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Hey! We created Newsbrane because we were frustrated with the skew between the popular stuff and the quality stuff on social news sites like this one and Reddit

Hey! We created Newsbrane because we were frustrated with the skew between the popular stuff and the quality stuff on social news sites like this one and Reddit. Easy-to-upvote stuff gets to the top quickly, which is not always what you want. Newsbrane learns your personal tastes, so it avoids this problem. Now whatever's at the top of your recommendations is completely up to you, and if you don't like it, you can change it with a few downvotes. It learns instantly, so just refresh the page after making a few votes either way. We wrote a more detailed article about this "lowest common denominator problem" and how Newsbrane solves it: http://blog.newsbrane.com/?p=4 http://blog.newsbrane.com/?p=4 Anyway, if you'd try Newsbrane, I'd be appreciative. If you send us feedback -- UI suggestions, security flaws, whatever -- I'll be VERY appreciative. Emailing feedback@newsbrane.com is the easiest way for me, but feel free to post here if it adds to the discussion! I intend to respond to every piece of feedback. The main question I want to answer is whether it can replace Hacker News for you. If not, why not? When you first sign up, you'll have to spend a little time training Newsbrane before it's useful. A good way to train it, if you know what you usually want to read, is to click 'Add Subscription' and add the Hacker News feed (or whatever other feeds you like), and vote on the recent articles there. Good luck!

newsio 17y ago
I'd like to offer a small observation about how you are pitching your idea to this group: I know you are thinking about how to unseat the competition, but asking people to try out your tool with an eye toward abandoning something that we like is not the best approach, in my opinion. I don't want to "replace" Hacker News. I assume that I am not alone -- many people are very loyal to HN, and like the community and the information found here. We're not looking to dump it in favor of something else, although if it's a compelling product I might use it in addition to HN.
- lincolnq 17y ago
  Hmm. I can see what you're saying. (I'm actually kind of loyal to HN too, but I visit mainly for the comments.) Thanks for the idea -- it's much appreciated!
- ynniv 17y ago
  Yes - suggesting that your product might "replace" HN creates preconceptions in my mind before I get there. I see the link, I imagine startup relevant topics, I see dinosaur comics. WTF? Fail.
  - lincolnq 17y ago
    Whoops, sorry to give you the wrong preconceptions. If you train it by voting a bunch, you can make it give you whatever topics you like, startup news definitely included. If you don't have the patience to train it, I've heard that feedback before, and that's an axis along which we don't have a good answer yet -- though hopefully we will soon!
    - ynniv 17y ago
      Thats okay, marketing is a learned skill. You might try making some profile templates that I can start with. The landing page could say, if you like Hacker News, click here, if you like XKCD, click here, etc. Clicking would copy the profile of a user that you have pre-trained with items that are like that site.

newsio 17y ago

I'd like to offer a small observation about how you are pitching your idea to this group: I know you are thinking about how to unseat the competition, but asking people to try out your tool with an eye toward abandoning something that we like is not the best approach, in my opinion. I don't want to "replace" Hacker News. I assume that I am not alone -- many people are very loyal to HN, and like the community and the information found here. We're not looking to dump it in favor of something else, although if it's a compelling product I might use it in addition to HN.

lincolnq 17y ago
Hmm. I can see what you're saying. (I'm actually kind of loyal to HN too, but I visit mainly for the comments.) Thanks for the idea -- it's much appreciated!
ynniv 17y ago
Yes - suggesting that your product might "replace" HN creates preconceptions in my mind before I get there. I see the link, I imagine startup relevant topics, I see dinosaur comics. WTF? Fail.
- lincolnq 17y ago
  Whoops, sorry to give you the wrong preconceptions. If you train it by voting a bunch, you can make it give you whatever topics you like, startup news definitely included. If you don't have the patience to train it, I've heard that feedback before, and that's an axis along which we don't have a good answer yet -- though hopefully we will soon!
  - ynniv 17y ago
    Thats okay, marketing is a learned skill. You might try making some profile templates that I can start with. The landing page could say, if you like Hacker News, click here, if you like XKCD, click here, etc. Clicking would copy the profile of a user that you have pre-trained with items that are like that site.