Show HN: Prolifi.cc, a weekend project | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Prolifi.cc, a weekend project

prolifi.cc

86 pointstamal66 comments

No text-based summary, introduction, or blurb? Not everyone is able to view video at the moment they come across your site; if they can't immediately read what it's about, they may not come back to find out.

Agreed and great point. Thanks.

Also I would put the page title blurb ("use Twitter as your blog") somewhere prominently in the page text. I had to read around here to figure out what itch this was scratching.

The video won't play in my Android by the way.

How about that blurb? ;)

Eek. It's supposed to be WebM-friendly. I'll see what I can do.

Meanwhile, I've posted a blurb.

Thank you.

Flowplayer is really good by the way, check out http://j.mp/NBFTze if you're interested.

So. You created an application to blog and to be able to post that on twitter.

I don't get why this is #3 on HN right now.

You're judging to quickly. Take a step back and reconsider. The point is in the use-case, not the mechanics. He is allowing people to blog ad-hoc, using twitter as the glue to otherwise loose content containers. By doing this, he is extending the light(er) state-of-mind of twitting into blogging (which is otherwise a 'heavier' commitment). It's clever.

HN likes people who ship.

Any weekend project is "shipping" (in that sense) now? Good grief.

Not hating on OP or his site, just sayin'.

Of course it's "shipping." Why wouldn't it be?

The application automatically tweets your blog post to the world, thus giving you more exposure. I don't see why you should put down his work when it actually does what it's supposed to.

what does it bring more to : post a blog on the platform you like (tumblr, blogger, your own code...) and then twit the link?

The "feature" I was shooting for is zero-signup. It authenticates you via Twitter and that's it.

It's a bad idea.

I use to have this on my website with facebook instead of asking someone to create an account and link it with facebook.

If facebook bans your website => you can't access your account anymore

If facebook crash => you can't access you account anymore

If your facebook account is compromised => you can't access your account anymore

If facebook is blocked on the intranet => you can't ...

there are tons of reason people don't do zero-signup with twitter or facebook.

Interesting. That's worth mentioning on your landing page. I overlooked that.

So true. I don't get it either.

Deleted comment

Hey now Accusey Adam (or is it Conjecturey Constance?), put down the pitchfork. There's no need to accuse people of sockpuppeting/gaming just because you don't like their project. It's hurtful to hear people call you a cheater when you just want to get feedback on your project.

Tamal has a pretty neat looking service (yes, one that's been done before, but still pretty neat). I've seen SPLASH PAGES with zero functionality get more votes on HN; why shouldn't Tamal get his 15 minutes?

Relax and watch the blinkenlights.

A quick critique on the video.

1.) The screenshot of the prolifi.cc landing page has the large black coming soon banner.

2.) At the point where you show the creation of a blog post, I think the left pane with all the markdown instructions is so visually distracting. Perhaps the video can just focus only the right pane...

I really liked the fact that you stated "you don't have a blog and you don't need one.." I think that really reinforces the concept and value of your product.

Just my $0.02.

You know what would be really killer? Fork a couple popular open source desktop Twitter clients and add Prolifi.cc integration.

Whenever you start typing past the character limit, have the edit window morph to add your blog title field and change the button to "Post via Prolifi.cc", and have it hit your back end.

Would be cool as a browser plugin, so that when a message goes over the character limit, a button to post via Prolificc appears, all within the natural flow of using the Twitter website. You could even extend this concept by creating a Prolificc API to allow third party developers to integrate into popular twitter clients.

Awesome weekend project!

I think this is pretty cool, if for no other reason that it's a next step (not "the") in the evolution of the platforms.

It used to be you wrote a blog. Then you started using Twitter as a toy. Then you linked to blog posts on Twitter. Then you got lazy about updating your blog (i.e. Robert Scoble). Then you used only Twitter. Then you realized occasionally you want to say more than you can Tweet. Then.. Voila!

TweetDeck used to let you post long messages. Have they stopped doing that, or is Prolifi.cc trying to let you do something else?

There are quite a few long message services. Most (if not all) are plain text. Prolifi.cc allows styling via Markdown, images, etc. More of a proper article post and less wall of text.

So basically tumblr with zero sign-up?

Less than that. Tumblr has it's own followers/following/social network. This does nothing more than "attach" a blog post to a tweet. apitaru put it quite well elsewhere in the comments.

Would be more useful if prolifi has an extension. That way, when I exceed 160 chars on twitter, I am reminded that I can post the blurp through prolifi instead and have the link posted to twitter automatically. Similar to how Facebook implemented their Notes concept, which never made sense in the Facebook context.

I might actually use this... Markdown, Twitter auth, nice interface. Really low friction. Sticky domain name, too!

Where's the target group?

Because the question is: how many people use twitter and don't have a blog or website?

TBH the only person I built it for is me. I had an itch and scratched it.

Great reply and great attitude!

a lot? i think it's kind of different using twitter than a blog or a website. usually this last two require mantainance, or at least, a little time spent on them. which not everyone wants to give or even cares.

I have a blog BECAUSE twitter doesn't do this.

Can it do code markup? I was looking for something the other day and I didn't want to set up my own 'blog'. Tumblr couldn't support Github gists for some reason, so really that' all you need.

Edit: On first glance, it doesn't seem to be able to embed Github gists. Darn.

I run https://snipt.net/, and I just built in a blogging platform, seems like it might be what you're looking for: https://blog.snipt.net/announcing-the-sniptnet-blogging-plat...

There is code markup, but no syntax-highlighting (yet).

Edit: Gists is a good one. Added to my to-do list.

You could just use thinkery.me and make your stream public for that.

i really like this idea! i do not have a blog but i would love to start one, and i also do not use twitter much. but like this idea. but before i would love to see some posts examples.

http://prolifi.cc/p/prolifi_cc/1-introducing-prolifi-cc

thanks

So you don't have a blog, you don't use twitter. But you like the idea.

This thread is getting really suspicious.

This is my twitter https://twitter.com/#!/SimoneMasieroDv with a grand total of 6 tweets this year. I agree with you that this thread is suspicious due to the number of votes it receive, when i first commented it had 11 votes and no comments. But anyway i can grant you i have nothing to do with it. I have a personal website, but it's sadly unfinished, http://hackertyper.net/portfolio

I just like the idea of not having to register to a new service to make some posts.

lol, that's a funny comment!

It's nice, but don't get why it should be able to

* Read Tweets from my timeline. * See who I follow, and follow new people. * Update my profile.

so, not registering, sry...

There are only 3 types of permission levels in the twitter api: read, write and write with DM access. Those displayed there are the details of the write access.

Twitter has three permission levels: Read Only, Read and Write, and Read, Write, and Direct Messages.

In order to have it Tweet on your behalf it needs Read and Write permissions. Along with that comes all the other permissions. If I could exclude it I would.

Oh, ok, got it. Not a twitter app dev. You are forgiven ;-) - registered.

Glad you shipped it :) Any plans of monetization? Open-source?

Maybe ;) There are opportunities for both. I'm not committed to any one path yet.

Reminds me a lot like http://checkthis.com/ except a micro-micro blog form

It took me a while to figure out this isn't a C++ program. C++ source files sometimes use the .cc extension.

the http:// wasn't a big clue?

How is it different from http://cpypst.me/

It appears similar, except your posts are tied to your Twitter account instead of just floating.

Weekend project as in "done-in-a-weekend", or as in a side-project?

Technically done-in-a-long-weekend (last Thanksgiving).

I'm attempting to turn it into a side-project to justify buying a Retina MacBook Pro, so I dusted it off, recorded the video, and updated a few bits.

What's the tech stack for this, if you don't mind me asking?

Rails on Passenger on nginx, omniauth for Twitter authentication, redcarpet for Markdown support.

Thanks for sharing that. I was looking for something like this, keep up the good work :)

Also, would be cool, if you decided at some point to open-source it or unless you went the startup route, and end up monetizing the hell out of it. Then again, making money and open-sourcing are not mutually exclusive, methinks...

I'll this in mind, thanks, it might come in handy.

Similar to TwitLonger?

I posted this elsewhere in the comments: "There are quite a few long message services. Most (if not all) are plain text. Prolifi.cc allows styling via Markdown, images, etc. More of a proper article post and less wall of text."

Cool I see the difference now, thanks for clarifying.

Thanks this is great!

Fine application, except for the wood grain background.

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