
Show HN: My startup - Summarizing popular HN articles - MichaelApproved
http://skimthat.com/
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il
Is this really a startup or more of a side project? Do you plan to expand to
other sites/blogs, sort of like the business book summary market?

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MichaelApproved
I plan to expand this beyond HN but, at first, I want to focus on HN since I'm
part of this community and it's a great place to get feedback. It's my first
attempt at an MVP and I want to make sure I get things right before building
out the entire site.

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eoghan
People who believe that they don't have time to read are fooling themselves.
The real problem is that they find it increasingly difficult to concentrate
amongst the distractions that a lot of us have allowed into our lives. The
solution is not more technology (or smart services like this one) but rather a
significant change in our lifestyles. Training yourself out of the ability to
concentrate will have serious long-term consequences as you grow older and
those who seek to invent great things will find it hard to do so without deep
thought.

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MichaelApproved
For me, it's not a matter of concentration. There are some articles where I'd
prefer to just get the raw information.

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sygma
Personally, Daniel Tenner's Swombat [1] is already fulfilling that need.

[1] <http://swombat.com/>

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MichaelApproved
Daniel includes opinion and editorial. I plan on taking things down with no
personal editorial.

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kno
How is this a startup? not all project are startup thia seems more like a
[side] project

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MichaelApproved
I'm mainly looking to get a working formula for now. There will be much more
built out once I get that right.

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phreeza
Have you thought about the authors IP rights? For example, if they have a CC
no-derivs license on their blog, wouldn't you be violating it?

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MichaelApproved
I don't believe summarizing violates copyrights. Fair use should cover what
I'm doing.

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agscala
What exactly is your startup offering? Is someone going to paraphrase each
article submission-by-submission? Personally, if I was told that Jacques
Mattheij had an interesting blog post, I would rather read what he wrote
rather than what someone else interpreted it as.

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MichaelApproved
Think of it as a TLDR version of an article with just the bare facts. If you
find it interesting then you can go on to read the entire article.

I agree, there are times when you want to read the full article but think of
all the other times you try to skim through a page and hit the back button
after 30 seconds.

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stevenp
There's a typo in the Andrew Warner quote. I think you mean "work" instead of
"word". :) The concept looks really interesting. Do you think the target
market is large enough to make your service profitable?

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MichaelApproved
Fixed typo, thanks.

The initial concept will focus on HN articles because I read a lot of articles
here and it's a great audience for feedback. Once I make sure the summaries
are good, I'll expand to more news sources and build out the site.

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pixelbath
When I start to become too busy to read Hacker News, I simply stop reading it.
I removed it from my RSS feed long ago (who can actually read 1000+
submissions per day, and remain employed?), and only visit the site manually
now.

A page or two later, and I'm usually done. Great things usually stay fairly
sticky on the main page, and truly fantastic things will generally be mirrored
elsewhere.

YMMV.

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MichaelApproved
What if I delivered content that gave you something between stopping to read
it and only getting the truly fantastic?

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pixelbath
I might be interested, depending on the editorial quality of the summary.
Though honestly, I might still come directly to Hacker News specifically for
those stories that fly under the radar.

I've noticed that the goals of a startup-oriented aggregator do not always
intersect my interests. I think cherry-picking out of the broader feed would
only decrease the total number of items to read, but not necessarily improve
the signal. The target audience (entrepreneurs, investors, startups) may
benefit greatly; I don't know.

It's difficult to get a feel for how this works without some visible examples,
though.

~~~
MichaelApproved
I'm working on the first batch of summaries now. If you signed up, you should
get some examples shortly.

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dy
Curious how the summarization works - are you using something open-source or
customized?

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MichaelApproved
I'm having writers read and shorten the articles. They're taking it down to
the bare facts with no personal editorial.

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dy
Any ideas on how you would run this operation at scale?

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MichaelApproved
Thinking a team of editors around different time zones so they cover news
throughout the day. Each editor can do about 40 articles a day.

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thecoffman
What are you using for the summaries? Is it algorithmic or human? Perhaps
mturk or similar?

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MichaelApproved
Hiring editors to read and shorten the articles at first. Once I get a feel
for how the summaries should be written, I'll experiment with something like
mturk and other ideas so I can scale.

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HeyLaughingBoy
Who is your market and how much do you think they will pay?

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MichaelApproved
My market is someone who wants an overview of news. I expect to operate on ad
revenue.

