

Looking back on news recommendation sites - pclark
http://newsblogblog.com/post/61694512/argh-news-recommendation-services-are-too-new

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lincolnq
I'm working on a site that does exactly this! It learns pretty well what you
want to read (based on voting up/down on everything). It's mostly based on
correlating your preferences with those of other people.

My site is <http://newsbrane.com> and you can try it if you like. I'd
appreciate feedback; click 'send feedback' at the top of the page (or post
here - I'll read it).

Lincoln

~~~
unalone
It feels a bit awkward to use: three stories at a time, and they're all
displayed so big! No idea how you're finding these readable stories.

The problem with this is that I feel no need to continue using it. No
incentive. Part of that's because I know you'll keep giving me a stream of
items, no matter what my limit for reading stories is.

I think it would be neat if this could determine what things attracted me to
stories, and ONLY showed me ones that I'd be interesting in. A site willing
not to give me content is one that I'd possibly become a diehard fan of.

~~~
seansmith
The other founder here.

Newsbrane is still in its infant stage, and your criticisms are entirely valid
:). The first 10 minutes aren't very satisfying.

The site actually does exactly what you want it to do: it learns your tastes
and shows you only the things you're interested in.

What you experienced was the "Explore" mode, which is designed to _figure out_
your tastes, not give you the best stuff. Explore is the 3-at-a-time mode you
start out in. Once you've done some voting, you can use the "Recommended"
mode, which does what you want.

The site works great for people with 50 votes or more. We are still working on
the new user experience, and we are ravenous for feedback like yours, so thank
you.

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dood
I find it a little odd that no decent news recommenders have emerged (I expect
they will eventually). Possible reasons:

\- The recommendation problem is very hard (or the solution-space is very
large)

\- Good recommendations require lots of user data, leading to a chicken-and-
egg problem

\- Not enough people care enough about it

The answer is probably a bit of all three. But it is suprising that such an
obvious opportunity hasn't been done right yet.

Good luck to all the people working on it!

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aditya
oh, and they missed <http://outside.in/> \- but I'm biased. :-)

I think relevance is a hard problem to solve when it comes to news. You need
to trust the community that filters your news for you and if it is an open
community then that leads to all sorts of FAIL. Lots of exciting things
happening in the area though.

~~~
jfornear
FriendFeed/Twitter allows you to specifically choose each individual that
belongs to that group that gets you your news. I just don't feel like these
two companies focus on this aspect of it enough.

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akkartik
I work for <http://meehive.com>

~~~
pclark
could I have an invite? peter [at] omgponi.es

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gaika
Nobody knows <http://jaanix.com>

~~~
unalone
Because it's ugly, there are few submissions, and most of the submissions are
parroted from Reddit.

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pclark
cool topic, surprised google reader doesn't do more of this stuff.

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brandnewlow
What about Techmeme?

