

Socialbrowse: Y Combinator Startup is Twitter For Links - mhartl
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/24/socialbrowse-ycombinator-startup-is-twitter-for-links/

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mhartl
I just realized something. When first using 8aweek, I noticed that it would
track my restricted sites (say, Hacker News), but not the sites _linked_ from
my restricted sites (which, with sites like HN, are the real time-sucks). I
remember asking about this, and the 8aweek guys said they were working on
tracking those links, too. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that's how they got
started on Socialbrowse.

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peakok
<http://www.socialbrowse.com/>

direct link for people that won't click a techcrunch link anymore.

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axod
Seems like not much time since 8aweek launched, and now it's on the
backburner? Any insight into what happened?

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aneesh
Did RescueTime have anything to do with them finding the new idea more
tempting? I always thought those two were awfully close to both be funded by
YC. And I personally liked RescueTime more. Did 8aweek have any traction
before they jumped?

~~~
thorax
I love 8aweek-- probably one of my top 3 Firefox extensions. Really helped
remind me when I got sucked into sites when I should be working.

Not sure if it works for everyone, but it works well for me. RescueTime on the
other hand hasn't really done anything for me (except take up 100% CPU a few
times). I may be in a minority on that one.

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aconbere
This seems a bit like the project I work on (timelope.com). But still requires
people to actively push data into the network. With an extension installed and
already looking at what you browse, why not just let that data they generate
just by browsing be the key part?

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Prrometheus
No thank you. I'm trying to spend less time on the internet, not more. It's
like announcing better crack to a recovering addict.

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oditogre
>2 Receive real time updates of cool links shared by people you like

How do you handle a link that gets sent to the same person by two people? What
about a link that you yourself sent? Can it be 'sent back' by somebody that
you follow, that doesn't follow you (i.e., they don't know that you've already
seen it)? I'm kind of thinking of situations where, i.e., person 1 'watches'
person 2, 2 watches 3, 3 watches 1, and a, b, c, ... z watch 1, 2 and 3, and
it makes me think of that 'Bedlam DL3' story Larry Osterman wrote about a
while ago (<http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2004/04/08/109626.aspx>).

I mean, won't this cause a lot of duplicate / unnecessary traffic through the
server and possibly to clients? Or are you doing it in some other way than how
I'm thinking?

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garbowza
This happens all the time: multiple people you are following share the same
link. In fact, that is one of the cool effects: a shared link starts spreading
through the social graph. What you as an end users sees in your sidebar is a
single view of that link, with multiple small user icons lined up underneath
it, showing each of the users to have shared it. Think of Gmail's message
threading.

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rglullis
One quick question: the article said this project is from the same guys that
started 8aweek (garbowza). Is this a second startup by a same person that was
approved by YC, like kiko and justin.TV, or has it received the "Y Combinator
Startup" brand because of the founder?

What I'm trying to say is: is this something that the YC guys have in mind
when investing?

~~~
garbowza
PG is right when he says your ideas change as you implement them! This started
as an offshoot to 8aweek, believe it or not. We switched gears and started
working on it exclusively near the end of our YC session.

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s3graham
Seems neat at first try.

I'd be more likely to keep it installed if it didn't uglify (for example) the
news.yc main page. Can you make the icons detect what they're next to so that
the text doesn't get all mis-spaced? (FF3, Vista, in case it's not-always).

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thingsilearned
thanks for the feature request. We're working on smarter ways of embedding the
icons. If you have good ideas make sure you let us know.

If its bugging you you can disable them in Tools->Socialbrowse

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mpc
I'm using it now and it's pretty darn awesome.

Is it fair to call it a "distributed reddit" ?

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ajbatac
Me too. Can I have an invite when a packet is available for additional
traffic? ;)

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thingsilearned
We opened up more. Try again.

<http://socialbrowse.com/techcrunch/>

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ajkirwin
Well, I'd try again.. if it was up ;)

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thingsilearned
Some heavy usage on a new app. Sorry about that :). Should be good now.

~~~
inovica
Tried with 2 different email accounts. No email through

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lbrandy
not gonna lie, i'd use this site :)

I basically use AIM for precisely this purpose, at this point. I have my own
little AIM mini-network for link spamming amongst friends.

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humanlever
Not sure if this'd equate to feature creep or not but it'd be useful to know
what category people submitted a link to in addition to who did it first and
how many followed.

~~~
thingsilearned
Great request. On anyone's profile page you can select "all" under any of the
links they share. This brings you to a page that shows the link and all the
people who have rated it.

When you're on a site you can also get to that info page about the site by
clicking the "shared by (n)" link in the sidebar. (where n is the number of
people who've shared it.)

We should at the number of shares and the first share to the info page. Thanks
for the feedback!

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fuzzythinker
how's it different than friendfeed?

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joshwa
or tumblr?

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jonknee
You should probably detect browsers because the .xpi I just downloaded does
nothing for Safari. There's nothing about the page that says you need FireFox.

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thorax
Reminds me of me.dium, but I like this much better.

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JesseAldridge
That popup that comes up every time somebody shares a link is annoying and I
can't figure out how to turn it off.

~~~
garbowza
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=227122>

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brianr
liking this a lot. great start!

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richcollins
I hope they get this right. I've been waiting for this for years.

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nazgulnarsil
It would be nice if the colors conformed to the users settings.

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yangyang42
I'm trying it now.

First impression: Totally Awesome!

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yangyang42
holy crap.

Second impression: I'm hooked.

This application is so sticky. I am now following only a few people, but
occasionally seeing their links on the bottom of my browser is becoming very
interesting/addicting.

I am also browsing through some of my old bookmarks and sharing them.

IMHO, I'm finding this application to be much more compelling than Twitter.

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Mistone
im not sure I dig the little pop-ups and want them to go away. after I turn
off the popups I can focus on trying this out.

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thorax
If you have the sidebar up, also, the popups don't come up. I never noticed
those until I closed the sidebar.

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rw
Site isn't responding (22:00 EDT).

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jonknee
It really is Twitter for links, they even have the uptime record!

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maien
i am not sure the real benefits, but I can smell it will be loved by spammers.

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garbowza
Actually we are spammer resistant. Your shared links are only broadcast to
people who follow you. If you spam, then nobody will follow you.

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mikedouglas
What about PageRank fraud? Are the links nofollow?

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gaika
You can open Hacker News in firefox sidebar for the same functionality :)

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rokhayakebe
Sounds simple and useful. Can we please get a few invites?

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ajkirwin
Ahh, finally.

And wow, yes. Very nice! A few suggestions: It'd be nice if I could, y'know..
collapse the sidebar.

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thingsilearned
Easy. Hit the X in the upper right of the sidebar or the green icon we put in
the toolbar.

If the sidebar's close you'll still get notifications in the form of growls.
If you don't like the growls those can be disabled. Toggle
Tools->Socialbrowse->Receive Message Popups

Thanks for trying us out!

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ajkirwin
Looks interesting. Seem to have missed out on the invites though. Ah well.

