Show HN: Content underload | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Content underload

delight.so

23 pointsjoeroot31 comments

Comment by @himerzi who is shadowbanned (surprise!):

"Hi, i'm one of the creators. We're interested in personalised content curation but wanted to take it back to scratch. To do this we're manually curating online content for users with one hand-picked article per day for each user.

We really want to build a relationship with our users and find out what makes them tick whilst delighting them with something new each day."

Hi, i'm one of the creators. We're interested in personalised content curation but wanted to take it back to scratch. To do this we're manually curating online content for users with one hand-picked article per day for each user.

We really want to build a relationship with our users and find out what makes them tick whilst delighting them with something new each day.

I'd like an example or something before I give out my email. I have no idea what I'm signing up for.

I agree, I have no intention of giving out my e-mail without an example.

When you signup we spend some time trying to understand you by exploring your Twitter profile (followers, links, retweets etc.). Once done, we either recommend you an article from a curate pool of articles which we've come across before, or by browsing sources we think will have interesting content which you might not be looking at already.

We then send you an email with a link to the content and an explanation behind our reason. If the user replies or reads the link, we keep going. If they don't we stop! Ultimately to do this well, we want to have a conversation with the subscriber (almost like bibliotherapy).

For example, were someones Twitter data points indicative of an interest in Programming Languages and Education, we might send them http://worrydream.com/#!/LearnableProgramming, with a brief explanation on why. If they reply saying they don't like long form, old content, then we'd make sure to adjust the next article accordingly. Hope that helps!

Are you planning something for people not on twitter?

Definitely. You can sign up without Twitter, it might just take a bit longer to get to the bottom of what interests you!

Thanks! You should put this on your site :)

"Twitter: We'd like to see you follow"

I don't understand this part. Should I give you my Twitter handle so that you can see whom I'm following, or a Twitter handle of someone I enjoy reading on Twitter?

Hey spindritf, good point. That was terrible copy. We've updated it to hopefully make more sense. We'd like your Twitter handle. This seeds us with our first few data points!

A couple more I noticed:

"its a terrible habit" -> it's

"thats been hand-picked by a human" -> that's

Cheers Gigablah!

I've signed up a couple of days ago but no mail so far? (twitter: odinovereem)

How will you know what I like?

Hey I'm one of the creators of Delight.

We're using Twitter as a starting point. We hope to work out what makes you tick, but ultimately that will only come from a conversation with you - thus why we've chosen to individually curate and pick content for all our users by hand.

If you pass us on any more info by clicking on "Tell us more", we'll use that too.

How are you monetising the service? Charging people for curation?

Right now it's completely unscalable, we just want to see if people find value in the personal touch vs an algorithm, as well if people prefer a small amount of high interest content rather than lots of mediocre stuff.

It does seem unscalable, indeed; I asked how you plan on monetising the service, though?

it sounds like this first phase is more market testing than the final product - I suspect if interest is high then they will have enough data and potential buyers to formulate a business plan.

That sums it up

My thoughts exactly. And we see articles on this kind of strategy on HN all the time. Typically they get a bunch of positive, "I like this in the abstract realm/will try this in the future"-type feedback. So I am a little surprised by the disbelief this particular instance is receiving.

You should tell `himerzi` that they are shadowbanned on HN.

He noticed. 3 years of lurking down the drain.

Have you considered using hunch.com to help with this?

How do you plan to 'delight' everyone?

Hi sarreph. We hope to delight by understanding what each individual likes. From out initial testing, we've found that our first article is a pretty good starting point for tech "people" when we use their Twitter markers to inform us. From there we get a lot better if the user offers us valuable data points - either by reading the article or even better replying to our suggestions with feedback.

We'd all become tried of algorithms claiming to know who you are. We wanted to take this back to first principles and try to understand what captivates people.

That's an interesting initiative. However, aren't you, by definition, using an algorithm to track Twitter usage in order to tailor results?

No. We go through a user's followers by hand; identify common influencers and interests; cross reference these against interesting content from a range of sources. We will eventually look for scalable aspects, however right now we're trying to figure out what works best on an individual level.

Okay. Are you identifying common influencers and interests off the top of your head though, or is that computed somehow?

Right now no. We use intuition to extract these. We're taking notes though!

Good luck then in that case! :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com