
Convert your Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, all into a physical journal - benjlang
http://myscribr.com/
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willidiots
Founder of Scribr here. We're stoked to see this on HN and curious to see what
the minds here think of it.

TheNextWeb has a good article detailing our book here:

[http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/12/30/scribr-preserves-
your-...](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/12/30/scribr-preserves-your-social-
media-posts-turning-them-into-a-beautifully-printed-journal/)

We also have Timeline-esque features that aren't very public at the moment. We
delve into these in our blog here:

<http://blog.myscribr.com/post/15036430644>

~~~
benjlang
Seems like an amazing idea, can't wait for it to come out.

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Kaedon
I love this but I would love it even more if it would support Wordpress. I
migrated my old Livejournal (I know...) to Wordpress so it's like a record of
my past ten years at this point. It'd be fantastic to have all of that as a
physical item.

~~~
willidiots
Blog support is a top-priority next feature for us.

~~~
100k
Yeah, arbitrary RSS support would be cool.

I was also thinking if you could integrate with Daily Mile (which I use) or
services like that, that could be really interesting. I have some memorable
bike rides in there.

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keeptrying
Some reasons why this may not be a great idea: * No one really reads their own
posts afterwards. * The crap you write on facebook is for others - ie, rarely
deep enough to keep for yourself.

One place I think you could make money: New Parents.

These guys post pics of their kids all the time and text. Grab all that put it
into a book. I think that would be very easy for a new parent to do (because
they already do it) and very valuable. It would be 0 effort for parents which
I'm sure they would appreciate. Otherwise they'd have to download all the pics
and then make a book adn add text etc ...

~~~
willidiots
To a degree, we want to capture both the deep meaningful thoughts _and_ the
inane daily business, to capture a whole picture of someone. It's interesting
seeing how little things (a check-in, say) can trigger associated memories for
the reader.

That said, there are certainly a number of people who fill their social
networks with crap, and just don't care about it. For them, we have the option
of omitting services from the book, and as we add more blogging platforms the
value may increase.

We also encourage users to keep a journal within Scribr itself via our nightly
email, which makes the process super-easy.

New parents are definitely a target market for us, we have a few in our Alpha
group and we're finding they're _really_ into it.

~~~
keeptrying
I would definitely focus on your happiest customer. And its not like they will
ever go away.

The backlash from people saying "Hmmm it seemed like a good idea at the time
but I really dont want to pay $20 bucks for a bunch of my 3 line posts" could
be considerable.

Also just targetting one market well is a lot of work for a startup.

Anyway best of luck - its great to see you have deeply engaged customers -
that to my mind is the holy grail of an early stage startup.

Best of luck.

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100k
I like this idea. I already keep a notebook/journal, and I've started writing
more frequently on my blog, but so much of what I do that's memorable goes
onto Facebook or Twitter (not so much Foursquare, but maybe if I was recording
it for posterity in a book, I might be more interested in using Foursquare).

I think the key is being able to easily select and exclude entries from being
included. I doubt I would want links I post on Twitter in such a book, or most
@reply conversations.

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kmfrk
Sounds like a great idea, especially in light of the year's end.

Who prints your books?

~~~
willidiots
We use Lulu, they've been absolutely great to work with.

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switz
Scribr makes me think of Scribd. Otherwise great idea. I thought of this a few
years ago, but never followed through with it. Glad to see someone is doing
it! Left my email.

~~~
bodyfour
There was also <http://www.blogbinders.com/> that made a go at the same idea
~8 years ago. Sadly they didn't survive.

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Urgo
Looks like a interesting idea. Would be cool if you could incorporate YouTube
into it as well. YouTube is my primary Social Network
(<http://YouTube.com/Urgo>) where I did a video a day for a whole year may
2010-may 2011 and still make a couple vlogs a week. If that could be tied in
as well with my twitter, flickr & foursquare I think I'd be sold into trying
it out :) I signed up for a beta invite.

~~~
willidiots
Not sure how we'd print YouTube, a flipbook maybe? :)

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Urgo
You can still put the title & description of the video in plus the thumbnails
(youtube generates 4. 3 intervals + a partner/primary one) and a QR code to
link to watch the video :)

~~~
willidiots
Absolutely, was mostly joking about the flipbook. Mostly.

We definitely want to add the services that people are using. YouTube wasn't
high on our list but you make a good point about vloggers, it might have to
get bumped up the priorities a bit.

~~~
zacharycohn
Eh, I don't know how big of a selling point Youtube would be. For vloggers,
the journal-like content is IN the video and you'd have no way of getting to
that. Having just a title and timestamp wouldn't be that interesting in book
form.

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sliverstorm
_Even after Scribr, Facebook, Twitter and the Internet itself are gone._

I like how this is presented as if it is a certainty such a day will come to
pass :)

~~~
Urgo
I think its a pretty solid bet. I mean when's the last time you posted to your
neighborhood BBS, or on aol. Remember geocities or even myspace (though its
still there, who really uses it, really). You can't even get access to your
own older tweets.

~~~
sliverstorm
Oh, sure, Twitter and Facebook will probably go away. I was mostly looking at
the inclusion of the Internet.

~~~
willidiots
We figure it'll happen someday. Of course, it may be centuries in the future
when the roach kings rule, and our paperback book may not last _that_ long.

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yanksrock777
I love the idea of having a physical copy of all this information. The art of
printmaking has certainly become a lost art.

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marquis
A blogger friend of mine would love this, great gift idea.

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omarchowdhury
How's the pricing going to work?

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mshafrir
This would be a great gift idea but it would be hard to make it a surprise.

