

Announcing App.net Broadcast - Shank
http://blog.app.net/2013/11/21/announcing-app-net-broadcast/

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spindritf
_Dalton Caldwell just showed me a new service that could be a very big deal._

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/402260557325021184](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/402260557325021184)

Is this it?

It could be big. It certainly is something that I was missing on the web.
Something that TV still does fairly well.

~~~
jypepin
If pg was talking about this, it feels like an over statement to me since it
feels like it's the exact same idea as "close friends" on facebook, which
creates a notification anytime one of them does something.

What am I missing?

~~~
zaidf
The difference is the angle. The Facebook Close Friends is useful but is made
for one to one relationships than organizations. App.net is not advising that
you make an alert appear on your fans' phones everytime your band publishes
anything on social media; they only want the band to use this feature when a
new song is being released or they are about to perform in your area. It is
publisher centric; Facebook Close Friends feature(which I love and use!) is
consumer-focused. I don't think my Close Friends even know I get an alert each
time they post something. In contrast I bet app.net plans to expose detailed
analytics including engagement and unsubscription rates so publishers can
further optimize content and reduce noise.

In that way, it sounds like a Facebook Page + Close Friends feature + letting
publisher trigger notification on selective posts only.

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look_lookatme
I wish Twitter supported this. It would be nice to have a mega-stream from NYT
that dumped out tons of updates, but I could subscribe to threads of those
updates. For instance I'd like to get "broadcasts" for their ongoing coverage
of the current Senate filibuster news as well as non-breaking news, like their
movie reviews, etc.

Essentially I'd like publishers to be able to categorize their tweets and make
those categories available for subscription without having to create and
follow discrete twitter accounts.

~~~
untog
Sadly this is exactly the kind of thing of thing that could have been built on
top of RSS, before everyone gave up on it.

~~~
eridius
For non-breaking news, sure. For breaking events, RSS is inappropriate. You
need a push model (which ADN Broadcasts is), whereas RSS is the epitome of
pull.

~~~
buckbova
I still don't see the need for this. If my RSS reader is always polling for
new messages then I will get the message. Push or pull, the end user doesn't
see the difference.

~~~
eridius
You'd be hard-pressed to find an RSS reader that polls more often than every 5
minutes, and I would wager all of the RSS services have a longer refresh timer
than that. If you're trying to keep up with breaking events, being 5+ minutes
behind everyone else is pointless. You're just going to end up glued to
Twitter.

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eridius
This is pretty cool! Looks like I'll never miss a Perry Bible Fellowship
again.

~~~
possibilistic
Low-frequency channels could utilize this.

A great percentage of the content I'm interested in is created or updated only
rarely, and it tends to be superior to the kind of content that is churned out
for quick consumption.

I fear that even with a tool like this, discovery, spam, and the need for
heavy personal curation will still be problems. In any case, this stands to
help improve signal:noise.

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jamesdeer
Ah App.Net- I forgot about that.

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BaconJuice
I still don't get App.net

~~~
AznHisoka
I still don't get App.net, and this whole push notifications thing... isn't it
like Twitter? or email?

Twitter became a medium to consume content for many people, and when it became
mainstream, people started abusing it, and now you see tweets for everything,
even unimportant stuff. If this takes off, I can see this happening too,
people pushing unimportant marketing messages.

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chrisfarms
> A good Broadcast Channel will send at most 1-2 Broadcasts per day

What about the _bad_ channels. I'd love it if that 1-2 broadcasts was a hard
limitation. I would be more inclined to subscribe to something I _know_ was
forced to pick the most interesting thing they had to say or at least to
summarise.

~~~
thisishugo
I would like if _I_ could set the limit (per-channel) on how many broadcasts I
get. Publishers can try to send me as many broadcasts as they want, but if
they go over my limit they're silenced until I choose to look at them
explicitly.

I want broadcasters to (re)learn that _breaking news_ is "Plane lands on
Hudson river" not "dog bites man."

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hardwaresofton
So I've had this idea before, but I thought it'd been done before...? Aren't
there various services based on pubsubhubbub?

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parshap
So it's as if @nytimes also had @nytimes_broadcast and you could subscribe to
get push notifications for latter's tweets.

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qthrul
Anyone here remember zephyrgram instances back in the 90s?

[http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/doc/izephyr/html/node3...](http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/doc/izephyr/html/node30.html)

~~~
sebkomianos
I am only 25 so I didn't know about zephygram. How is it different to email or
twitter?

(This is the only "valuable" page I found: [http://the-
tech.mit.edu/about/old/zwrite.html](http://the-
tech.mit.edu/about/old/zwrite.html))

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donpark
To me this is return of RSS post category feed which was popular enough but
was eventually overshadowed by tags.

In Twitter terms, it's saved search with username and hashtag pair.

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Raphael
The real news here is that App.net finally has an Android app.

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vidocha
A couple friends and I are building something similar. The idea is great but
more importantly is how you will bring this to mass market. If you had this
idea before send me an email, we are looking for a fourth set of hands or just
some insight.

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naner
FTA:

 _Just like an email list..._

That was what I was thinking. Email is technically not push but there's not
really a noticeable difference.

His Broadcast Twitter is richer and looks slicker but you have to sign up for
another service and download an app to use it. I can't even browse what
broadcasts are available. Why would anyone (who hasn't already drank the Kool-
Aid) sign up?

Also this whole App.net thing is pretty weird. I thought it was intended for
paid users only? Or did they find it hard to have a lucrative developer
platform with no users?

sidenote: Snark and cynicism are the two hallmarks of shitty HN posts so I'm
sorry. I feel like I'm in some alternate universe where people are building
weird shiny things that nobody wants. Maybe this is a sign I'm getting old.

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theg2
This is sounding a lot like Twitter without the social aspect.

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kmfrk
Seems like an interesting concept. Don't know how the App.net integration
works, but aside from that, it looks like an interesting idea.

