Prismatic creates a special signup for Google reader users

For Google Reader refugees coming here hoping for their salvation, some advance warning: Prismatic is not a straightforward RSS reader.

It's more similar in concept to Pandora - you tell it what content you're interested in, it tries to generate a content feed you might find similarly interesting.

This does not mean it's a poor source for information, quite the contrary - it's a very useful information discovery tool.

However, it will not show you every post (unread or otherwise) from RSS feeds of your choosing. It's just not that kind of tool.

Here's an (older) article on NYTimes regarding it:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/prismatic-hopes-to-...

This new entry page on their site seems to be an extension of their Google Reader integration they added last June, automating the import of your current RSS feeds as 'seed' interests to generate your Prismatic feed:

http://blog.getprismatic.com/blog/2012/6/1/prismatic-integra...

I used to be a huge fan of Prismatic until it mysteriously decided about a month ago that all I want to hear about on main feed is Apple, Gadgets and Social Media. My other 63 interests (including Physics/Web dev/Genomics/Machine Learning/etc...) are nowhere to be seen and I find myself having to navigate through some of them manually to see more awesome stories that somehow don't make it to my main feed.

This is the problem I have with "smart" services that learn about you. They eventually start doing things you don't want them to do and you don't know how to change the behavior.

On the other hand, services like Google Reader have complete transparency. If you subscribe to a blog you really like, a new post will light up on the left and you don't have to be afraid of missing out. It places a little more burden on the user sometimes, but at least I feel that I am in control and that I know what is going on. It gives me peace of mind when I want it.

My (hopefully) constructive criticism amounts to asking for more transparency, and more user control. Find ways of being clever and impressing me, but also allow me to correct/improve or constraint you explicitly when I want to. Otherwise, keep up the great work!

> Prismatic is requesting permission to:

> View basic information about your account - OK

> Manage your data in Google Reader - Of course.

> View your email address - I get it, but I'd rather not.

> Manage your contacts - What?!

> Perform these operations when I'm not using the application - ...

Did anyone do it and notice anything weird?

Why it needs an access to "manage my contacts"?

Compared to early crazy years of Facebook apps, there has recently been a pleasant trend of apps asking just a minimum needed access rights and gradually asking for more if it needs. Now that all major platforms (Facebook, Google, Twitter, iOS) offer a pretty good way to display access rights - I think Facebook's way of showing them is the most clear of the pack - access right management seems a natural part of the application signup flow and not a chore.

Since the Prismatic team is reading, I'll post a couple requests/annoyances.

Context:

I'm on the obsessive side when it comes to news reading. I'm trying to accurately predict the future, which mostly works. I clear out my full Prismatic feed twice a day supplemented with first page HN twice daily and my google reader subscription covering ~300 low-volume blogs and 5 planets. Out of the 700-800 feed items I scan in a day, usually about 15 are interesting. Prismatic sources 2-3 of these that I don't get in other sources and usually has 10-11 of the 15 covered. I consider this to be excellent performance for a single source and recommend it to pretty much everybody.

Issues:

* I get a lot of (exact) duplicate articles. It seems like my feed tries to pull ~350 articles. If I cover them all, then refresh, I'll frequently but not always get ~200 unread articles, 90% of which I've just skimmed. I've also had this happen a couple hours later with the same 90% previously read behavior. On a more infrequent basis, I get the same article repeated for months. As an example, I've been getting 'Journey through the MVC Jungle' once every two weeks or so since it was published last summer.

* Topic clustering for medium volume topics. I know you're doing this for higher volume topics (though I'd prefer slightly more pruning) but I get a lot of repeat articles for lower volume topics. My annoyance at the moment is the rash of "no Firefox on iOS" articles. It's a stupid story (no actual change in Moz policy) but I've had like 40 articles on the topic all from different sources over the last 3 days or so. Don't know if there's a great solution but I'd like to be able to blacklist `Firefox AND iOS` for the next two weeks.

* Integration of low volume sources. Personal blogs by clever people are the absolute best source material and I do not want to miss any articles in these feeds. Looks like you're on top of this.

* Topic bucketing. I find it easier to partition the news by topic and then do my skim. For example, I want to do all my Clojure articles in one pass, then Mozilla articles in a second pass, then Web Design articles in a pass, etc. This seems to be an unusual pattern but it helps me filter out duplicates faster which is important due to volume. I do it on Google Reader by grouping feeds into folders and 'gu[foldername]'.

* Can't read on the subway (Android). I emailed back and forth with Jacob last October and said that I'd write an offline capable mobile version of the site but I still haven't gotten around to it. Happily, my framework is coming together and with the closing of Reader I actually have a deadline to finish this.

Regards.

Host your own, and support a FOSS developer by buying the mobile app on Android (what I do).

http://tt-rss.org/redmine/projects/tt-rss/wiki

ok. I'll admit this.

Though I'm sad to see GR disappearing, the primary reason for not using GR for me in the past 3 months has been because of Prismatic.

I've tried a NUMBER of content aggregators, content discovery tools, social feeds (whatever you call it) because I do like finding good reads, so far I think Prismatic team has very closely 'got it'.

It's by far the more accurate "we will find articles that you would be interested based on your taste" tool from my opinion.

Prismatic is beyond Google Reader in terms of features and utility. It's my default application for discovery at this point

Prismatic has been my favorite "rss reader replacement" for awhile now, great marketing idea to try to capitalize on this.

Kudos for moving on this quickly, here is my feedback.

When I clicked the OP link, I got a 'Sign up with Google Reader' link even though I have a logged-in Prismatic account already. After clicking through Google's authorize UI I received a 'Welcome to Prismatic' email so I think I might have created a dup account, but I can't tell. I would expect to be able to see my Twitter account and my Google Reader account in the same profile/settings page.

I expected a 'connect' UI like is used with OAuth on StackOverflow, alongside Twitter etc.

I think my Google Reader account will be a better source of data for Prismatic than my Twitter account. I would like to drill down to the explicit mapping inferred by Prismatic from generic 'Interest' to specific 'Feed' and be able to follow a feed ad hoc, bypassing the inference.

I'm sorry, I tried this and thought it imported my google reader stuff but it didn't. Instead, it suggested articles for me to read etc and eventually I decided this is not my GR replacement. (Don't get me wrong, I'd totally use this IF I wasn't on GR. This is good for first time, but for migrating from GR, I don't think so)

I wanted to delete my account since I don't plan on using it....but then there's no delete account! Shouldn't that be one of the first features? (Although I do understand people make it hard for users to delete to give their apps a chance)

@bradfordcross: Since you've been asking what you can do to make Prismatic better...

I want a weekly heads-up on all important news items in a particular domain. So I can make sure I'm staying on top of it.

I like to browse Prismatic daily because of the mix of recommendations relevant to my space, and fun pieces. When I skip reading Prismatic for a few days, I feel like I might have missed important news.

So essentially, I want a really heavily filtered Prismatic for a few particularly crucial topics of interest to me, that I can review weekly.

Looks awesome. Believe, it is similar to Zite that it recommends news based on interest rather than predefined feed?. I love Zite for the fact.

Also, hate to be that guy. I'm one among the rarest who use Windows Phone. The site looks okay in IE but for few minor UI issues. Will be great if you can correct some of them without going much out of your way considering your priorities. Also, if it works in desktop IE 10, it will most probably work well in mobile IE 10 as well in case you want to check it.

Good luck!

I already have a Prismatic account. Can I merge my Google Reader account with my existing Prismatic account? I tried to do this but it doesn't look like it's possible.

For the oauth login it requires the following permissions: View basic information about your account, Manage your data in Google Reader, View your email address Manage your contacts, View and manage your Google Contacts, Perform these operations when I'm not using the application

Why would it want access to view AND MANAGE my contacts? This seems a bit odd.

Can I put individual feeds into prismatic and be shwb every post?

i cant say enough positive things about prismatic. i have been using it for months and it bubbles up 90% of what i want to read. i thought it was just me, so I recommended it to non-tech friends and three of them all have come back and admitted they do most of their reading via prismatic. i was very skeptical initially, but have been presently surprised.

What do they need my contacts for. Nop.