Have you ever read an article that you knew you had to send to a friend? If so, you probably copied and pasted the link, emailed it to yourself to open on your phone, then texted it to your friend? Or perhaps you found the perfect paragraph on medieval art for your group history project, but you had to upload the link to a shared Google Doc then struggle to explain which paragraph you were looking at? Or maybe you have read a list of “Top 10 Restaurants Near You” and had to screenshot #5 and #8 to send in your group chat?
With Patchwork, a startup venture incubating in the Syracuse University LaunchPad, content sharing is quick, easy and intuitive. Patchwork is a Google Chrome extension that allows you to share written content and hold conversations without ever needing to leave the original web page.
Its founders — Jackson Ensley, a marketing management major at the Whitman School of Management, and developer Paul Hultgren who is the LaunchPad’s inaugural Innovator in Residence — came up with the idea after realizing there is no streamlined way to discuss content online while viewing it.
As the founders explain, we live in a time where the internet is focused on integration and engagement, making it more important than ever before to have a platform that allows people to share content quickly and collaborate more efficiently. Patchwork does just this by letting users open a chat panel on the side of their screen and refer directly to specific quotes on a page.
Until now, this form of discussion has been reserved to platforms dedicated to serving academic scholars, but Patchwork makes discourse about digital information more social, fun and accessible to anyone.
In future years, Patchwork also hopes to encompass additional integrations that would allow users to share content to platforms such as Slack or Twitter.
By creating a more engaged and connected web of internet readers, Patchwork will transform the way we view information, one shared link and quote at a time.
Story by Sasha Temerte ’23, LaunchPad Global Fellow