

NewsBlur (YC S12) Takes Feed Reading Back To Its Basics - conesus
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/30/yc-backed-newsblur-takes-feed-reading-back-to-its-basics

======
conesus
Thrilled to be launching NewsBlur's social features. NewsBlur has become
something much bigger than what I ever thought possible when I wrote the first
line of code in June 2009 in the New York City underground.

We're now two people and YC-backed. We have so many new big features coming
down the pipeline. An iPad app, an updated iPhone app, an Android app, all
first-class experiences.

This is the launch of Blurblogs. This is my blurblog:
<http://samuel.newsblur.com>.

~~~
mgunes
Will you keep making the source code available in a free software license in
the upcoming iterations? Is the YC investment likely to cause any change in
this regard?

I'm happy that you're able to work much more freely on NewsBlur, but as an
early premium user, the investment did get me mildly worried about the future
of my beloved app that a handful of dedicated people used, and was very well
cared for by one guy I trusted my data and workflow with.

My uneducated and selfish hunch for NB's ideal future is one where you keep
charging a much larger amount of users (and possibly charge more), avoid any
further investment of the VC kind, and continue keeping the latest production
source available under a free license.

~~~
conesus
The intention is to keep NewsBlur open-source. We'll see how that goes. The
other intention is to never have to raise more money, but we'll see how that
goes. I have big plans for what I want to build, but to do it, I need seed
funding. After that, my hope is to never raise again and have premiums pay for
the service. Today, that is not possible. But we're at a tipping point that I
think we can juice.

~~~
mgunes
> _The intention is to keep NewsBlur open-source. We'll see how that goes._

Do you mean with the investors? Do you perceive or foresee pressure from YC
against keeping it open source, or do you believe there will be a shift of
incentives (such as the practicality of hosting and sharing no longer being
your focus of value for paid service) or technicalities that might prevent you
from keeping the code open in the future NewsBlur?

As the continuous availability of the source code is critical in my choosing
to use and pay for NewsBlur (and I assume this is the case for a few other
users on HN), I'd appreciate any details you can share in this regard.

> _I have big plans for what I want to build, but to do it, I need seed
> funding. After that, my hope is to never raise again and have premiums pay
> for the service._

Happy to know that's your intention.

------
JeffJenkins
I was working on a (now-shuttered) startup in this space. Almost universally
people's favorite feature was seeing the live website. I had also built in a
reading queue into the application, the idea being that you could do inbox-
zero with your feeds if you could process them extremely fast.

I talked to a bunch of largely non-technical RSS power users and discovered
that the people who really use RSS readers are subscribed to 1500+ feeds and
barely scratch the surface of reading everything in them.

It was really disheartening to discover my fundamental premise was wrong, and
at the same time my now-cofounder contacted me with a great idea with a
clearly underserved market so I abandoned the solo effort for that.

I think there's a ton of room for innovation in the media reader space, so I
wish NewsBlur luck!

~~~
cpeterso
> _I talked to a bunch of largely non-technical RSS power users and discovered
> that the people who really use RSS readers are subscribed to 1500+ feeds and
> barely scratch the surface of reading everything in them._

That is an interesting finding, in its own right. When Google neutered Google
Reader's sharing features, "sharebros" started an "I am the 1000+" campaign
(as a play on the "I am the 99%"). To me, that suggests having 1000+ unread
feed items is common enough to be a viral joke.

There may be a business opportunity for helping people find the wheat from the
chaff in their 1000+ feeds.

~~~
JeffJenkins
As the other reply says, that is what news blur is trying to do and i think it
is the right way to go.

I had, but never got to try, an idea to only show users a small percent of the
articles. Then, since metainbox was designed for quick triaging, you could
show people more articles based on what other people read or queued. It would
allow the "curation" to be done by more people

------
bryanh
I've been watching NewsBlur for a while now, even exchanging a few emails with
Sam. He's a first class guy and I'm excited to see what he can do with
NewsBlur. Congrats on the launch!

------
untog
This is barely related to the actual article, and only occurred to me because
I was excited by the name "NewsBlur", but then discovered that it isn't
necessarily news-related.

Are there any startups doing interesting stuff with news, journalism or any of
the like? I've seen a lot of services that will aggregate the links your
Twitter friends are posting and so on, but I'm more interested in the actual
reporting itself.

~~~
jeremymims
There are some interesting things happening on the reporting side: data
analysis, drone usage, citizen-sourced journalism, and more.

However, I believe the most interesting things right now are happening on the
news monetization side. News outlets are desperate to find a solution to
continue the work they do.

While lots of folks are creating aggregators (this one looks great), it's not
hard to make a news aggregator that looks and feels nicer than a newspaper
(step 1: No ads. Look how much nicer it looks already!). The far harder part
seems to be figuring out how to pay for great content.

------
roycyang
Check out my version of a Blurblog, I styled it a little differently:
<http://roy.newsblur.com>

On the roadmap, theming and letting people really make their Blurblog their
own.

Full disclosure, I am 2 of 2 at NewsBlur!

~~~
conesus
I just announced the addition of Roy as a co-founder on the NewsBlur Blog:
[http://blog.newsblur.com/post/27033939756/introducing-
blurbl...](http://blog.newsblur.com/post/27033939756/introducing-blurblogs-
roy-and-y-combinator). Roy is working on the iOS apps and has been
instrumental in shaping NewsBlur's future. He also can put up with me for 14
hours a day, which is no small feat.

------
heyitsnick
So as a heavy Google Reader user (processing about 300 articles a day), can
someone sum up the advantages to switching to NewsBlur? It's not entirely
clear from this article or the NewsBlur site. Or perhaps its target audience
is not me?

~~~
conesus
Yeah, I'd say you are definitely the target audience. NewsBlur does three
things better than Google Reader:

\- News reading: With first-class iOS, Android, and web apps, NewsBlur is an
easy and organized way to read the news wherever you are. There is also an
Original view that shows you the original website. You have to see it to
believe it.

\- Training: By using NewsBlur's training filters, you can hide stories you
don't want to see while highlighting the stories you want to focus on.

\- Social: Sharing and talking about the news is not only fun, but allows you
to break out of your filter bubble and embrace the serendipity of your
friend's tastes.

Also, NewsBlur's being actively developed, so that's a huge plus.

------
misiti3780
Congrats - does the funding affect plans to continue open-source development?

~~~
conesus
Not as far as I can help it. NewsBlur makes money through hosting. And our
competitive edge is the network. Giving back to the open-source community is
in my blood, especially after my work on DocumentCloud.

~~~
misiti3780
awesome. thanks

------
look_lookatme
First off congrats to the Newsblur guys. I am a big fan. One thing that I
would really like to see is some sort of sharing feature akin to Google
Reader's old "shared items".

~~~
conesus
You bet, that's what we just launched. Here's my blurblog:
<http://samuel.newsblur.com>. You can share directly from a blurblog or in the
Feed view on NewsBlur. We're working to make that more visible in some new
designs we have coming soon.

~~~
Aissen
One thing I _loved_ about Google Reader's sharing ability was the powerful
bookmarklet. You could select a part of the text in the page, call the
bookmarklet, and have that part only shared in an article. I used and abused
this feature to share things from feed I wasn't subscribed too. It's also very
powerful for webpage that didn't have RSS. And you could _edit_ before sharing
(even the HTML!)! How awesome is that ?

All this was lost in the Google+ transition (which pushed me to NewsBlur). The
one thing that wasn't lost was the "comment on top" which allowed your
followers to see what you thought about the story _before_ reading it. You
could also comment after if you didn't want to spoil it (just like in
G+/blurblogs). I had only a few followers, but this was the best feed reading
experience of my life. (Ok, I also _love_ NewsBlur frame tech that merges
content and context).

Wouldn't it be nice if the comment were on top of the blurblog share ?

~~~
conesus
Comments on top are something I'm thinking about. Tell you what, in order to
continue this discussion, would you mind moving it to a new thread on
NewsBlur's community forums: <http://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur>. Just give
it a good title and file it under Idea. That way everybody else can
participate.

Also, that bookmarklet is a huge feature I'm working on for the next couple
weeks. Thanks for the good ideas.

------
dtwhitney
Google Reader is missing a serious mobile component, and I'm excited by what I
see with NewsBlur. Congrats on the launch!

~~~
skorgu
Late to the party but please submit the android app to the amazon appstore,
the kindle fire might be a good platform for it.

------
carterschonwald
Are you going to fix the feed archival problem at some point? (we've spoken
about it before :-) )

~~~
conesus
You mean keeping stories indefinitely? Absolutely, it's just a technical
limitation right now. At some point we'll move to a real archive.

~~~
carterschonwald
yay, thats something that makes me nervous about newsblur, :) (even though
i've signed up & paid etc, its a psychological barrier to daily use)

~~~
carterschonwald
ooo, and the mathjax now renders correctly! :)

