Ask HN: Help us seed NewsTilt (YC 2010) with thoughtful comments. | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Help us seed NewsTilt (YC 2010) with thoughtful comments.

newstilt.com

38 pointspbiggar40 comments

Just my 2c, please rethink most of the fonts. Not a fan of those.

Also I just don't understand what NewsTilt is :/ It just looks like a blog with some articles... Is there a clear description of what's going on somewhere?

For example I see an article reviewing the movie "How to train your dragon". Why would I only read it on NewsTilt? Isn't it more likely I'd google for reviews and check out a few? I don't see how it fits into peoples behaviors atm... Sort of seems like an online version of a hardcopy paper, but without the hardcopy paper bit :/

Yes, though I personally overwhelmingly prefer sans serif fonts, the font choice for the main article titles is rather uninspired. The design is not terrible, it just needs attention to details. Also a big readability issue: increase the line-height.

Noted.

+1, the article text fonts are spidery-thin and hard to read. I'm also not too sure what NewsTilt is -- a 'hn celebrity' type blog?

I think the general idea is to act as a central repository for information/articles and to syndicate that out as much as possible (clearly it's not going to wash as a news site with such varied content) and also act as a central "home page" for each journalists brand. (Im not 100% sold on the concept yet - but it has promise)

That is the impression I got from a newsgroup discussion I was part of a short while back when they were looking for ideas on how best to serve journalists (so it might be outdated).

We'll look at the fonts, sure. I wasn't sure myself, but they do look quite pretty.

The notion is to turn journalists into TechCrunch by building a brand around them. This is version 1.0, in that we're trying to attract a community and more journalists so that we can grow to be THE place to go to for news, and to make names of our journalists.

Ah ok, I understand a little more now. Seems like starting with a narrower focus would be good though - being the place for movie reviews, or science news, or politics etc is probably an easier starting goal than trying to be THE place to go to for news.

There's so many places to go for news online now it's kinda overwhelming.

Regarding "how to train your dragon". We anticipate that you would Google for it, and that you would find your way to Captain Critic, see some of his other reviews, have a read of them. The next time you look for reviews you see the same thing, and before long you just decide to sign up for RSS.

Then you notice some good comments in the RSS (we'll be sending the top comments with the feed). One day, one of them provokes you so much ("How dare they say that about the matrix") that you click the reply link and let him know your opinion.

And so on. Its not about newstilt, its about the journalist. You like his movie reviews, you'll come back next time. We're giving the journalist everything they need in terms of services to make it happen.

Thanks for explaining. Be interesting to know how many people use RSS. I've never got into it FWIW. If I really loved a review I would of course bookmark the site and pop back every so often though.

I do think a narrower focus would make building a community easier though.

If the first comments on NewsTilt are the kind of quality we've come to expect on HN, we may be able to socially engineer others into leaving really good comments too. Help set a good example.

As a bribe, I promise to write about how well that works.

From what I see so far, I think you have a promising start. I understand the problem you're trying to solve, and this is a good attempt at a minimum-viable version 1, as pg is always counseling startups to do. It will be interesting to see how you iterate with this.

Got a comment from a 'silver surfer' in my family that it wasn't obvious how to log in to comment. Need to do something to make it obvious to people who've never used Facebook connect before.

I'm not on Facebook, so sites that have this Facebook connect feature as the only way to sign up / log in have lost me as a user.

I realize I am probably in the minority, or at least not in the target market.

I am on facebook, but don't want to use facebook connect. Maybe I'm also a minority I don't know. I sort of like my facebook being separate to everything else.

We don't do anything to your facebook account, we just want to know real names so that comments will be better quality.

I don't use my real name on facebook either, and I know many other folks who do the same. Indeed, I might prefer to use my real name on NewsTilt but NOT facebook.

As with many of the login complaints, this is probably only an issue for a small minority of your target users.

Really? Interesting. I presume though that it's a name that you're invested in somehow, and that you wouldn't like to tarnish by leaving crapping comments?

Simplest thing to do right away would be to place the Facebook connect login button where it currently says "Please login to respond to the article." At least people who know how to use that login will be able to comment more easily.

Yes - when I'm looking at "Please log in to respond to this article" there is no where else on my screen where I can click to log in. I have to scroll all the way back to the top, by which time my mind is moving past the article I just read and on to the next tab I have open.

Excellent point, we'll fix it.

OK, will fix.

From a design point of view, I think it's really great, but there's a couple of tweaks I would make. First, I would ditch the Zapfino script font, it's quite distracting and jars with the other fonts. Secondly, I would slightly increase the leading on the main body text (something like line-height: 150% works quite well for me). Apart from these small things, I think it looks lovely, keep up the good work!

The design bothers me a bit, actually. It feels amateurish.

The icon you've got there (tiny newspaper on what looks like a mac monitor) is completely unclear to me. What are you trying to say with it?

I don't know if this is true for anyone else, but for me the header nav stuff is HUUUUUUGE and could use some aesthetic work. For reference, here's what I see: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v624/adlaiff6/2010-04-14-1... It is smaller on other pages.

I will try to have more idea-based/conceptual/critical comments for you soon, kinda running out the door at the moment.

I agree. We're iterating on the site, and I think we'll be reducing the size of that. Its actually smaller on every other page.

The homepage is going to be more about the content, so we'll be moving towards making the non-content elements smaller an less significant.

Also, we're to make the site about the journalists, rather than about us, so we'll be changing the design to emphasize the journalists' brands more than newstilt.

I like this. I'm getting tired of sites that tell you what they are, it would be nice to see sites move to /showing/ me what they are instead.

This seems like a more difficult task though, so good luck.

Disappointment. The layout is well done. In fact my eye was immediately drawn to the leads of the first 3 stories, from which I concluded I was faced with 3 more opinion pieces.

Disappointment because the web, tv, and all entertainment media are already drowning in post-post-modern opinion. Eric Schmidt wants Google to get opinions you don't share in your face (somehow). Actual news gathering organizations have had their budgets slashed. What little objective reporting exists is mostly rewrites from wire services.

I suppose with a name like "Tilt" I should have expected more "Look at me! I've got a great venue and I've got an opinion!"

Objective journalism would have been a nice surprise.*

*Disclaimer: Like I said, I was drawn to the story leads that first displayed. All reactions are drawn from that experience, i.e. I did not go further.

The stories that we launched with are of the more 'evergreen' variety, because we asked journalists to have a number of stories ready for launch. Since we didn't know what time we would be launching at, and we didn't even know the date for sure until a few days ago, it was hard for them to guarantee that they would have stories ready to go.

From now on, stories are much more likely to be up to the minute news. For example, check out [idavar's story on HayStack](http://www.newstilt.com/idavar/news/iranian-techies-eager-to...).

However, I do believe that readers want more opinion, not less of it. I am encouraging journalists to let their own voices be heard in the stories they write, where traditionally they would have held back on that. Its important for them to have a brand, and that their community likes them and identifies with them. Opinion helps here.

Good story. Good luck with the start-up!

Why when I log out does it also log me out of Facebook?? Is that a limitation of FBConnect?

EDIT: I see that it is a limitation.. that sucks.

We don't like it either. On the plus side, it means you're less likely to logout from NewsTilt, but we wouldn't have done this if we could have avoided it.

Yeh, totally. It's actually put me right off (as a developer) FBConnect as a sign on service.

some random observations:

Please rethink about fonts. I would prefer "continue reading" button on right side. "News" link can be little more prominent; centered content on "news" page.

on the side note: are you going to let user to customize/filter/personalize "news" page?

> are you going to let user to customize/filter/personalize "news" page?

Yes, when there is a little more content up. We're also going to automatically make a nice homepage for you based on what you like, recommendations, and facebook connect.

I thought you guys were syndicating stories to reach the audiences who would comment on human interest stories, etc.

We're working on syndication now.

I have to say, I don't like this site. I run at 1680x1050 and when the actual meat of the site only takes up a fraction of my screen width..

In your browser, press Control and the + button at the same time. That zooms in.

I don't want my font size jacked up to incredible levels, thanks.

We're going to work on that. People with larger screens will get more content on them. But give us some time, there are a ton of features to do and bugs to fix.

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