9 ms·

Yahoo Acquires News Gathering And Delivery Startup Summly

57 points by richardv 14y ago

rayiner 14y ago
Is there something about these "ly" startup names that escapes me?
- shawndumas 14y ago
  .ly is a tld http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ly
- nwzpaperman 14y ago
  They rare.ly last
  - chunknug 14y ago
    Well played, well played indeed.
- zalzane 14y ago
  It's just a startup trend for catchy domain names. Recently, .io has been fairly popular as well.
- clicks 14y ago
  Premium domain names (of .com tld suffix) are nearly impossible to come by, and if you're interested in buying them some will literally run into the millions (last month I tried to engage with a domain seller... I was in my mind convinced that I'd pay up to $500 for the domain he owned, imagine my surprise when the guy gets back to me with a '$650,000' counter-offer). So now a lot of startups (without much funds) are flocking to .ly, .io, etc. domain suffixes, coming up with clever puns to name their startups, etc. all to avoid paying ridiculous amounts for domains. Yes, I don't exactly have a good opinion of people in this domain squatting business as you could have guessed. The .ly domain name for startups has become somewhat of a fun fad, there isn't much rhyme or reason to it.
nicholassmith 14y ago
It's an interesting purchase from Yahoo, I've used the app a few times on and off since it was released. It's fun, not sure how good it is at what it promises but it can always be tweaked up. Maybe it's a sign of Yahoo's slow realisation that there's money to be made in them thar mobile delivery platforms.
highace 14y ago
Some of the articles surrounding this seem to hint that the app was failing. Is this true? Furthermore, kudos to the founder for creating this thing at such a young age, but is he really going to have a space at Yahoo?
- ancarda 14y ago
  Not sure about other people's experiences however the app consistently produced inaccurate results for me and often had several nasty bugs. i.e. I would see HTML in bullet points because it wasn't parsing the page properly.
ericcholis 14y ago
Slightly related, but I'm ecstatic about young developers building things like this. It shows a great aptitude for engineering, i.e. identifying and solving a problem or a need. It's even better that his product got acquired. I hope that this can serve as yet another example of how important software and product development can in education.
unreal37 14y ago
And it will be removed from the App Store today too. Another interesting technology killed and users crushed. Yay Yahoo!
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
xianshou 14y ago
Young genius, hot technology, insufficient adoption, clever acquihire, gentle disappearance. It's the circle of life... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX07j9SDFcc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX07j9SDFcc
- freyr 14y ago
  Young programmer showing a glimmer of promise, overhyped technology, no adoption, acquihire, a tree falls in the woods.
citricsquid 14y ago
Although money isn't everything it's pretty note worthy in this case that the sale price was apparently around £30 million[1] which means he's now worth 8 figures, self-made money that he's too young to access. Heh. [1] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/techandgadgets/exclusive-summly-app-created-by-london-schoolboy-sold-to-yahoo-for-millions-8548506.html http://www.standard.co.uk/news/techandgadgets/exclusive-summ...
- nanoman 14y ago
  Well, it seems he has gathered capital from a number of investors, which may want to be paid back: "Angel Investors and Advisors include; Ashton Kutcher, Betaworks, Brian Chesky, Hosain Rahman, Jessica Powell, Joanna Shields, Josh Kushner, Mark Pincus, Matt Mullenweg, Seb Bishop, Shakil Khan, Spencer Hyman, Stephen Fry, Troy Carter, Vivi Nevo, Yoko Ono and many more. We are also working closely with News Corporation on the summarization of their content." Source: http://summly.com/about.html http://summly.com/about.html But sure enough the kid is rich now.
  - throwaway129921 14y ago
    > But sure enough the kid is rich now. Fair play to him for doing this himself, but he wasn't exactly poor to begin with. A bit of googling shows the jobs his parents hold and an address on Parkside SW19 (which is one of the most expensive roads outside central London).
defen 14y ago
I remember when this launched and people on here were ragging on it, because it seemingly used the most naïve NLP imaginable and seemed to be getting hype simply because the founder was 15. I never used the app, so I'm curious what the story behind this acquisition is. Did it get a lot better? Did Yahoo! get snowed (seems unlikely)? Talent acquisition?
- ronnier 14y ago
  This? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4727321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4727321
  - defen 14y ago
    That's the conversation I was thinking of, yes.
  - notahacker 14y ago
    HN certainly wasn't the only one ragging on Summly. http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15+year+old-app-developer-cry http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15+year+old-app-deve... d'Aloisio seems to have a attracted disproportionate mainstream press coverage and and unusually critical tech press attention considering his app's relatively low budget and short life, even for a youngster. Being expensively acquihired by Yahoo might not change that, but I guess the monetary reward at 17 gives him the last laugh
dictum 14y ago
Congratulations, Yahoo! Now you own a slice of the smartphone apps pie. Remember when you bought Geocities and Broadcast.com to have a slice of the dot com bubble pie? Remember when you bought Flickr and Delicious to have a slice of the Web 2.0 pie? * * * Good news for D’Aloisio: post-acqhiresition, founders of companies bought by Yahoo always seem to do well.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
notlisted 14y ago
This thing didn't work well at all. Strange acquisition. What's the dealio? Yahoo assisting not-so-smart investors from waking up with egg on their faces? I worked on auto-summary-generation in the late 90s (I know I know, lawn, get off you shall) When I ragged on Summly elsewhere ("yet another example of people claiming genius inventions by under-18s that fall short upon closer inspection of the claims") I came across http://skimzee.com http://skimzee.com in a comment of an older guy who complained about the attention Summly generated. Skimzee.com lacks the web 3.0 design finesse, and hipp-ly name, but does a very admirable job summarizing articles in various languages. Tried it out and was very impressed, simple interface, works on non-English languages as well. Deserving your attention/feedback. (disclosure: have nothing to do with the site, but did communicate with the creator a couple of times. very smart older guy.)
- mark_l_watson 14y ago
  I just looked at skimzee - looks like a nice site, but: for the few article summaries that I compared with the original article: the summary was just the first couple of paragraphs in the article.
  - notlisted 14y ago
    Fiddle with the slider at the top. The default setting is rather limited. It works better on some sites than it does on others, mainly because distinguishing content from "other clutter" is a b*tch of a problem to solve. The best way I've found to test this out is installing the bookmarklet (which for some odd reason is hidden in the settings page... see http://skimzee.com/settings.html http://skimzee.com/settings.html )
- brador 14y ago
  There's always http://skimfeed.com http://skimfeed.com if you just want a tech news firehose.
  - petercooper 14y ago
    Although, ultimately.. I think the technology-assisted human curation angle works best: http://techmeme.com/ http://techmeme.com/ This makes me wonder what TechMeme would be worth actually.
fmd 14y ago
Does this have anything to do with LinkedIn purchasing Pulse? A competitive move on Yahoo!'s part?
patrickmandia 14y ago
AllThingsD pegs the price at $30M http://allthingsd.com/20130325/yahoo-paid-30-million-in-cash-for-18-months-of-young-summly-entrepreneurs-time/ http://allthingsd.com/20130325/yahoo-paid-30-million-in-cash...
zacharyvoase 14y ago
More evidence that overnight success takes at least a couple of years :) a hearty congratulations to Mr. D'Aloisio.
HunterV 14y ago
In my honest opinion Yahoo! acquired Summly for their launch video: https://vimeo.com/52014691 https://vimeo.com/52014691 It's simply so cool. Yahoo! is nowhere near that cool. The experiment now is if buying cool makes you cool.
- HunterV 14y ago
  Can I just say I called it before Wired posted this: http://www.wired.com/business/2013/03/yahoo-summly/ http://www.wired.com/business/2013/03/yahoo-summly/
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

57 points by richardv 14y ago

rayiner 14y ago

Is there something about these "ly" startup names that escapes me?

shawndumas 14y ago
.ly is a tld http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ly
nwzpaperman 14y ago
They rare.ly last
- chunknug 14y ago
  Well played, well played indeed.
zalzane 14y ago
It's just a startup trend for catchy domain names. Recently, .io has been fairly popular as well.
clicks 14y ago
Premium domain names (of .com tld suffix) are nearly impossible to come by, and if you're interested in buying them some will literally run into the millions (last month I tried to engage with a domain seller... I was in my mind convinced that I'd pay up to $500 for the domain he owned, imagine my surprise when the guy gets back to me with a '$650,000' counter-offer). So now a lot of startups (without much funds) are flocking to .ly, .io, etc. domain suffixes, coming up with clever puns to name their startups, etc. all to avoid paying ridiculous amounts for domains. Yes, I don't exactly have a good opinion of people in this domain squatting business as you could have guessed. The .ly domain name for startups has become somewhat of a fun fad, there isn't much rhyme or reason to it.

nicholassmith 14y ago

It's an interesting purchase from Yahoo, I've used the app a few times on and off since it was released. It's fun, not sure how good it is at what it promises but it can always be tweaked up. Maybe it's a sign of Yahoo's slow realisation that there's money to be made in them thar mobile delivery platforms.

highace 14y ago

Some of the articles surrounding this seem to hint that the app was failing. Is this true? Furthermore, kudos to the founder for creating this thing at such a young age, but is he really going to have a space at Yahoo?

ancarda 14y ago
Not sure about other people's experiences however the app consistently produced inaccurate results for me and often had several nasty bugs. i.e. I would see HTML in bullet points because it wasn't parsing the page properly.

ericcholis 14y ago

Slightly related, but I'm ecstatic about young developers building things like this. It shows a great aptitude for engineering, i.e. identifying and solving a problem or a need. It's even better that his product got acquired. I hope that this can serve as yet another example of how important software and product development can in education.

unreal37 14y ago

And it will be removed from the App Store today too. Another interesting technology killed and users crushed. Yay Yahoo!

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

xianshou 14y ago

Young genius, hot technology, insufficient adoption, clever acquihire, gentle disappearance. It's the circle of life... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX07j9SDFcc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX07j9SDFcc

freyr 14y ago
Young programmer showing a glimmer of promise, overhyped technology, no adoption, acquihire, a tree falls in the woods.

citricsquid 14y ago

Although money isn't everything it's pretty note worthy in this case that the sale price was apparently around £30 million[1] which means he's now worth 8 figures, self-made money that he's too young to access. Heh. [1] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/techandgadgets/exclusive-summly-app-created-by-london-schoolboy-sold-to-yahoo-for-millions-8548506.html http://www.standard.co.uk/news/techandgadgets/exclusive-summ...

nanoman 14y ago
Well, it seems he has gathered capital from a number of investors, which may want to be paid back: "Angel Investors and Advisors include; Ashton Kutcher, Betaworks, Brian Chesky, Hosain Rahman, Jessica Powell, Joanna Shields, Josh Kushner, Mark Pincus, Matt Mullenweg, Seb Bishop, Shakil Khan, Spencer Hyman, Stephen Fry, Troy Carter, Vivi Nevo, Yoko Ono and many more. We are also working closely with News Corporation on the summarization of their content." Source: http://summly.com/about.html http://summly.com/about.html But sure enough the kid is rich now.
- throwaway129921 14y ago
  > But sure enough the kid is rich now. Fair play to him for doing this himself, but he wasn't exactly poor to begin with. A bit of googling shows the jobs his parents hold and an address on Parkside SW19 (which is one of the most expensive roads outside central London).

defen 14y ago

I remember when this launched and people on here were ragging on it, because it seemingly used the most naïve NLP imaginable and seemed to be getting hype simply because the founder was 15. I never used the app, so I'm curious what the story behind this acquisition is. Did it get a lot better? Did Yahoo! get snowed (seems unlikely)? Talent acquisition?

ronnier 14y ago
This? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4727321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4727321
- defen 14y ago
  That's the conversation I was thinking of, yes.
- notahacker 14y ago
  HN certainly wasn't the only one ragging on Summly. http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15+year+old-app-developer-cry http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15+year+old-app-deve... d'Aloisio seems to have a attracted disproportionate mainstream press coverage and and unusually critical tech press attention considering his app's relatively low budget and short life, even for a youngster. Being expensively acquihired by Yahoo might not change that, but I guess the monetary reward at 17 gives him the last laugh

dictum 14y ago

Congratulations, Yahoo! Now you own a slice of the smartphone apps pie. Remember when you bought Geocities and Broadcast.com to have a slice of the dot com bubble pie? Remember when you bought Flickr and Delicious to have a slice of the Web 2.0 pie? * * * Good news for D’Aloisio: post-acqhiresition, founders of companies bought by Yahoo always seem to do well.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

notlisted 14y ago

This thing didn't work well at all. Strange acquisition. What's the dealio? Yahoo assisting not-so-smart investors from waking up with egg on their faces? I worked on auto-summary-generation in the late 90s (I know I know, lawn, get off you shall) When I ragged on Summly elsewhere ("yet another example of people claiming genius inventions by under-18s that fall short upon closer inspection of the claims") I came across http://skimzee.com http://skimzee.com in a comment of an older guy who complained about the attention Summly generated. Skimzee.com lacks the web 3.0 design finesse, and hipp-ly name, but does a very admirable job summarizing articles in various languages. Tried it out and was very impressed, simple interface, works on non-English languages as well. Deserving your attention/feedback. (disclosure: have nothing to do with the site, but did communicate with the creator a couple of times. very smart older guy.)

mark_l_watson 14y ago
I just looked at skimzee - looks like a nice site, but: for the few article summaries that I compared with the original article: the summary was just the first couple of paragraphs in the article.
- notlisted 14y ago
  Fiddle with the slider at the top. The default setting is rather limited. It works better on some sites than it does on others, mainly because distinguishing content from "other clutter" is a b*tch of a problem to solve. The best way I've found to test this out is installing the bookmarklet (which for some odd reason is hidden in the settings page... see http://skimzee.com/settings.html http://skimzee.com/settings.html )
brador 14y ago
There's always http://skimfeed.com http://skimfeed.com if you just want a tech news firehose.
- petercooper 14y ago
  Although, ultimately.. I think the technology-assisted human curation angle works best: http://techmeme.com/ http://techmeme.com/ This makes me wonder what TechMeme would be worth actually.

fmd 14y ago

Does this have anything to do with LinkedIn purchasing Pulse? A competitive move on Yahoo!'s part?

patrickmandia 14y ago

AllThingsD pegs the price at $30M http://allthingsd.com/20130325/yahoo-paid-30-million-in-cash-for-18-months-of-young-summly-entrepreneurs-time/ http://allthingsd.com/20130325/yahoo-paid-30-million-in-cash...

zacharyvoase 14y ago

More evidence that overnight success takes at least a couple of years :) a hearty congratulations to Mr. D'Aloisio.

HunterV 14y ago

In my honest opinion Yahoo! acquired Summly for their launch video: https://vimeo.com/52014691 https://vimeo.com/52014691 It's simply so cool. Yahoo! is nowhere near that cool. The experiment now is if buying cool makes you cool.

HunterV 14y ago
Can I just say I called it before Wired posted this: http://www.wired.com/business/2013/03/yahoo-summly/ http://www.wired.com/business/2013/03/yahoo-summly/

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]