

Ask HN: Review  my site -- socialreader.net - rama_vadakattu
http://www.socialreader.net/

======
rama_vadakattu
I thought a lot on this application.

Can you please guide me on

1)Is this idea worth trying and to focus on? Iam relying on

    
    
        a) friendfeed API to fetch diverse content like delicious, facebook,Google Reader 
        b) twitter API for twitter
    

2) Its sole aim is to provide interesting content for a topic (users can rely
on this if he needs to keep track on a topic ),

3)What parts of the application requires an improvement?

Thanks

~~~
messel
The only danger in relying on friendfeed is that it was bought.

Otherwise I'm curious of what algorithms or measures you used to score shares?

I am working with another developer on a semantic/social processin
application. We use external trending sites for search a well as Twitter
search API with JavaScript. I think value comes from helping to make new
connections, or raising interesting content from friends that may have been
missed.

Check VictusMedia.com if you're curious (next patch is adding some groovy
features once bug smashing phase is cleared).

~~~
rama_vadakattu
yeah exactly iam bit worried as i am relying on friendfeed platform .As they
are acquired by Facebook i donot for how much time will they support their
API.

For scoring/shares i used the following simple algorithm like

1)Number of people shared this link

2)Blog popularity (i.e) If the blog is popular more shares has to happen for
it to appear on appropriate topic popular page.

Any other ideas on improving the algorithm?

~~~
messel
That sounds great as a first cut.

At VictusMedia we used Topsy as a measure of recent trending links related to
categories.

------
voidfiles
I like the idea of having some transparency into google reader, its like the
last place where good stats aren't readily available, but I am having a hard
time understand what I can you use your site for other then, top 10 lists. Is
that all its going to be? I signed up created a topic and then didn't get any
content on that topic.

I use google reader all the time, its my main source of reading news. I have
two years worth of shared, and stared, and noted data. Is there anyway for you
to look at that and figure out what I am already reading?

Does friendfeed aggregate all of google reader, or only the google reader
accounts that have been linked to friend feed accounts?

------
keefe
From a design point of view, I would put your two columns inside a fixed with
div centered in the page. On my 1920x1080 monitor, there's a huge pile of
whitespace between the two. I would replace all the detail with how it works
with some actual content. Nobody cares how it works. I look at it for a second
and go OK, why wouldn't I just go to alltop? not trying to be critical just my
first impression and why I'm not looking at it further.

------
UpFromTheGut
Is this meant to be used in lieu of a feed reader, or in complement? At some
point you should work on nice error pages, by the way:
<http://www.socialreader.net/blah/>

