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Ask YC: feedback on my startup (changefeed.com)

19 points by chf ↗ HN
I've often wanted something that'll alert me when URLs change, and show the resulting diff (e.g. changes to the terms of service or privacy policy of the sites I use, or the page for tracking some FedEx parcel I shipped, or areweatwarwithiran.com). ChangeFeed is designed to basically turn any page into a completely impartial RSS feed.

26 comments

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chf
I've often wanted something that'll alert me when URLs change, and show the resulting diff (e.g. changes to the terms of service or privacy policy of the sites I use, or the page for tracking some FedEx parcel I shipped, or areweatwarwithiran.com). ChangeFeed is designed to basically turn any page into a completely impartial RSS feed.
Shooter
Nice feature, but you need to explain what it is on the homepage.
bartman
I second that. Couldn't make anything off it until I went to some page and clicked the bookmarklet to see what happens. Nice idea though!

"Watch websites for changes/updates" might be a start.

wastedbrains
Yeah I couldn't really tell what the point was until adding a page. Then since it wasn't really a page that updated I didn't get it. Have an about page that shows a feed for a commonly known page. Something that changes often. That would make it really clear what your product does and if I would find it useful. Since this is YC I went a head and added a page and played around to see how it works, but in the real web I wouldn't take that much effort to try to understand the point of the product.

Once you see it working it is a really cool. It would be useful for some of the sites and blogs I read that still have no RSS feed. Nice work, I like that you keep it simple, but if I want to know more and I am willing to click to learn more you should offer some other information.

chf
Fair point. Done.
mercurio
It could still do with some more work.

The watch changes button made me expect that the page would show me real time changes. Why not change it to "Create Feed" as thats what it does.

You have a lot of white space to work with. Use it to better explain what the site is about. Display the pro account option more prominently. Add a little color.

fk0
I really like it as a utility. However, it's hard to imagine the use cases that would justify a pro subscription over just writing your own scripts.
sohail
The time required to write and maintain your own scripts perhaps?
fk0
Right but it seems like someone needing a pro subscription would be the type to write their own anyway. Nevermind :)
nikete
Are you for real with the "unlimited" part of the pro accounts? I.e. I will definitely get one if I am allowed to interact with my account programatically (ie I am free to write a script to add urls to monitor I?) this is functionally I have to use in a lot of the little tools i develop.
chf
My intent is that unlimited would be basically unlimited, but I suppose if things become crazy I might have to put a cap in place (1000 URLs or something). The API already exists in a sense; check out the bookmarklet.
brianr
It would be cool if you indexed the sites people are tracking (with their permission) or at least had an index showing changes on the top N sites on the web. I'd like to be able to browse changes across Facebook, Google, etc., without having to set up a feed, add it to my reader, and wait--it'd be great if I could see a history right away.
prakash
Who do you think will use your website? Would it be throwaway monitoring (something like mailinator)? People who are not savvy enough to use a RSS reader or RSS itself?

I love the minimalist design and the very functional UI -- good job.

You might want to shorten the subscribe URL so that it doesn't get wrapped in emails. Look at how short the you tube URL's are.

Good luck!

aston
I'm about to throw this on PG's essay list page. News.YC karma++ ftw...
mercurio
Nice idea. Made me think of tinyurl, so thats good. But this is just as easy to replicate, which makes me think of the hundreds of tinyurl clones. If you take a look at how those clones tried to distinguish themselves from tinyurl and what features they added, it might give you some ideas on how to add value to your site. Might let you stay ahead of the inevitable competition if people find this useful.

Also, a pro user would want to integrate this into some other service. So you should consider providing a simple request API call that returns the feed address. You should also consider not charging any money initially and focus instead on building a userbase.

bprater
Would be useful to allow a way for people to aggregate all changes into one feed. Hardly want to have to add 50 feeds when one could do the job.
mixmax
Absolutely lovely design.....

I understood what it was all about in five seconds - which is all the time you get before a potential customer clicks away.

dstowell
Put an example on the front page. Show a site before and after a change, along with the resulting RSS entry. The quality of the diffs will determine whether I want to subscribe.
jyothi
I like the idea. I think its a good thing to track sites you are interested. (other than blogs for which i would use feeds)

I wanted to set it up for our own startup - I entered http://www.reviewgist.com

Threw an error - glitch ?

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'TException' with message 'TSocket: Could not connect to localhost:9091 (Connection refused [111])' in /var/changefeed/thrift/thrift-php/src/transport/TSocket.php:182 Stack trace: #0 /var/changefeed/thrift/thrift-php/src/transport/TBufferedTransport.php(73): TSocket->open() #1 /var/changefeed/www/incl/conf.php(31): TBufferedTransport->open() #2 /var/changefeed/www/pub/new.php(5): diffConnect() #3 {main} thrown in /var/changefeed/thrift/thrift-php/src/transport/TSocket.php on line 18

jyothi
Correction - Of course I would set it up to track competitor sites but I was just trying our own site as a trial.
chf
Sorry; fixed.
paulgb
Cool idea.

I remember a company that did something similar, a while ago. You would give it a URL and it would email you with any changes (It was before RSS and Web 2.0... probably around the time of the bubble). I think they even let you specify what type of changes to monitor by feeding in an XML file. Anyone remember the name of that site?

ephextom
how can i remove my url from your DB??

(I entered a site of my own out of curiosity, but now its killing my stats!!)