3 ms·

Ask YC: Rate my news aggregator prototype

4 points by adammichaelc 18y ago

First, if you want to skip my explanation and just see what I've built, http://startupurls.com/ For those with a bit more time, first, my problem: I don't go to popurls.com because I don't like reading news about Brittney Spears or the latest rantings from Digg, but I really like the concept. I like looking through top news stories in an aggregator along with unique photographs and videos. But I've never found anything like it that is focused around startups. I have a couple of specific questions. 1. Is this a site you'd visit? 2. What other url's would you be interested in getting news from? (I looked at startups.alltop.com, but it seems that most of that is not very high quality -- it seems to be there simple because the blog has the word "startup" in it. There are a few exceptions). I'd really like to see where you read about startups, which reminds me, I need to add killerstartups.com. Plus, there are no pictures. Pictures break up the monotony of getting news from text, IMHO. 3. Are there any sites (or feeds) that show videos re: startups? Pictures? Thanks!

ErrantX 18y ago
A nice idea. I like the concept. The execution is good too :D Your right pictures would be nice if you can get them in. Also I would push the content to the right and put a slim sidebar with some more info and links to stuff you can't syndicate (perhaps). One killer feature (not sure how far you want to go with the site :D) might be to allow accounts and then for us to save our favourites or memorable content for future reference (like a personal search.yc). +woot though :D
- adammichaelc 18y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure if this will take off or not, but it's something that I'll visit every day, and in the end that's all that matters (unless I was depending on this to feed the fam, which luckily I'm not). I still can't believe there's so much open-source software that allows creations like this to be possible. I had it running in about 30 minutes.
answerly 18y ago
Seems like a site like this will live or die by the curation. Its not clear to me why I would visit your site versus Hacker News since the community here culls out the startup related posts from the sources you have listed on your site already. Also, "startups" is a pretty broad topic and there are lots of sites which aggregate startup related content. It seems like you could be more successful by picking some aspect of startups and focusing on aggregating content related to that specific aspect. As far as video, vator.tv has lots of startup video content. I am not sure about pictures, but sites like slideshare.com have interesting startup related presentations.
- adammichaelc 18y ago
  Thanks for the tips. What do you mean by "curation?"
  - answerly 18y ago
    Just the idea that you could bring a lot of value by only displaying content that is truly related to startups. For example, you are pulling in the straight TechCrunch feed, but in reality only a small percentage of TechCrunch stories are really relevant to startups. One potential way to improve on the sites that inspired your site is by creating some filtering system to only show the relevant stuff. I know Guy Kawasaki has said that AllTop is targeted to folks who don't know how to use feed readers (i.e. non-techies). But an audience for a startup related news is probably already grabbing the feeds for a lot of these sites. So, you could make the user experience better by filtering out some of the "other stuff" either programatically or by hand. Anyway, hope this is helpful.
    - adammichaelc 18y ago
      Good point. Thanks for the feedback.
bemmu 18y ago
Personally I would just subscribe to the blogs I'm interested in by RSS, but then again popurls does seem to be popular, so I'm sure there is some portion of people who prefer this.

4 points by adammichaelc 18y ago

ErrantX 18y ago

A nice idea. I like the concept. The execution is good too :D Your right pictures would be nice if you can get them in. Also I would push the content to the right and put a slim sidebar with some more info and links to stuff you can't syndicate (perhaps). One killer feature (not sure how far you want to go with the site :D) might be to allow accounts and then for us to save our favourites or memorable content for future reference (like a personal search.yc). +woot though :D

adammichaelc 18y ago
Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure if this will take off or not, but it's something that I'll visit every day, and in the end that's all that matters (unless I was depending on this to feed the fam, which luckily I'm not). I still can't believe there's so much open-source software that allows creations like this to be possible. I had it running in about 30 minutes.

answerly 18y ago

Seems like a site like this will live or die by the curation. Its not clear to me why I would visit your site versus Hacker News since the community here culls out the startup related posts from the sources you have listed on your site already. Also, "startups" is a pretty broad topic and there are lots of sites which aggregate startup related content. It seems like you could be more successful by picking some aspect of startups and focusing on aggregating content related to that specific aspect. As far as video, vator.tv has lots of startup video content. I am not sure about pictures, but sites like slideshare.com have interesting startup related presentations.

adammichaelc 18y ago
Thanks for the tips. What do you mean by "curation?"
- answerly 18y ago
  Just the idea that you could bring a lot of value by only displaying content that is truly related to startups. For example, you are pulling in the straight TechCrunch feed, but in reality only a small percentage of TechCrunch stories are really relevant to startups. One potential way to improve on the sites that inspired your site is by creating some filtering system to only show the relevant stuff. I know Guy Kawasaki has said that AllTop is targeted to folks who don't know how to use feed readers (i.e. non-techies). But an audience for a startup related news is probably already grabbing the feeds for a lot of these sites. So, you could make the user experience better by filtering out some of the "other stuff" either programatically or by hand. Anyway, hope this is helpful.
  - adammichaelc 18y ago
    Good point. Thanks for the feedback.

bemmu 18y ago

Personally I would just subscribe to the blogs I'm interested in by RSS, but then again popurls does seem to be popular, so I'm sure there is some portion of people who prefer this.