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Ask HN: Please review our Startup - ThreeFeeds

7 points by flashgordon 18y ago

This came out of StartupCamp sydney II on the weekend of 17th Jan. We are obviously looking to take it a lot further and would really appreciate feedback on what we could do and what we should cut out of it. www.threefeeds.com What is it? Its a topic aggregator. Lets you keep track of items on Twitter, Blogs and other sources as you add them in an easy way. You can contact us either from my HN profile, or send email to feedback@threefeeds.com Cant wait to hear all the good, bad and ugly from y'all.. thanks again.

bprater 18y ago
You haven't clearly described what the service is and what problem I'm having that it fixes. (And why my present tools aren't good enough.)
- andrewdever 18y ago
  The service is Search & RSS aggregation across multiple platforms (i.e. google, blogsearch & twitter). Once these are aggregated the tool also allows you to share a link, subscribe via RSS or email and embed a widget on your website. The problem that it solves is "searching a term or topic across multiple sites is difficult and time consuming, and there's no easy way for me to aggregate and share this" Your present tools aren't good enough because they don't aggregate search (e.g. google shows 1 list of search results across all sites) and this makes it time consuming to do the kind of web, blog and social search needed today. They also don't allow you to easily subscribe, share and widgetize up-to-date search results. We're working on the homepage copy to make this clearer to new users, and this might include a demo video. Any more feedback on this is much appreciated :-)
  - bprater 18y ago
    'The problem that it solves is "searching a term or topic across multiple sites is difficult and time consuming, and there's no easy way for me to aggregate and share this"' I use Google to search for topics across sites. I'm not trying to be difficult, but I'd continue to refine your pitch until it makes crystal-clear sense in one sentence.
    - andrewdever 18y ago
      Thanks for the valuable feedback :-) Google search is that google creates only 1 list, and you can only search 1 topic per browser window. As well as this it doesn't allow the user to easily subscribe to an aggregated RSS, share a link or widgetise the results. ThreeFeeds let's you aggregate seperate search 'lists' and add more than 1 topic, and then easily feed, share and widgetise the results. So an example use case could be tracking an election campaign, whereby you can track several candidates (as well as additional terms or topics) across web, blog and social sites and then feed this into your reader, add a widget to your website or share the page with friends
utnick 18y ago
I was thinking of doing something similar. I think it will be more popular if you don't make people login. For example, threefeeds.com/erlang takes you to the erlang feeds page and then just have a normal rss link at the bottom.
- flashgordon 18y ago
  actually login is completely optional... logging in is only if you would like to subscribe to your aggregated set of topics... up until the point of subscribing or sharing (or embedding it as a widget on a blog) logging is not necessary... so ideally one could go her and simply enter the topic and get a synopsis of what is going on without a login :D
- flashgordon 18y ago
  also the other thing i forgot mention was that, the real value comes in when you can customise the feeds (eg remove twitter but leave google and my own particular blogs in)... this is why we have put a login constraint.. but that is a good idea for unmodified topic watches... so that a search for "android" without any changes will be at the one location... thanks for that one
jeroen 18y ago
Too late for deep thoughts, but two small annoyances: - <enter> doesn't trigger the Add button in the search field - when I hit refresh, everything I just added is gone. It would be nice if it were remembered (in a cookie?) Oh, and tell me what I get for registering.
- flashgordon 18y ago
  actually the idea was that refresh was a way of starting over... it was by design, so that any thing you add becomes part of the current topic you were watching... granted a clearer way to clear it would have been a "Start over" button...
- flashgordon 18y ago
  <enter> works now btw :D
dc2k08 18y ago
nice idea and very clean. I have a site that gives out an RSS feed. how do I get three feeds to see it?
- flashgordon 18y ago
  you can add blogs to the search bar and its added to your list of topics you want to watch :D sorry that should have been "clear" on the page...

7 points by flashgordon 18y ago

bprater 18y ago

You haven't clearly described what the service is and what problem I'm having that it fixes. (And why my present tools aren't good enough.)

andrewdever 18y ago
The service is Search & RSS aggregation across multiple platforms (i.e. google, blogsearch & twitter). Once these are aggregated the tool also allows you to share a link, subscribe via RSS or email and embed a widget on your website. The problem that it solves is "searching a term or topic across multiple sites is difficult and time consuming, and there's no easy way for me to aggregate and share this" Your present tools aren't good enough because they don't aggregate search (e.g. google shows 1 list of search results across all sites) and this makes it time consuming to do the kind of web, blog and social search needed today. They also don't allow you to easily subscribe, share and widgetize up-to-date search results. We're working on the homepage copy to make this clearer to new users, and this might include a demo video. Any more feedback on this is much appreciated :-)
- bprater 18y ago
  'The problem that it solves is "searching a term or topic across multiple sites is difficult and time consuming, and there's no easy way for me to aggregate and share this"' I use Google to search for topics across sites. I'm not trying to be difficult, but I'd continue to refine your pitch until it makes crystal-clear sense in one sentence.
  - andrewdever 18y ago
    Thanks for the valuable feedback :-) Google search is that google creates only 1 list, and you can only search 1 topic per browser window. As well as this it doesn't allow the user to easily subscribe to an aggregated RSS, share a link or widgetise the results. ThreeFeeds let's you aggregate seperate search 'lists' and add more than 1 topic, and then easily feed, share and widgetise the results. So an example use case could be tracking an election campaign, whereby you can track several candidates (as well as additional terms or topics) across web, blog and social sites and then feed this into your reader, add a widget to your website or share the page with friends

utnick 18y ago

I was thinking of doing something similar. I think it will be more popular if you don't make people login. For example, threefeeds.com/erlang takes you to the erlang feeds page and then just have a normal rss link at the bottom.

flashgordon 18y ago
actually login is completely optional... logging in is only if you would like to subscribe to your aggregated set of topics... up until the point of subscribing or sharing (or embedding it as a widget on a blog) logging is not necessary... so ideally one could go her and simply enter the topic and get a synopsis of what is going on without a login :D
flashgordon 18y ago
also the other thing i forgot mention was that, the real value comes in when you can customise the feeds (eg remove twitter but leave google and my own particular blogs in)... this is why we have put a login constraint.. but that is a good idea for unmodified topic watches... so that a search for "android" without any changes will be at the one location... thanks for that one

jeroen 18y ago

Too late for deep thoughts, but two small annoyances: - <enter> doesn't trigger the Add button in the search field - when I hit refresh, everything I just added is gone. It would be nice if it were remembered (in a cookie?) Oh, and tell me what I get for registering.

flashgordon 18y ago
actually the idea was that refresh was a way of starting over... it was by design, so that any thing you add becomes part of the current topic you were watching... granted a clearer way to clear it would have been a "Start over" button...
flashgordon 18y ago
<enter> works now btw :D

dc2k08 18y ago

nice idea and very clean. I have a site that gives out an RSS feed. how do I get three feeds to see it?

flashgordon 18y ago
you can add blogs to the search bar and its added to your list of topics you want to watch :D sorry that should have been "clear" on the page...