The Philosophy

Read the source.
Skip the noise around it.

The modern internet is a hall of mirrors. Most of what we consume about a person is a reaction to a reaction — a summary of a screenshot of a subtweet. By the time it reaches us, the original intent has been laundered through three layers of context collapse.

Recordal is a stubborn correction. We don’t track what people say about someone. We index what that person produces themselves, in one place, in the order they produced it.

No mentions. No retweets. No trending. No algorithm ranking your attention by engagement. Just a chronological feed of primary output from the people whose thinking you actually want to follow.

Two ways to follow a person.

Mention Tracking

What everyone else is saying about them.

Google Alerts on their name
News aggregators surfacing coverage
Reply threads and quote-tweets
Roundups and summaries by third parties
Ranked by recency and engagement

High volume. Mostly noise. Rarely the person’s own words.

Recordal

What they actually said or wrote.

Their essays and blog posts
Their social posts, in full
Podcasts they host or guest on
Talks, keynotes, and video interviews
Ordered chronologically. No ranking.

Low volume. High signal. Their record, in their voice.

Why I built this

I wanted to learn from great educators like Jensen Huang, Howard Marks, et al., and used to feel FOMO when I found out I’d missed one of their interviews last week/month. So I created Recordal.

Hooda

Common questions.

How is this different from Google Alerts?

Google Alerts tracks mentions of a name across the web. Recordal tracks the person’s own output, regardless of whether their name appears in the headline.

Do you rank or reorder the feed?

No. The default view is newest first, with no algorithmic scoring.

Can I suggest someone to add?

Yes. Search for the person first. If we are not tracking them yet, request them from the results — we add people based on how many others are asking too, so there is no promised timeline. Signed out, it still counts toward who we add next.