
Blendle Is Up to Something Big - JeanMertz
http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/10/05/blendle-is-up-to-something-big/
======
Confiks
Another fun thing about Blendle is that it is open source. At least, only the
front-end, and probably unintentionally.

They left their Webpack source maps on the server [1]. Chrome automatically
unpacks the source map into a directory structure in the 'sources' debug view.
It's nice to see how they are building their React application.

I've previously sent them an email about this, but never got a reply back.
I've just sent them an email again. Let's see what happens.

[1]
[https://www.blendle.com/js/app.js.map](https://www.blendle.com/js/app.js.map)

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mverwijs
Love how a nay-sayer (www.mondaynote.com/2014/11/02/the-new-york-times-and-
springer-are-wrong-about-blendle/) got converted to a believer. Kudos to
Blendle for changing the proposition and to the author for taking another
look.

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otis_inf
Blendle offers articles across various outlets. It's a dataminer's dream: they
can monitor the interests of the readers of the articles like no online
newspaper/article site can as they can track what readers read across various
sites, how long the reader is paying attention, how it is shared, with whom,
in what order they're reading the articles etc. etc.

This is also the downside of this system: Blendle can create a very detailed
profile of your interests and thus you. This is very sad, as Blendle isn't
free, so you pay for the articles you read not only with money but also with
your privacy, and with no influence on what will happen with the profile data
Blendle created.

I know the group of people who is concerned about their privacy is small (or
not big enough, I'd say), and this might look like paranoid whining, but in
case you didn't realize this: now you do :)

~~~
arno_v
Blendle Data Scientist here (living said dream). I'd like to mention that
users do have influence on what is done with their data. We currently provide
two ways of determining what data is collected, one setting (which is switched
on by default) makes us collect data for internal usage. Switching this off
will make us stop sending analytics events from the frontend and we will stop
aggregating your data into a profile used for personalization. Note that these
profiles are currently being developed and are not yet in use anywhere and
once they will there only use case will be making Blendle better for its
users. The other setting is switched off by default and allows us to share
some data with one specific publisher (which is very clearly mentioned).

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danieldk
I have been using Blendle nearly since the day they launched for reading Dutch
newspapers. It is absolutely great: I can cherry-pick articles without
subscribing to a newspaper, I don't have to shop around on different newspaper
sites and they have this great feature where you can request a refund if an
article is not what you expected quality-wise.

Also, they have this nice feature where you can register your newspaper
subscription to get unlimited access in the Blendle webapp.

The only thing that I find lacking is an Android app - the webpage is
sometimes slow on my nicely spec'ed ASUS tablet and I'd like to save longer
articles for offline use.

~~~
jeroen94704
They do have an Android app, but I must admit I haven't used it on an Android
tablet, so maybe it is only for phones?

~~~
danieldk
Thanks for pointing this out, I completely missed that they introduced an app.
Maybe it was not available in Germany before? (Dutch expat here ;))

Edit: There also seem to be two apps:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.blendle.app...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.blendle.app&hl=en)

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blendle.ap...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blendle.app)

I cannot install the first (possibly because I am not in NL).

~~~
jorams
That first app is odd. I _am_ in the Netherlands, but it is "not available in
your country". The second one is.

~~~
lojanda
Hi, one of Blendle's Android devs here (Dutchie as well). The first one used
to be the official app, but since it posed some problems we deprecated it.
It'll be removed from the store soon. The second one is atm only meant for
Germany, but that might change very soon... :-)

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berryg
The one thing that is still bugging me is their automatic refill of your
wallet. As soon as I noticed it refilled far more often than I liked, I
quickly turned off the automatic refill. And now I am very conscious again of
the costs of reading an article. I am constantly thinking: "Is this article
really worth € 1,-?". Most of the time, no. Either I do not buy the article at
all or I ask my money back after reading it. The thing is: their is really not
that much content that is worth (like in paying for) reading. My favourite
spot for reading opinions is currently Medium. The quality of the articles and
the joy of reading is much better.

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teekert
Alexander Klöpping visited silicon valley for a series on dutch tv, I guess he
got inspired there :)
[http://dewerelddraaitdoor.vara.nl/media/230201](http://dewerelddraaitdoor.vara.nl/media/230201)
(Dutch)

~~~
wjnc
The thing with the Dutch adoption rate is indeed the use of public television
for massive pitching of the product. He had an 'Oprah book club' opening and
executed succesfully.

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applecore
It's increasingly clear that the future of publishing—for content
providers—will be to relinquish control and publish their content directly to
third-party distribution and engagement platforms.

See also: Snapchat Discover & Facebook Instant Articles.

~~~
x0x0
I can't possibly believe publishers could be stupid enough to partner with
Blendle. Blendle clearly, as demonstrated by the effort to duplicate content
down to the pixel, intend to be a middleman and, if they get popular, control
the pubs. If they were a SSO solution that allowed you to pay and see an
article on the original pubs it might be a good deal.

After seeing what happened with apple and itunes/music, or amazon and
kindle/ebooks, I just can't see how content makers are willing to make the
same error. Letting a third party own your relationship with users never ends
well.

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CodingGuy
@Blendle: Add Business Punk / t3n and ix and I will use your service! :)

