYI, the social media counterpart to the newsletter, and its app. And this week, after two months on an invitation-only basis, the site is open to the public.

Mr. Bainbridge said he thought the network could be a tool for coalescing scenes around the world, like the one that has sprung up around Manhattan’s Chinatown over the past several years.

“You can find pockets of people who are like you or who you think have cool taste,” he said.

PI.FYI does not look or feel very much like a modern social network, borrowing the retro-internet aesthetic of the newsletter. Beyond text and static images, there isn’t any media. There are no ads. Users can choose the background color of their profiles. There is a prominent, charmingly retro directory of everyone using the site.”

Your PI.FYI profile is closer to an Interview Magazine style profile vs say…an Instagram profile. A photo of you is front & center, your name is huge & in your face, and it’s themed to your liking. A far cry from a tiny cropped avatar and short username tucked away in the corner of a generic page.

This design was made possible by our friends at Special Offer Inc in New York City. They shared our ambitious vision and helped us bring it to life in a way that felt reminiscent of the earlier wild west days of the Internet without feeling overly nostalgic. Something in the world of Perfectly Imperfect’s lo-fi design spirit.

You’ll find be finding friends, girlfriends, and boyfriends, based on their esoteric literary knowledge or because they like the same Drag City records. We’ve already gotten reports of a few people meeting up from the app… 👀 😏 So, have fun. And don’t overthink it. Just share your joy with others in the form of a…recommendation.

And fear not, the newsletter isn’t going anywhere.

In fact it’s just going to get even better.

~

It was time for me to take a leap of faith.

Thanks for being a part of this.

I appreciate you reading and supporting Perfectly Imperfect over the last three years. It’s changed my life in every way possible and that’s all because of you. We’ve tried (and are still trying) to embody the change we want to see and I believe that together we can save word of mouth recommendations and human curation, and put an end to algorithm driven taste.

And a huge shout out to Alex Cushing, Jennie Ross, Robbie Barnett, Michael Philbin, Will Stallmeyer, Vivi Hayes, Clarke Sonderman, and all of the day 1 beta testers, for your help over the last few months. You made it so coding for 15 hours straight most days didn’t make me go (completely) insane and encouraged me to keep going. I couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you!

See our entire archive here.

Follow Perfectly Imperfect, Tyler, Alex on Instagram.

Special thanks to our epic & cool interns Vivi, Mavis, Josh, and Sofia.

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