7 ms·

Apply HN: Make HN social – follow users, topics, and get notified about replies

55 points by Smirnoff 10y ago

sabuj 10y ago
to day apply but one time call me
sabuj 10y ago
software name give me i download take
sabuj 10y ago
how to i understand call me phone: 90980450
abhi3 10y ago
How come you guys didn't make the runoff?
- Smirnoff 10y ago
  Because discussion was not substantive enough.
Smirnoff 10y ago
IDEA: Hacker News is a great resource for news and interesting discussions. However, sometimes I wish it could do a little better in some areas like reading on mobile, sending notifications about replies, and perhaps having more social features. We decided to take a different look at HN and build a feed with notifications for HN users, which will notify about the following items: - When a user you follow comments on Hacker News (e.g. ptacek, patio11, dang) - When someone responds to your comments (I've missed a response from kevin once :(. This could've helped) - When someone posts a topic/keyword, which you follow and it gains popularity (e.g. "lisp", "scheme") TEAM and COMMITMENT: We are 4 guys residing in Uzbekistan -- all working on the same startup. We'd like to think we are smart -- 3/4 of us got full rides to study at UMBC/UPenn/Hertfordshire. We are committed to succeed -- as a team, but not necessarily with this or some other idea. In the past we worked at Morgan Stanley, Western Union, and created apps for others. WHY HN APPLY: This as an experiment. So far we have an idea and an Android prototype. We invested 4 days of work. If we are picked, we will pursue this full time over the summer and ship weekly builds. We need your feedback on this. I am sure some people won't need it because it will ruin the simplicity of HN but, perhaps, as power users you need some other features and use-cases. Let us know. PS: As Hacker News API is very limited, we have to do lots of work to build our own API from ground up to add rich set of API. Sorry if things break -- we only spent a couple of days on this.
- jbob2000 10y ago
  I don't like it. Hacker news is nice right now because it doesn't have all the crap you want to add. I don't want this site to turn into a "social media game" like reddit. I like that the power users feel limited, it keeps them inline with 98% of the other users here.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Smirnoff 10y ago
    Hi jbob2000. I understand your concerns. In fact I have got a few people tell me that they like the HN the way it because of the great content. Don't get us wrong, we don't want to change that. What we do want is to give some people the ability to make their experience richer. This is not for everyone but it can be helpful for some people. Personal anecdote -- I asked a question one time but no one answered it. I deleted my question but as I was doing that Kevin Hale (a YC partner) responded back. After he posted it looked like he was talking to no-one. Fortunately, dang emailed me to notify that there was a response and asked if he could bring back my post. If I had gotten a notification about a response, this peculiar situation could have been avoided.
    - jbob2000 10y ago
      I am fine with some users experiencing those peculiar situations, they don't happen for like 99% of the users here. I like that this site is thin on features, it gets rid of all the people who don't need to be here; recruiters, marketers, spammers. If you start answering some of these usability problems, you're just making it easier for all of the web's cruft to jump onto our platform.
  - altotrees 10y ago
    I agree with this. Part of what makes Hacker News great, in my opinion, is the fact that it contains few of those usual social media bells and whistles mentioned above. I feel like it places more emphasis on quality content and in-depth responses. I don't really feel the need to "follow" anyone, but do take a look at the top user list from time to time. That is not to say that things like notifications might not be useful, just that I come here more for the content and intelligent thought, and less for the social aspect.
greenspot 10y ago
Nice TLD
nikolay 10y ago
Have an Android app that notifies me via an SMS; this makes no sense!
- Smirnoff 10y ago
  Thanks for feedback Nikolay. We wanted to add many things. Notifications via SMS is for super busy people, who go offline from time to time but would never want to miss a reply from pg. Also, we are considering adding a Telegram bot for notifications. Please let us know if someone would like this. EDIT: I can't reply to posts below, so I am going to post here. The android notifications are default. On top of that we would like to offer other types of notifications: SMS, Email, Telegram bots, etc.
  - jchendy 10y ago
    I assume nikolay would prefer native Android notifications.
    - nikolay 10y ago
      True. Plus, I can't miss native notifications thanks to Notif Log Pro [0]. [0]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dvdh.notiflog.full&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dvdh.notif...
  - brianshaler 10y ago
    I think the point was that an Android app that needs to send a notification to a user of the app should use the built-in push notification functionality.
calcsam 10y ago
Really like the idea! Wish it was a website as well as an app.
- Smirnoff 10y ago
  Thanks! This was a weekend project, so we couldn't get it done in time. We have got a few things started :)
dilap 10y ago
looks awesome, ios version plz! :)
- kadder 10y ago
  I use HNBuzz for iOS it already supports this feature . Follow a comment and receive notification when some one replies - |via http://bit.ly/hnbuzz01 http://bit.ly/hnbuzz01 |
  - dilap 10y ago
    want i really want is the ability to follow people. (i comment rarely enough that i can use karma score bumps as a rough "someone maybe replied" indicator.)
moeamaya 10y ago
This is a huge pain point when initially developing web applications—spinning up redis instance, pub/sub, dirtying up models/controllers. I mean even facebook struuugggled with their +1 notification bug for years. If you can somehow normalize and create systematic best practices for notifications, this could be a very large SaaS product.
ecesena 10y ago
BTW, does anyone know what happened to hn notify via email? It seems it has stop to work for me, but I really need something around replies to my comments.
- gr3yh47 10y ago
  comment reply notifications is by far the largest gaping hole in HN functionality imo.
abhi3 10y ago
While this is a very cool idea, how to you intend to make money? I would assume YC would object/revoke API access if you tried to monetize their content. From the YFC eligibility FAQ: Can non-profits apply? Sorry, we’re not accepting non-profits for this experiment. If the experiment goes well though, we hope to fund some in the future. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
- Smirnoff 10y ago
  abhi3, thanks for your question. While we will give this product away for free to HN users, we plan to monetize the technology behind this in near future. One of the uses of our notification system is to notify users about certain keywords in the articles. Let's say you study for GRE and you need to memorize 1000 words. Currently, you can study with flash cards but ideally you need to read New York Times, Washington Post, Nautilus, Economist to really see the words in sentences. What if we could notify you when certain keywords appear in these articles? I bet you would love to keep track of these words and with notifications you will only read newest articles. I hope some people would pay for such usage.
Matt3o12_ 10y ago
Since you're probably using a backend for checking if somebody replied to your comment (and don't do it in your app because that would be slow and battle draining) do you consider adding email notifications? I'm not really interested in a new hacker news app – the one I'm currently using is just fine. Email notifications could be invaluable, though.
- dangrossman 10y ago
  I made http://hnreplies.com http://hnreplies.com which is just e-mail notifications for comment replies.
  - stared 10y ago
    Thank you - you made my "valuable interactions on HN"/"procrastination on HN" ratio much higher! :)
- stared 10y ago
  For notifications I use http://www.dangrossman.info/2016/02/21/e-mail-alerts-for-hacker-news-comments/ http://www.dangrossman.info/2016/02/21/e-mail-alerts-for-hac... and couldn't be happier.
jaflo 10y ago
Never seen the .uz CCTLD. Turns out it's from Uzbekistan. Does anyone know where a foreigner could buy one? Or how difficult is it to purchase? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.uz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.uz
- diyor 10y ago
  Have a look at this website - http://cctld.uz/reg/ http://cctld.uz/reg/
- muminoff 10y ago
  Doesn't matter, foreigner or not. You need to send them your scanned passport copy.
palgraham 10y ago
i want nothing to do with any of you
onion2k 10y ago
I made a Chrome plugin to do this... http://imgur.com/xQ9bzyi http://imgur.com/xQ9bzyi It let's you 'follow' people, tag them with keywords, easily look up profiles. It parses out interesting things (keybase, twitter, email, etc) too. The fun bit is the tagging - it syncs tags using firebase so it's delightfully collaborative. Or it would be if it had more than one user. Like many, many side projects, it's unfinished and on hold while I work on other things. I plan on finishing it, but if someone (you guys...) makes something that works then that'd be awesome.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
wickedOne 10y ago
not sure whether this is a good idea… limiting your news aggregation by following a few (preferred) people makes me wonder whether you'd not better share your email address and start a cozy conversation. i'm aware this app is for those interested and those who don't can continue to use hackernews as they're used to, but i fail to see the added value of making it "social"…
Geekette 10y ago
This would be very useful. It'd be great if accessible via desktop not just mobile. It would be cool if it ultimately ended up being incorporated into the main HN site. Not sure why the opprobrium against it - it's a fully optional addition to one's use of HN.

55 points by Smirnoff 10y ago

sabuj 10y ago

to day apply but one time call me

sabuj 10y ago

software name give me i download take

sabuj 10y ago

how to i understand call me phone: 90980450

abhi3 10y ago

How come you guys didn't make the runoff?

Smirnoff 10y ago
Because discussion was not substantive enough.

Smirnoff 10y ago

IDEA: Hacker News is a great resource for news and interesting discussions. However, sometimes I wish it could do a little better in some areas like reading on mobile, sending notifications about replies, and perhaps having more social features. We decided to take a different look at HN and build a feed with notifications for HN users, which will notify about the following items: - When a user you follow comments on Hacker News (e.g. ptacek, patio11, dang) - When someone responds to your comments (I've missed a response from kevin once :(. This could've helped) - When someone posts a topic/keyword, which you follow and it gains popularity (e.g. "lisp", "scheme") TEAM and COMMITMENT: We are 4 guys residing in Uzbekistan -- all working on the same startup. We'd like to think we are smart -- 3/4 of us got full rides to study at UMBC/UPenn/Hertfordshire. We are committed to succeed -- as a team, but not necessarily with this or some other idea. In the past we worked at Morgan Stanley, Western Union, and created apps for others. WHY HN APPLY: This as an experiment. So far we have an idea and an Android prototype. We invested 4 days of work. If we are picked, we will pursue this full time over the summer and ship weekly builds. We need your feedback on this. I am sure some people won't need it because it will ruin the simplicity of HN but, perhaps, as power users you need some other features and use-cases. Let us know. PS: As Hacker News API is very limited, we have to do lots of work to build our own API from ground up to add rich set of API. Sorry if things break -- we only spent a couple of days on this.

jbob2000 10y ago
I don't like it. Hacker news is nice right now because it doesn't have all the crap you want to add. I don't want this site to turn into a "social media game" like reddit. I like that the power users feel limited, it keeps them inline with 98% of the other users here.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Smirnoff 10y ago
  Hi jbob2000. I understand your concerns. In fact I have got a few people tell me that they like the HN the way it because of the great content. Don't get us wrong, we don't want to change that. What we do want is to give some people the ability to make their experience richer. This is not for everyone but it can be helpful for some people. Personal anecdote -- I asked a question one time but no one answered it. I deleted my question but as I was doing that Kevin Hale (a YC partner) responded back. After he posted it looked like he was talking to no-one. Fortunately, dang emailed me to notify that there was a response and asked if he could bring back my post. If I had gotten a notification about a response, this peculiar situation could have been avoided.
  - jbob2000 10y ago
    I am fine with some users experiencing those peculiar situations, they don't happen for like 99% of the users here. I like that this site is thin on features, it gets rid of all the people who don't need to be here; recruiters, marketers, spammers. If you start answering some of these usability problems, you're just making it easier for all of the web's cruft to jump onto our platform.
- altotrees 10y ago
  I agree with this. Part of what makes Hacker News great, in my opinion, is the fact that it contains few of those usual social media bells and whistles mentioned above. I feel like it places more emphasis on quality content and in-depth responses. I don't really feel the need to "follow" anyone, but do take a look at the top user list from time to time. That is not to say that things like notifications might not be useful, just that I come here more for the content and intelligent thought, and less for the social aspect.

greenspot 10y ago

Nice TLD

nikolay 10y ago

Have an Android app that notifies me via an SMS; this makes no sense!

Smirnoff 10y ago
Thanks for feedback Nikolay. We wanted to add many things. Notifications via SMS is for super busy people, who go offline from time to time but would never want to miss a reply from pg. Also, we are considering adding a Telegram bot for notifications. Please let us know if someone would like this. EDIT: I can't reply to posts below, so I am going to post here. The android notifications are default. On top of that we would like to offer other types of notifications: SMS, Email, Telegram bots, etc.
- jchendy 10y ago
  I assume nikolay would prefer native Android notifications.
  - nikolay 10y ago
    True. Plus, I can't miss native notifications thanks to Notif Log Pro [0]. [0]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dvdh.notiflog.full&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dvdh.notif...
- brianshaler 10y ago
  I think the point was that an Android app that needs to send a notification to a user of the app should use the built-in push notification functionality.

calcsam 10y ago

Really like the idea! Wish it was a website as well as an app.

Smirnoff 10y ago
Thanks! This was a weekend project, so we couldn't get it done in time. We have got a few things started :)

dilap 10y ago

looks awesome, ios version plz! :)

kadder 10y ago
I use HNBuzz for iOS it already supports this feature . Follow a comment and receive notification when some one replies - |via http://bit.ly/hnbuzz01 http://bit.ly/hnbuzz01 |
- dilap 10y ago
  want i really want is the ability to follow people. (i comment rarely enough that i can use karma score bumps as a rough "someone maybe replied" indicator.)

moeamaya 10y ago

This is a huge pain point when initially developing web applications—spinning up redis instance, pub/sub, dirtying up models/controllers. I mean even facebook struuugggled with their +1 notification bug for years. If you can somehow normalize and create systematic best practices for notifications, this could be a very large SaaS product.

ecesena 10y ago

BTW, does anyone know what happened to hn notify via email? It seems it has stop to work for me, but I really need something around replies to my comments.

gr3yh47 10y ago
comment reply notifications is by far the largest gaping hole in HN functionality imo.

abhi3 10y ago

While this is a very cool idea, how to you intend to make money? I would assume YC would object/revoke API access if you tried to monetize their content. From the YFC eligibility FAQ: Can non-profits apply? Sorry, we’re not accepting non-profits for this experiment. If the experiment goes well though, we hope to fund some in the future. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Smirnoff 10y ago
abhi3, thanks for your question. While we will give this product away for free to HN users, we plan to monetize the technology behind this in near future. One of the uses of our notification system is to notify users about certain keywords in the articles. Let's say you study for GRE and you need to memorize 1000 words. Currently, you can study with flash cards but ideally you need to read New York Times, Washington Post, Nautilus, Economist to really see the words in sentences. What if we could notify you when certain keywords appear in these articles? I bet you would love to keep track of these words and with notifications you will only read newest articles. I hope some people would pay for such usage.

Matt3o12_ 10y ago

Since you're probably using a backend for checking if somebody replied to your comment (and don't do it in your app because that would be slow and battle draining) do you consider adding email notifications? I'm not really interested in a new hacker news app – the one I'm currently using is just fine. Email notifications could be invaluable, though.

dangrossman 10y ago
I made http://hnreplies.com http://hnreplies.com which is just e-mail notifications for comment replies.
- stared 10y ago
  Thank you - you made my "valuable interactions on HN"/"procrastination on HN" ratio much higher! :)
stared 10y ago
For notifications I use http://www.dangrossman.info/2016/02/21/e-mail-alerts-for-hacker-news-comments/ http://www.dangrossman.info/2016/02/21/e-mail-alerts-for-hac... and couldn't be happier.

jaflo 10y ago

Never seen the .uz CCTLD. Turns out it's from Uzbekistan. Does anyone know where a foreigner could buy one? Or how difficult is it to purchase? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.uz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.uz

diyor 10y ago
Have a look at this website - http://cctld.uz/reg/ http://cctld.uz/reg/
muminoff 10y ago
Doesn't matter, foreigner or not. You need to send them your scanned passport copy.

palgraham 10y ago

i want nothing to do with any of you

onion2k 10y ago

I made a Chrome plugin to do this... http://imgur.com/xQ9bzyi http://imgur.com/xQ9bzyi It let's you 'follow' people, tag them with keywords, easily look up profiles. It parses out interesting things (keybase, twitter, email, etc) too. The fun bit is the tagging - it syncs tags using firebase so it's delightfully collaborative. Or it would be if it had more than one user. Like many, many side projects, it's unfinished and on hold while I work on other things. I plan on finishing it, but if someone (you guys...) makes something that works then that'd be awesome.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

wickedOne 10y ago

not sure whether this is a good idea… limiting your news aggregation by following a few (preferred) people makes me wonder whether you'd not better share your email address and start a cozy conversation. i'm aware this app is for those interested and those who don't can continue to use hackernews as they're used to, but i fail to see the added value of making it "social"…

Geekette 10y ago

This would be very useful. It'd be great if accessible via desktop not just mobile. It would be cool if it ultimately ended up being incorporated into the main HN site. Not sure why the opprobrium against it - it's a fully optional addition to one's use of HN.