HN Explorer

Ask HN: Review my startup, This & That

7 points by marbemac ↗ HN
http://getthisthat.com/explore

We're trying to organize social media around a web of topics (think semantic web). As a user you would sign in, connect your social networks, and we'd pull the links/media you're sharing/liking into a single feed organized around our web. Shares also get put into a general "explore" feed for public perusal.

Later possibilities include creating your own custom feed with topics and topic combinations. For example, you could add "iPhone 5", "Obama & Funny", or "Astronomy & Politics" to your feed.

We have not launched yet and organize half of the app is not yet ready, but thoughts on the general concept are welcome!

8 comments

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jiaaro
Where does the content come from right now?

Also, can I add new "topics" for the stuff I see here?

marbemac
The content on there right now is actually being pulled from public twitter accounts we've manually added.

When we open up the organize half of the app, content will be generated from a user's shares/likes on other social networks.

When you sign in, you can add topics to the posts we pull from your other social networks. This serves two purposes: you're organizing your own feed of shares, and helping to organize the general explore feed.

jiaaro
How do you rank the articles?
hiddenstage
I'd change the homepage to be the explore page ala Pinterest. Reason being the current homepage tells me absolutely nothing of what your app does. The majority of your audience has a microscopic attention span.
marbemac
Agreed - thanks for the tip!
jiaaro
Definitely agree!

A twitter-bootstrap-popover-esque "(1) click here… (2) then here" would also be good to help the users understand how filtering works.

Though, personally, I find it very intuitive already

bira
Exactly, what does the app do, exactly?

I read: "We organize social media around a web of topics. Want to organize your social presence?"

And I don't see the benefit for me as an user. Do I need an organized social presence? I don't feel the pain of not having one.

marbemac
Hi Bira,

Basically step 1 is we consolidate all the things you're sharing and liking on other networks into one place. Step 2 is we make your feed easy to navigate by organizing everything in it around topics.

Say that over the last year you've liked a few programming how-to videos on Youtube and shared a bunch of links to programming resources on Twitter / Facebook. We take all of that and consolidate it into the programming section of your feed. It makes it easy keep track of and re-share everything you've found about programming (just one specific topic example).

If you're able to keep track of all of this yourself across your networks then I guess we're not for you :) Or if you don't care to...