3 ms·

This is my dream for Torbit (http://torbit.com http://torbit.com). We currently show performance data in a typical dashboard, but I wish we had a newsfeed as w

This is my dream for Torbit (http://torbit.com http://torbit.com). We currently show performance data in a typical dashboard, but I wish we had a newsfeed as well. We're playing with some ideas, but it turns out to be a really hard problem. I'd love to show a newsfeed with stories that say "your site is 5% faster because you changed this one JavaScript file" or "your site is 20% slower than usual right now due to a spike in IE6 usage in China". Those stories are simple for anyone to understand, but really tough to generate without a ton of false-positives. You have to account for daily, weekly or other seasonal changes in traffic patterns, even ones you wouldn't have an easy way to predict (like a commercial break during the Eastenders). You have to know what's typical for each site so you can detect anomalies and also be smart enough not to set off alarms when you get 5 visitors from Liechtenstein instead of 1. You have to wrestle with correlation vs. causation. It's a fun challenge & anyone who's interested in tackling it should check out http://torbit.com/jobs http://torbit.com/jobs. :)

2arrs2ells 14y ago
I met some ex-Facebook folks who were considering a "newsfeed as a service" startup, and thought that it was a great (albeit challenging) idea. An app developer give a third-party access to a stream of data (with hooks similar to mixpanel), and the third party is responsible for highlighting the best parts of the stream, consolidating similar stories, improving the algorithm, etc...
anildash 14y ago
"We're playing with some ideas, but it turns out to be a really hard problem." Yeah, this is definitely true. But it correctly puts the burden on the developer instead of the user. What's more, generally it makes for a more forgiving environment by which the user can interpret the data. If you say "you had a huge ecommerce day!" and it's Black Friday, the user interpreting it will be able to put that together, even if the app (initially) can't. Part of my bias here is that this is based on our experiences building ThinkUp, which is open source, and thus we're hoping to iterate on exactly these kinds of improvements when community members find the insights to be insufficiently, well, insightful.

2arrs2ells 14y ago

I met some ex-Facebook folks who were considering a "newsfeed as a service" startup, and thought that it was a great (albeit challenging) idea. An app developer give a third-party access to a stream of data (with hooks similar to mixpanel), and the third party is responsible for highlighting the best parts of the stream, consolidating similar stories, improving the algorithm, etc...

anildash 14y ago

"We're playing with some ideas, but it turns out to be a really hard problem." Yeah, this is definitely true. But it correctly puts the burden on the developer instead of the user. What's more, generally it makes for a more forgiving environment by which the user can interpret the data. If you say "you had a huge ecommerce day!" and it's Black Friday, the user interpreting it will be able to put that together, even if the app (initially) can't. Part of my bias here is that this is based on our experiences building ThinkUp, which is open source, and thus we're hoping to iterate on exactly these kinds of improvements when community members find the insights to be insufficiently, well, insightful.