
F5Bot: Email Keyword Alerts from Reddit, Hacker News, or Lobsters - dustingetz
https://f5bot.com/
======
overcast
I wish services like this would move beyond offering everything for free. It's
a valuable enough service to charge a nominal fee, be it lifetime or whatever
to ensure it sticks around, and give the developer incentive to improve upon
it.

I'm guessing the next big web movement will be more paid services that
actually have value. Weeding out all the trash that disappears with your data
in a year.

Update: Looking at his Patreon. He's making a total of $41. Not even enough to
cover his hosting fees apparently. That's why you charge for something worth
charging for. [https://www.patreon.com/f5bot](https://www.patreon.com/f5bot)

~~~
Cthulhu_
That's not how new services or startups work nowadays. You need critical mass
first, and if you put up barriers - like paying money, like ads - people won't
use your service. And there'll be a free alternative that takes over.

No, the formula is to invest your own money, hopefully see a lot of growth,
get a few rounds of dank investor money to pay for it all and stay afloat, and
maybe, MAYBE, come up with a monetization scheme (like idk, reddit gold or
premium subscriptions), and then either get bought by one of the big companies
or go to the stock market.

~~~
overcast
That's how yesterday worked. Impeding recession is going to dry up that funny
money. You're going to have to actually build products people want to pay for
to survive. Two individuals being equal, there is no way the one working for
completely free is going to outpace the one getting paid to do it. That free
service is attractive at first, until you're missing features, support, and
longevity that the paid service has.

Example. pinboard.in

~~~
cpmsmith
Pinboard employs a whole one person. It's a good model, but its aims are
pretty different from those of your average startup.

~~~
overcast
There's two, and the average startup could learn a lot from how Pinboard is
run.

------
foob
The author of F5Bot recently published a guest-post on the Intoli Blog called
_How F5Bot Slurps All of Reddit_ [1]. It goes into a lot of technical detail
about how the service works and some of the challenges that arise when dealing
with such a large number of posts and comments. If you're a fan of F5Bot, or
just learning about it now, then you might be interested to check that out.

As others have mentioned, F5Bot is free and completely driven by donations and
Lewis Van Winkle's generosity. Please consider giving a donation if you're a
user of the service and find it helpful [2].

[1] - [https://intoli.com/blog/f5bot/](https://intoli.com/blog/f5bot/)

[2] - [https://www.patreon.com/f5bot](https://www.patreon.com/f5bot)

~~~
justaguyhere
Thank you for the intoli link. It was a good read, plus I learned about
Aho–Corasick algorithm

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a_wild_dandan
Ah, so _that 's_ how extremists seemingly always find Reddit threads related
to certain hot topics and brigade them.

I used to think that it was a simple case of fringe folks being attracted to
popular threads. But it happens frequently enough on smaller threads on
otherwise moderate, modest communities that I thought something was up.

~~~
prolikewh0a
There is also this: [http://wiki.project-
pm.org/wiki/Persona_Management](http://wiki.project-
pm.org/wiki/Persona_Management)

And this: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/us/politics/rick-gates-
ps...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/us/politics/rick-gates-psy-group-
trump.html)

I left reddit because with the API these disinformation campaigns are too easy
to create. After watching from afar during the 2016 elections noticing weird
new things happening, new patterns, I decided that I no longer knew what was
real and left.

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jplank1983
I've been using this for a few months and it's been really useful. I agree
that offering a free version and a "premium" version with a few extra bells
and whistles would be a really good idea. It's definitely the kind of thing
that I'd pay to have extra features for.

~~~
codeplea
Hi, F5Bot author here. I'm working on a premium version, and a couple features
are already available through Patreon. It has just been a low priority. If you
have ideas for any premium features you would like to see, please feel free to
drop me an email sometime (just hit reply on any alert you get).

------
WA
What’s the difference to a Google Alert with: "site:reddit.com KEYWORD"?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Do Google Alerts even work reliably these days? I set up a bunch some years
ago, realized they don't seem to be working, and promptly forgot about this
feature. Every month or free some alert I set up then triggers and send me an
e-mail, but I kind of expected to get such e-mails _every day_.

~~~
edoceo
They are hit and miss. Nearly 100% of the results are from news sites and it
seems to lag. Like, I'll get forwards from associates about Topic on Monday
then the Google alert on Wednesday

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brazzledazzle
Is it worth seeking out an invite to Lobsters am I better off lurking?

~~~
Jaruzel
Lobsters is very low traffic compared to HN. The posts tend to have ~50%
cross-over rate with HN as well.

anyhoo, I can hook you up if you want. DM/Mail/Smoke-Signals me.

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wenbin
I built a similar service, but for podcasts:
[https://www.listennotes.com/alerts/](https://www.listennotes.com/alerts/)

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benjojo12
I use F5 and it's been genuinely useful seeing where my own blog posts come
up! Thanks to the creator for making it

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prophesi
Does the author have a timeline for when they'll open source it?

[https://github.com/codeplea/f5bot](https://github.com/codeplea/f5bot)

~~~
heinrichf
The about page says:

    
    
      If I reach $500/month in donations, I will open-source F5Bot.

~~~
prophesi
Ah, that's fair. I didn't see that.

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dec0dedab0de
I always forget about lobste.rs I remember wanting a membership when it
launched and getting mad that I couldn't find anyone to send me an invite.
Kinda made me feel like it was the no homers club.

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marknadal
This is the first time I've heard of it and this is awesome and amazing, and
I'm so glad it is free. Thank you for making this available as a great tool!

