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Prismatic Hopes to Create a New Category of Social News
- alextp 15y agoAs a recent daily user, prismatic is awesome. The way they leverage twitter is pretty interesting, mixing in "endorsements" to articles from both people close to you, famous people, and random people, in a way that keeps it interesting. There's also fairly heavy machine learning going on behind the scenes, in a way that is non intrusive. Congratulations to those guys.
- toby 15y agoAgreed, I think it's the first effort at article recommendations that's really worked for me. I think it's due to a pretty clever combination of social signal and machine learning.
- bradfordcross 15y agoThanks Toby, really glad you've enjoyed it. We can get so much better, but at least we finally do have a foundation. :)
- bradfordcross 15y agoThanks, Alex. What do you mean about the non intrusive point - something about the ongoing interactions within the product or things like bootstrapping interests from twitter?
- alextp 15y agoBy non-intrusive I meant that I have no idea what kind of ML is really going on behind the scenes. In this sense it's very different from interacting with, say, Netflix's recommender, or youtube's ad predictor (a friend "liked" a vodka ad once and is now assumed to be an alcoholic), where you really do need to build a mental model of what the ML is doing to effectively use the site. With prismatic I don't seem to need to care.
- gammarator 15y agoI've been using Prismatic for a month or two and really like it--it brings up interesting and relevant stories every time.
- sorenmacbeth 15y agoPrismatic feels simply magical when you use it.
- brendannee 15y agoI love prismatic - its completely replaced Google reader for me. I find that it consistently shows articles that are really relevant to me, from sources I've never even considered. Often, I'll find highly relevant things on prismatic a few hours before a friend emails me the same article that they found through some other source.
- alexg79 15y agoI use Prismatic daily. It does an amazing job of crawling the web and curating news articles that are aligned with my interest. Many of these articles I would normally not see and have no idea that they even exist. Prismatic is my primary method of news consumption now. There is a feeling of serendipitous discovery every time I use it, which keeps the delight factor high!
- brcrth 15y agoThe only thing about it that I really dislike is that there's no option to delete or cancel your account (a trend with startups). I don't fall to the silly excuse that it's in beta or that they'll have such options "soon". This should be there since day 1. Shows respect for the user/tester and sends the message that your information/data is yours to keep/remove whenever you want. Keep in mind that this is not a criticism towards Prismatic (which is really cool and well done), I just used them as an example to a common startup practice.
- bradfordcross 15y agoI agree, and we're on it. We're only just now allowing more people into the product and it's still a long way from being openly available publicly. With young companies and products, it's tough to balance all the constraints with the goals. We've spent a lot of time to learn what our users really love about the product. We agree that we need to get a profile out very soon, but we're happy we've put the core of the product first from the beginning.
- phreeza 15y agoAny invites or such for HNers?
- alextp 15y agoTweet at me (atpassos_ml) and I can spend one of my three invites on you.
- jeffk 15y agoPrismatic is what I read in the morning when I'm waking up and drinking a cup of coffee. I think it has the potential to change the way we consume not just social news, but news in general.
- JohnJAllen 15y agoWow, these are some rave reviews! Email me and I might give you an immediate invite (have two)!
- cgag 15y agoTwo to give away as well. Prismatic is excellent.
- phreeza 15y agoYou have to put your email in your description, the one you put in your profile is not public. edit: i have mine in my profile, I would appreciate an invite!
- simantel 15y agoI'd love one! My email is "bradsimantel@gmail.com".
- w01fe 15y agoThe first 10 people to email hackernews@getprismatic.com with their twitter handle will get an immediate invite to our early access. Edit: gone -- but if you sign up at getprismatic.com you should get an invite soon.
- possibilistic 15y agoThis is so great, thank you so much! :)
- rjurney 15y agoPrismatic is the next Google.
- EwanG 15y agoI suppose it's up to me to be the "Debbie Downer" on this one. First off, I like the recommendations, and the learning algorithm seems decent. However the UI continues to give me nightmares. I setup a list similar to what I have in Zite or Flipboard. For some reason only Chrome will let me actually go to the list and scroll it. For everything else (IE, Firefox, Opera) I can see the list, I can click on the list, but I can't scroll the list. While I like the recommendations, I would also like the ability to have more control over sources, and to control the refresh rate. Yes I "get" they think that isn't needed if they are doing this right. I just respectfully disagree. Just my .02 worth. I wish the team well, and hope they have an Android App version of this eventually as I would love to have the pretty on my Sony Tablet S...
- bradfordcross 15y agoHey Edwin, We agree and we're actively working on all the issues you bring up. Stick with us, it's really a big endeavor and it will improve quickly.
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- va_coder 15y agoBefore you sign up, Twitter asks you to give Prismatic permission to "Post tweets for me", why?
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- puredanger 15y agoYay, go Clojure! Hopefully we can get video from Bradford Cross's keynote from Clojure/West up on the web soon.
- minikomi 15y agoSigned up last time this popped up but didn't jump in (bad timing).. Just kicking the tiers, the suggestions are really hitting the right spot. Just a suggestion - I'd really like another button - read - with an action like the "dont like" button, so I cam just sit there clicking next next next without scrolling down (that said, the vim keys to jump between stories is awesome!!)
- kijin 15y agoAny way to sign up without using a Twitter account? Or is the service so tightly integrated with Twitter that it would be pointless to do so?
- joshu 15y agoHey Bradford, congrats on launching!
- noodleey 15y agoI actively use it for last 3-4 months and it's definitely my nr1 tool to receive news!! give me a heads up on twitter if you need an invite @zappika ;)
- davekale 15y agoCongrats to Aria and Bradford. Knowing Aria and his work, I have little doubt there is some fantastic engineering under the hood at Prismatic.