
Prismatic Hopes to Create a New Category of Social News - brendannee
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/prismatic-hopes-to-offer-a-new-category-of-social-news/
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alextp
As a recent daily user, prismatic is awesome.

The way they leverage twitter is pretty interesting, mixing in "endorsements"
to articles from both people close to you, famous people, and random people,
in a way that keeps it interesting.

There's also fairly heavy machine learning going on behind the scenes, in a
way that is non intrusive. Congratulations to those guys.

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bradfordcross
Thanks, Alex. What do you mean about the non intrusive point - something about
the ongoing interactions within the product or things like bootstrapping
interests from twitter?

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alextp
By non-intrusive I meant that I have no idea what kind of ML is really going
on behind the scenes. In this sense it's very different from interacting with,
say, Netflix's recommender, or youtube's ad predictor (a friend "liked" a
vodka ad once and is now assumed to be an alcoholic), where you really do need
to build a mental model of what the ML is doing to effectively use the site.
With prismatic I don't seem to need to care.

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brcrth
The only thing about it that I really dislike is that there's no option to
delete or cancel your account (a trend with startups). I don't fall to the
silly excuse that it's in beta or that they'll have such options "soon". This
should be there since day 1. Shows respect for the user/tester and sends the
message that your information/data is yours to keep/remove whenever you want.

Keep in mind that this is not a criticism towards Prismatic (which is really
cool and well done), I just used them as an example to a common startup
practice.

~~~
bradfordcross
I agree, and we're on it. We're only just now allowing more people into the
product and it's still a long way from being openly available publicly.

With young companies and products, it's tough to balance all the constraints
with the goals. We've spent a lot of time to learn what our users really love
about the product. We agree that we need to get a profile out very soon, but
we're happy we've put the core of the product first from the beginning.

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puredanger
Yay, go Clojure! Hopefully we can get video from Bradford Cross's keynote from
Clojure/West up on the web soon.

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w01fe
The first 10 people to email hackernews@getprismatic.com with their twitter
handle will get an immediate invite to our early access.

Edit: gone -- but if you sign up at getprismatic.com you should get an invite
soon.

~~~
possibilistic
This is so great, thank you so much! :)

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jeffk
Prismatic is what I read in the morning when I'm waking up and drinking a cup
of coffee. I think it has the potential to change the way we consume not just
social news, but news in general.

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brendannee
I love prismatic - its completely replaced Google reader for me. I find that
it consistently shows articles that are really relevant to me, from sources
I've never even considered. Often, I'll find highly relevant things on
prismatic a few hours before a friend emails me the same article that they
found through some other source.

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EwanG
I suppose it's up to me to be the "Debbie Downer" on this one.

First off, I like the recommendations, and the learning algorithm seems
decent. However the UI continues to give me nightmares. I setup a list similar
to what I have in Zite or Flipboard. For some reason only Chrome will let me
actually go to the list and scroll it. For everything else (IE, Firefox,
Opera) I can see the list, I can click on the list, but I can't scroll the
list.

While I like the recommendations, I would also like the ability to have more
control over sources, and to control the refresh rate. Yes I "get" they think
that isn't needed if they are doing this right. I just respectfully disagree.

Just my .02 worth. I wish the team well, and hope they have an Android App
version of this eventually as I would love to have the pretty on my Sony
Tablet S...

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bradfordcross
Hey Edwin,

We agree and we're actively working on all the issues you bring up. Stick with
us, it's really a big endeavor and it will improve quickly.

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minikomi
Signed up last time this popped up but didn't jump in (bad timing).. Just
kicking the tiers, the suggestions are really hitting the right spot. Just a
suggestion - I'd really like another button - read - with an action like the
"dont like" button, so I cam just sit there clicking next next next without
scrolling down (that said, the vim keys to jump between stories is awesome!!)

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alexg79
I use Prismatic daily. It does an amazing job of crawling the web and curating
news articles that are aligned with my interest. Many of these articles I
would normally not see and have no idea that they even exist. Prismatic is my
primary method of news consumption now. There is a feeling of serendipitous
discovery every time I use it, which keeps the delight factor high!

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JohnJAllen
Wow, these are some rave reviews! Email me and I might give you an immediate
invite (have two)!

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cgag
Two to give away as well. Prismatic is excellent.

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cgag
It looks like I need your twitter names as well. My email is in my profile if
you don't want to post them.

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davekale
Congrats to Aria and Bradford. Knowing Aria and his work, I have little doubt
there is some fantastic engineering under the hood at Prismatic.

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kijin
Any way to sign up without using a Twitter account? Or is the service so
tightly integrated with Twitter that it would be pointless to do so?

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noodleey
I actively use it for last 3-4 months and it's definitely my nr1 tool to
receive news!!

give me a heads up on twitter if you need an invite @zappika ;)

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sorenmacbeth
Prismatic feels simply magical when you use it.

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gammarator
I've been using Prismatic for a month or two and really like it--it brings up
interesting and relevant stories every time.

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joshu
Hey Bradford, congrats on launching!

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va_coder
Before you sign up, Twitter asks you to give Prismatic permission to "Post
tweets for me", why?

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w01fe
We only use that permission to allow you to share stories you find with
Prismatic. We'll never tweet unless you ask us to.

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jbauman
I finally got FB since that's where the party is, but I'm not over 45. Why
should I get twitter?

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phreeza
Any invites or such for HNers?

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alextp
Tweet at me (atpassos_ml) and I can spend one of my three invites on you.

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rjurney
Prismatic is the next Google.

