3 ms·

Knowing (or rather finding) content that is important/reliable (signal:noise ratio), and knowing what content is accurate.

sillysaurus3 12y ago
What's the value? I understand companies might pay for access to that, but why? When most people get their news from Reddit, and when techies get their news from HN, what's left? It seems hard to beat a community of upvotes. To phrase it more precisely, why is access to news within 60 seconds more valuable than access within 20 minutes? Are stock traders going to be the customer, or who? There doesn't seem to be a way to deploy advertising with this, so it's hard to understand why it will make money. Is the goal to sell this to TV stations who then show ads after they tell people about breaking news?
- austenallred 12y ago
  > When most people get their news from Reddit, and when techies get their news from HN "Most people" have never heard of Reddit or HN. The difference isn't 60 seconds vs. 20 minutes; it's <=20 minutes vs 6 hours. Do a Google News search for a breaking news event and for a few hours you only find yesterday's articles.
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    I wonder who would pay for that and why? Since advertisements can't be deployed through such a service, the service will need customers. Are those customers companies, or individuals? Are you going to sell to people involved in the stock market, like day traders? Or what type of customers would find this valuable?
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    Most techies have never heard of HN. Maybe 10 percent of them I meet have heard of it, almost none of them actually use it.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      What do they think of your extensive personal interest interviews?
      - vinceguidry 12y ago
        It's called having conversations. You should try it sometime.
        maxerickson 12y ago
        I think your irritation is justified, it would have been better to not make that comment. Sorry.
- ageek123 12y ago
  The day most people get their news from reddit, we're doomed.
sparkzilla 12y ago
Accuracy is over-rated for breaking news. The trend to try to fact-check every tiny piece of information as it comes in is a red herring.
- austenallred 12y ago
  > Accuracy is over-rated for breaking news. I don't even know what to say to that. The notion of accuracy being "overrated" in any aspect of news is very troubling to me. Wars are fought, people are killed, and lives are destroyed as a result of inaccurate news. For some news events up to 30% of the content being shared (and going viral) across social networks is verifiably false. That sways beliefs and opinions and affect lives. To conclude otherwise is completely irresponsible and incredibly dangerous. That's dangerous for society, dangerous for democracy, and... I can't believe I'm actually arguing that inaccurate information being shared as if it were accurate is dangerous.
  - sparkzilla 12y ago
    Hyperbole aside, you are conflating two things: The accuracy of breaking news with the dissemination of that news. Breaking news is very often inaccurate. No amount of fact checking can fix it because in most cases no other news is available to counter the initial report. Unless you have reporters on the ground who can provide a more accurate report, you can't hope to improve that report. When a later report becomes available it becomes the newest report. Like Infobitt, you appear to be aiming for a metric of quality ("accuracy") that the market doesn't care about that much. Take the recent plane crash in Taiwan as an example. At first it was reported that there were one or two casualties. Later reports said 13 dead. Most people are like "Oh really?" But, even though the first report is less accurate, it has more value to people than the second (unless you have family on the plane). As for the distribution of news, unless you are Facebook you have no control over how news is shared. In fact, most people don't care about the casualties, they just want to share the video of the plane crashing across the bridge.
    - austenallred 12y ago
      News spreads however it's first reported. Sometimes it's corrected later, but often times it's picked up and spread, even by major news organizations. You are assuming that news will eventually be corrected by news organizations. First, that's a false assumption (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8757421 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8757421), and second, for many it's already too late by that point. An anecdote of one false rumor not mattering doesn't change the fact that accurate news makes a difference.

sillysaurus3 12y ago

What's the value? I understand companies might pay for access to that, but why? When most people get their news from Reddit, and when techies get their news from HN, what's left? It seems hard to beat a community of upvotes. To phrase it more precisely, why is access to news within 60 seconds more valuable than access within 20 minutes? Are stock traders going to be the customer, or who? There doesn't seem to be a way to deploy advertising with this, so it's hard to understand why it will make money. Is the goal to sell this to TV stations who then show ads after they tell people about breaking news?

austenallred 12y ago
> When most people get their news from Reddit, and when techies get their news from HN "Most people" have never heard of Reddit or HN. The difference isn't 60 seconds vs. 20 minutes; it's <=20 minutes vs 6 hours. Do a Google News search for a breaking news event and for a few hours you only find yesterday's articles.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  I wonder who would pay for that and why? Since advertisements can't be deployed through such a service, the service will need customers. Are those customers companies, or individuals? Are you going to sell to people involved in the stock market, like day traders? Or what type of customers would find this valuable?
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  Most techies have never heard of HN. Maybe 10 percent of them I meet have heard of it, almost none of them actually use it.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    What do they think of your extensive personal interest interviews?
    - vinceguidry 12y ago
      It's called having conversations. You should try it sometime.
      - maxerickson 12y ago
        I think your irritation is justified, it would have been better to not make that comment. Sorry.
ageek123 12y ago
The day most people get their news from reddit, we're doomed.

sparkzilla 12y ago

Accuracy is over-rated for breaking news. The trend to try to fact-check every tiny piece of information as it comes in is a red herring.

austenallred 12y ago
> Accuracy is over-rated for breaking news. I don't even know what to say to that. The notion of accuracy being "overrated" in any aspect of news is very troubling to me. Wars are fought, people are killed, and lives are destroyed as a result of inaccurate news. For some news events up to 30% of the content being shared (and going viral) across social networks is verifiably false. That sways beliefs and opinions and affect lives. To conclude otherwise is completely irresponsible and incredibly dangerous. That's dangerous for society, dangerous for democracy, and... I can't believe I'm actually arguing that inaccurate information being shared as if it were accurate is dangerous.
- sparkzilla 12y ago
  Hyperbole aside, you are conflating two things: The accuracy of breaking news with the dissemination of that news. Breaking news is very often inaccurate. No amount of fact checking can fix it because in most cases no other news is available to counter the initial report. Unless you have reporters on the ground who can provide a more accurate report, you can't hope to improve that report. When a later report becomes available it becomes the newest report. Like Infobitt, you appear to be aiming for a metric of quality ("accuracy") that the market doesn't care about that much. Take the recent plane crash in Taiwan as an example. At first it was reported that there were one or two casualties. Later reports said 13 dead. Most people are like "Oh really?" But, even though the first report is less accurate, it has more value to people than the second (unless you have family on the plane). As for the distribution of news, unless you are Facebook you have no control over how news is shared. In fact, most people don't care about the casualties, they just want to share the video of the plane crashing across the bridge.
  - austenallred 12y ago
    News spreads however it's first reported. Sometimes it's corrected later, but often times it's picked up and spread, even by major news organizations. You are assuming that news will eventually be corrected by news organizations. First, that's a false assumption (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8757421 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8757421), and second, for many it's already too late by that point. An anecdote of one false rumor not mattering doesn't change the fact that accurate news makes a difference.