Show HN: Subtome – Universal subscribe button | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Subtome – Universal subscribe button

subtome.com

47 pointsjulien27 comments

Very nice. Btw, you should use capital letters to separate the words in the name.

Like this: SubToMe

Otherwise I read it as "sub-tome".

Good idea. We are also looking for a logo that could work well. Any idea?

Use a logo that incorporates symbols normaly associated with subscribing buttons, an "S", and symbols associated with universality and cross-platform utilization.

This will give you a springboard for incorporating your project's name, and illustrate that it's universal (a central point) along with showing its main purpose - subscribing.

I would recommend something like an S with an infinity symbol overlaying the top curve of the S, and the lower curve curling into an arrow pointing down towards the bottom of the screen.

Hope that helps :)

It does :) Thanks!

I was wondering about this. Thanks for clarifying the pronunciation.

From the cursory glance at landing page, I cannot really tell how does it work or what it is from user's PoV. Is it an RSS feed? An email digest? RSS-to-social-media feed converter?

It could really use a more specific description, and maybe a diagram too.

It's a button. Maybe you could have clicked on it :)

You could make the button "Try" a bit more obvious. It's the only uncolored button, I find it a bit weird.

I clicked on it and nothing happened. Using chrome on android. I still have no idea what it is.

EDIT: [I realize you may not be the author, so this isn't necessarily directed at you] Also, the button says, "Try it, Subscribe", which implies that by clicking the button I'll be subscribing to something. I want to know what the button is and what it does, I don't want to have to subscribe to something to figure it out. Now curiosity got the best of me and I clicked anyway, figuring I'd just unsubscribe (whatever that means) if I needed to. Of course, I clicked several times and nothing happened, so now my curiosity is gone. The point? A demo button should not make someone feel like they're committing to something (unless that's the intention). And when someone asks what it is after reading the page, it's best to answer them and maybe add it to the page.

At first glance, this seems like a non-compatible subset of Web Intents [0] that only pertains to subscriptions. Why use the SubToMe button over the Web Intents shim?

[0]: http://webintents.org/

Well, we actually wanted to use WebIntents to do that, but then WebIntents disappeared from Chrome, so we decided to create a similar approach which would work specifically for subscriptions :)

Like many others showing confusion as to what this does, allow me to add mine as well.

You have to look at this from the reader's perspective, an average reader. Everyone wants to, or should subscribe the web content, but not everyone subscribe equally or subscribe through the same means. Some use email, some RSS, some Twitter, Facebook, browser addon, extension etc. What I am looking for an answer to "Where does this service meet the common-denominator subscriber?" Does it meet them only if they know RSS, or email for that matter? A universal subscribe button for that matter, should be answering such a question.

We're obviously not clear enough, because this is exactly what this button does: allow each web user to subscribe thru the app of their choice, rather than force them own one specific choice.

Of course, this requires the "readers" (whether their RSS reader, Twitter, Facebook, etc...) have to "register" (see the developer section) or the list of defaults will be showed.

Most specifically, I see on your blog that you have a "Follow by email" field. This is great, but if you had a SubToMe button instead, people interested in following by email could still do it (using an app that does so) or maybe follow by SMS, or by IM (I use that personnaly). People using Google Reader could also do it easily... etc. As a blogger, you don't have to decice how people are going to subscribe to your content :)

May be you should consider having a different kind of launch for this service, if what you describe above is exactly what you are offering. But either case, IMHO, it would take a whole lot of people (a movement altogether) to get people to shift their perspectives on how the "subscribe" thing should work on the web. All the more power to you for attempting to solve this.

PS: the reason I have subscribe email button is because Blogspot provides it by default through Feedburner. So I have opted for the platform's native service instead of anyone else. I will give your service a try anyway but asking people to subscribe to a service .... to subscribe to a service...well you know where it leads.

You don't have to ask your readers to subscribe to a service at all! Again, it's just a button :) There is not even a web app running on the back. Only some Javascript and the use of your localStorage.

It's integrated on a couple sites like: http://andraz.wpengine.com/ check it out to see how easy it is to use.

I don't see an option for email, browser add-on/extension etc (by browser addon, I mean to suggest the type of alerts you get in Gmail when you have that extension installed). The service is simply providing one relatively known service and rest the unknowns (again, looking at it from common-denominator average perspective).

Well, email is not app, nor is browser addon. However, apps that use email or browser addons could very easily register with Subtome (see the Developer section) so that if you used them, they'll show up.

We also have added Blogtrottr as a default, and yes they provide emails...

Again, SubToMe will not show you a foot long list of services, just the ones that you used in the past (thru the registration mechanism) or a couple default ones to get started.

Event after reading most of the website I was under the impression that this somehow bypassed RSS or something, started wondering about polling/crawling...

in case you didn't get it either: it allows you to add feeds to GoogleReader/NewsBlur/etc from a single button.

You know how Opera does it, and how much simpler your solution can be? http://i.imgur.com/mehY4Hw.png

I don't really understand the purpose of this. How is it different from the subscribe bookmarklet provided by Google Reader?

What if one does not use Google Reader?

That's a good enough answer, but then take it a step further.

If your application and Google's cost the same, why use yours over Google Reader?

Google is a powerful brand and it's free. What can SubToMe offer to gain users?

I understand this is open source so you're not thinking about things like market share but just a helpful thought.

Well, to be fair, they really don't have the same purpose.

Say you're a blogger. You want to allow your users to subscribe to your content. Would you only allow those who use Google Reader to do so? Certainly not! SubToMe actually plugs nicely into Google Reader for the Google Reader users as well as it plays nicely for those who use BlogLovin'... etc.

That is a good description.

I didn't get the button from the page alone - follow seems like the wrong word for that. For me, that is a subscribe-button for a rss-feed. Which is a good thing i would like to use for my own blog, as in my eyes the browsers went crazy in removing their support for feeds. This seems very helpful.

Well, again RSS is actually too big of a constraint. Say I list on my blog page the list of my social web profiles (Twitter, Facebook, Google+...). Rather than have button for each of them, the button could very well redirect the user to each of these services to allow them to follow me on there.

I know it's tricky to understand, bit this button just does 'subscribe', without actually specifying to what (besides the page you're on), or using what reader/tool.

Cool; I really like this idea. A couple of suggestions to make it even better:

1. Add icons for the available services in addition to the names. 2. Add an "Other RSS" button that gives the user an easy way to copy and paste the feed URL into their app of choice in case it's not listed.

Sorry, wanted to try but I really don't get it.

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