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Ask HN: Review my startup Readness.com - a last.fm for news [chrome/fb connect]

32 points by pclark ↗ HN
We spend most of our time reading on the web. We're doing it right now. But what we read still feels like a black box, we believe we can create a remarkable experience by making these habits open.

We read to stay informed, and we wish to remain informed amongst our friends - this is the crux of readness.com, to inform you of what your friends are reading, and vice versa.

Readness.com remembers what news articles you read and shares them to your Readness.com friends. The great thing about this is irrespective of how you read news - Hacker News, websites, Twitter or RSS - as long as it's in the browser we can create you and your friends remarkability (recommendations and data).

We do this via a simple browser extension, initially for Google Chrome. We've designed this entire experience to respect your privacy online. Hopefully the click through to our site clearly defines our policy (essentialy: only friends see what you _read_, everyone else data & starred articles, 15 minute window before articles are shown to friends, whitelist of sites only)

You also get a great profile of what news you read, a news profile. It shows the topic sources and topics of news you read.

This product is super early (and our 3rd major product iteration, but thats another story) and we'd love all feedback on privacy, facebook integration and where you find value. Check it out!

Thanks!

Peter - CEO @ Broadersheet

http://beta.broadersheet.com

21 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 55.4 ms ] thread
obsaysditto
With all the talk about privacy issues recently, the user should be prompted after they connect via Facebook to set their profile as Open, Delayed, or Private.

I am still trying to figure out how to do stuff and maybe that is a sign to help the user through it. Like, what does unlock and level up mean in the settings?

pclark
the unlock and level up stuff relate to quests/achievements for news, they're not quite ready for usage yet. We're interested in trying to tempt people to discover new articles or sources via incentization, essentially.
jmatt
I think it would be ideal if the experience was more transparent. Discover some great articles that your friends and family may enjoy and incidentally get achievements. I don't think anyone on SO, the most successful achievement system out there, actually chases achievements. Instead the achievement system should rewards whatever behavior helps the community and app the most.
jokermatt999
Might be nice to mention this is all through Facebook connect in the title. I have plenty of interest in something like this, but no interest in having a Facebook account.
pclark
tweaked title - sorry. and we do plan on supporting other sign on services.
jokermatt999
Thanks, I'll be sure to check it out then. I'm definitely interested in the idea of recommendations for articles to read. Google Reader tries to do recommended items, but it's pretty bad in my experience.
jbail
I second the motion. Sites that force you to use Facebook to login make the Internet sad.
zmmz
Like joker, I don't have a facebook account to test this but the project certainly looks interesting.

I am curious as to how you select what topic an article has? Doing a few random searches it seems to be a combination of scanning tags in articles and the names of the articles. Could you elaborate?

pclark
we use the zemanta article and we're building our own technology atop their tags (some are too loose for our content)

would you sign up with twitter if you could? planning next sign on service :)

zmmz
Thanks for the reply. Twitter + firefox would do it for me.
tworx
Come to think of it your site brings another dimension to the way we interact on the web but what separates you guys from say Google's Reader service. I'll take a look.
bdickason
I personally didn't find the screenshot very compelling. I think a "What are your friends reading now" with a few URL's and title's (kind of like a 'what's hot') for the screenshot would be much more interesting and get me to click. Also, as I scrolled down the 'download' page, the green arrow didn't stay with me.
pclark
thanks for the feedback. you're totally right about the screenshot now that someone mentions it :)

will put a more engaging one in with some javascript sprinkles.

yourentwesplit
I actually really like this idea in theory. I currently find most articles through either RSS (Google Reader) or Twitter because I know I can trust these people.

If you can find a way to crowdsource who I follow on twitter so that it instantly reveals the "top topics" I'd sign on immediately.

Perhaps an additional page on your site (I'm not on Facebook either so I can't check you out), where I can upload my twitter name and it sorts links shared by who I follow in order by the # of retweets, time, etc...

Good luck!