
Y Combinator’s Slinkset Launches Hosted Reddits For The Masses  - nickb
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/14/y-combinators-slinkset-launches-hosted-reddits-for-the-masses/
======
ojbyrne
Totally off-topic (except that it's linked from the article) but techcrunch's
reddit clone is hilariously and pathetically empty.

More on topic, I'd like to see more options to customize the "editorial
policy" of your site - how many votes to get promoted, how user karma works,
how sites get blocked, manual overrides, and so on.

I find when I compare HN and Digg, I'm struck by how the sites have come to
reflect the personalities of the people who founded them. Here it's hyper-
technical and it makes you think twice about commenting frivolously, because
of the potential for what seems like infinite downvoting and its effect on
karma. Digg is pretty frivolous and all over the place, perhaps because karma
is not visible to users, and downvoting doesn't have the same direct effect on
karma.

My point being that the personalities behind the site shape the content - even
if the engine is "democratic", the constant tweaking of that engine represents
an editorial policy, just as much as a newspaper's.

~~~
gruseom
_I'm struck by how the sites have come to reflect the personalities of the
people who founded them_

It's fascinating how companies (and other creations) tend to carry the
personalities of the people who started them. In our world, Microsoft, Apple,
Google are good examples... one could go on endlessly. There aren't many
general principles that seem to hold up as well as this one does.

~~~
byrneseyeview
I don't know anything about Larry and Sergei except through what they do at
Google. So it's almost a tautology that their company would reflect what I
know about them. I guess Jobs is a little different, but he's still synonymous
with Apple to most people.

Can you think of any business whose founder is independently famous, and who
reflects your theory (e.g. a musician with a talent for improvisation, who
started a company that constantly changes its business model)?

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jrockway
_In the future the site hopes to integrate drag-and-drop widgets and ad
placement, but with a company that currently consists of only two co-founders,
these are probably a ways off._

Yeah, that sounds impossible for two people to implement. ___rolls eyes_ __

~~~
rms
Yeah... this was an odd Techcrunch review, it sounds like they were negative
just because they couldn't think of anything obviously positive to say.
Techcrunch has mostly stopped covering startups at Slinkset's level, but Y
Combinator is interesting.

~~~
bobhoward
If you ask me, TC's proclivity toward reviewing very early stage YC startups
is a bit questionable; what about those startups that are just as interesting,
yet didn't have the good fortune of being part of the YC lineup? I guess
that's what your 2-10% buys you, beyond the seed money.

~~~
rms
Questionable, sure, but there's an easy answer. Right now on the Techcrunch
homepage there are two stories about small startups. One is a blog and one has
$1MM worth of funding.

Techcrunch doesn't really cover prefunded startups anymore. They do more
mainstream news about Facebook and Yahoo and Apple. As far as pre or
microfunded startups go, YC is as good as it gets, so Techcrunch covers YC
startups. Certainly they are much better than the average unfunded or
microfunded startup.

~~~
bobhoward
Well, I'd have to disagree. The only difference between a YC startup and a
non-YC startup is (1) access to advising resources, and (2) a bit of pre-
filtering due to the selection process. Of course, there is also the $15k of
funding-- but for many entrepreneurs, getting 10-20k of seed money is really
not too hard (you could _probably_ drum up that much "dumb" money from family
and friends-- after all, how many jobless or underpaid teenagers do you know
who were able to persuade their folks to buy them cars?).

For your statement to be true, it seems that either the advice dispensed by YC
advisors is sufficient to transform a bad idea into a good idea or
alternatively, that the YC selection committee only selects ideas destined for
success. While these points do hold /some/ water (good advice never hurts, and
pg et. al. clearly know a thing or two about entrepreneurship), it is still
important to note that YC makes mistakes from time to time and that
(participated in YC) -> (good startup) does not imply that (NOT participated
in YC) -> (NOT good startup). Heck, even the first implication is a fallacy.

Regardless, at the end of the day, you're asking me to assume that founders
who either don't make the cut for YC or whom didn't apply in the first place
are either inferior entrepreneurs or are pushing a bad idea. This is simply
not true.

Entrepreneurship has been around for a LONG time and plenty of people are
working their butts off for a shot at launching a successful, growing startup.
For some, YC provides the perfect opportunity to actually sit down and execute
an idea; for most, YC is either not an option or is simply not necessary.

In the past couple of weeks, TechCrunch has reported on YC startups with
surprising frequency. Given that it is fairly difficult to get TC to profile
one's startup, it seems a little suspicious that whenever a YC app launches,
it gets a (typically positive) write-up. In light of this, my conclusion that
YC and Arrington have some sort of friendly or financial relationship leading
to a lowered-barrier-to-article for YC-funded startups is sound if not
altogether true.

~~~
rms
>Regardless, at the end of the day, you're asking me to assume that founders
who either don't make the cut for YC or whom didn't apply in the first place
are either inferior entrepreneurs or are pushing a bad idea. This is simply
not true.

No, I'm not. I'm saying Techcrunch doesn't cover startups anymore.

>In light of this, my conclusion that YC and Arrington have some sort of
friendly or financial relationship leading to a lowered-barrier-to-article for
YC-funded startups is sound if not altogether true.

No, they don't. Techcrunch covers YC startups out of laziness and journalistic
inadequacy. They want to give the appearance that they still cover early stage
startups, but they don't. They only cover YC startups. YC offers an easy
filter for TC to have some stories to give the outward appearance that their
blog hasn't changed over time.

~~~
bobhoward
"Certainly they are much better than the average unfunded or microfunded
startup."

If you aren't saying what I've asserted you're saying, please explain the
above. Also, did you edit your original comment? Perhaps I misread it.

In any event, it remains awfully convenient to chalk up the evident YC fetish
at TechCrunch to mere editor laziness: I've seen plenty of seed-funded or non-
funded startups in the past months-- heck, TC _pays_ folks to sort through the
mountains of press releases that arrive every day; I'm sure that there is no
dearth of interesting, upstarting startups to profile.

I've always gotten the impression that TechCrunch serves up a fairly decent
mixed bag-- except when they seem to exclusively cover YC-funded startups.
Hence, my prior remarks.

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dominik
Excellent! I've been waiting a long while for something like this :)

Some suggestions: \- When adding a feed, include feed detection code, so that
I can type in a URL and have the feed auto-detected, instead of having to find
the exact feed URL \- Allow a threshold for downmodding like HN... only
submitters with X or more karma can downmod.

This looks great and I look forward to seeing it evolve and get better!

~~~
rms
<http://features.slinkset.com/>

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adrianwaj
Have just setup a Slinkset board:

"Room.YC Blogs" - Aggregating 120 Blogs of Hacker News' top users.

<http://roomyc.slinkset.com/>

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omakase
nice work guys. can I browse the slinksets that have been created? I saw
typehype.slinkset.com on the homepage and thought it was cool -- I wonder what
other ones have been created?

~~~
dominik
I've made an Internet Law slinkset: <http://ilaw.slinkset.com>

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rokhayakebe
From HN to YC to TC to HN. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=140841>
Congratulations SlinkSet team. Hard work pays off.

EDIT: I just spent more time at SlinkSet and I think they definitely have a
business model in hosting their app as a HELP FORUM (excatly like the one they
have on their site).

Writing a FAQ is very hard and you always leave some questions out. By hosting
this feature for small businesses, they can also gather a lot of information
about those businesses and their customers.

~~~
brett
Thanks.

And, yeah, we've thought of a few options for targeting businesses. Help
forums is definitely one.

~~~
yangyang42
Congrats, Brett! remember not to break the chain, ok?

keep up the good work!

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mynameishere
Have it scrape your blog/website and auto-post any new links as if they were
user submissions.

~~~
fallentimes
It already does that (I was in their beta). You just go to Settings -> Feeds.
Input your blog feed. Done.

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DaniFong
I am now using this as a task/bug/idea tracker internally. It could work out
really well. :-)

~~~
brett
I would love to hear how it does.

~~~
DaniFong
Honestly so far it seems to be really good. The voting enables anonymous
feedback, which already, only one day in, has lead to some surprises in how we
perceive our priorities. For example, I thought I should do a mipmapped
particle system, but it turns out at least two people disagree with me.

Also, it's as easy to use as basecamp (and an order of magnitude easier than
bugzilla or trac) so lots of people are using it.

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DaniFong
This software is super great.

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goelp
I like slinkset, it fills a void between the techies (who can use reddit os)
and the non-techies.

<http://design.slinkset.com/>

Enjoying it.

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jackchristopher
I wanted to mess with reddit (open source), and it's been a pain.

This is great.

But why do you required login _before_ the test drive? Was this a technical
issue?

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LukeG
Nice work guys.

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adrianwaj
Great Work

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jerry5
Someone please explain to me how your personal reddit, hosted or not, is
different from any other forum software such as, say, phpBB2, just as an
example. Maybe other forums aren't quite as focused on the voting aspect
(though it does exist). Some people see that as an advantage, though. I guess
the whole point of having your own social news a.k.a. forum site is so you can
dictate what can be posted and what not, to keep the quality and focus on a
special subject of your interest.

~~~
r7000
Forums treat all threads as equal. Usually they are listed by the time of the
last post. You can get any thread back to the top by "bumping" it. Within
threads all posts are equal and listed by time of entry. In a long thread the
only way to see the best comments is to read the whole thing. Voting
mechanisms are either poorly implemented and almost useless or not available.

For many subjects a 'social news site' style of threading is probably a better
fit than traditional forums. Right now everyone knows how to use a forum.
Despite Digg, reddit etc. social news sites are still a niche. But I have
often thought when using forums that I'd like to be able to vote up a comment
or thread. Over time, a 'social news site' interface might become a widely
used alternative to traditional forums.

~~~
jerry5
You are right as are the other commentors. However it seems that the
difference between a 'social news' site and a forum aren't huge, i.e. forum
software could be spruced up with a few lines of php and they'd be the same.

