[HN Gopher] Show HN: Alias - Google Alerts for your favorite people
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Show HN: Alias - Google Alerts for your favorite people
Author : jonathancai
Score : 86 points
Date : 2021-07-22 17:38 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (alias.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (alias.co)
| apurvak wrote:
| I really like this website design especially on mobile - how did
| you make it?
| iMuzz wrote:
| hey thanks! Nothing special just plain old CSS. :)
|
| As far as our overall stack -- we've been pretty happy with
| NextJS/TypeScript on the frontend and Hasura to power the
| backend. We use a combination of Vercel and Heroku for hosting!
| cameronbrown wrote:
| Awesome stuff. A couple years ago I built my own bespoke service
| (which I won't plug here) to do exactly this, but in a generic
| way. In retrospect, it would've been far more useful to build
| around this idea of following online creators, rather than
| letting people figure out the use cases on their own.
|
| Have you thought about expanding this beyond just the people
| here? There are more casual use cases like following specific
| creators across Twitter/YT/Patreon are also be valuable imo.
| jonathancai wrote:
| We are definitely looking to expand beyond the tech/silicon
| valley scene. We only started in this space because it's the
| kind of stuff we read, but we're looking into which spaces make
| the most sense to scale into, and we index new people every
| day.
|
| Which areas/use-cases would you be interested in seeing?
| Maubry wrote:
| I think fitness and marketing experts could be interesting.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Are you ..... me?
|
| This is such a dream product. I hope that it can be useful and a
| big success outside our tiny corner of the internet.
|
| Like will this be useful for someone who is following thought
| leaders in MMA fighting, Pornstars, DIY Guns and Drugs?
| jonathancai wrote:
| > Like will this be useful for someone who is following thought
| leaders in MMA fighting, Pornstars, DIY Guns and Drugs?
|
| We haven't quite been considering the latter folk for obvious
| reasons, but we have been pondering the general question of
| "which types of people should we index?"
|
| I think this is an interesting question to consider.
|
| One framework we've been using to try to answer this question
| is the old vitamins vs. painkillers line of thought. Where is
| the need for a product like this the greatest? Or "where is the
| consequence for missing out on a piece of content the highest?"
|
| This line of thought leads us towards the finance folks, where
| a single piece of information/alpha from a thought/industry
| leader can lead to 100+x returns, and missing out on those
| returns can be financially painful.
|
| But I'd love to hear others thoughts on this question.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| So I followed over 1,000 people on Twitter because I valued
| them for "some field" or other, but that may have been years
| ago. And I did a terrible job organizing my follows into
| lists.
|
| So now my Twitter is full of somewhat useful people, but I
| can't really use it quickly populate a list on your site.
|
| I'd like it if your signup process included easy access to
| suggested lists on topics like "longevity" or "virtual
| reality". I see a lot of the people I want on your home page,
| but I can't really use that during signup without two windows
| open.
| iMuzz wrote:
| Hey this is great feedback. We should definitely make it
| easier to come up with names and suggest more folks for you
| to subscribe to based off of topics
| xena wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about this as someone that creates a bunch
| of content across different platforms. I intentionally spread it
| out across platforms as different platforms have different groups
| of people that follow me and engage with things differently. This
| is a nice idea but feels like it could be used for stalking. It
| would be nice if there was an explicit opt-in for creators having
| their feeds associated here instead of them being aggregated
| somehow and put there through some heuristic.
| iMuzz wrote:
| Appreciate the feedback here /u/xena --
|
| > This is a nice idea but feels like it could be used for
| stalking.
|
| So we make sure to only aggregate _publicly_ available
| information that the creator released and never include pieces
| _about_ them or from someone else. We also make sure not to
| aggregate any gated /paywalled content.
|
| The problem with having every creator opt-in is that that we'd
| never be able to launch the profiles because there are so many
| creators. But maybe we could have an _opt-out_? We actually
| have the ability for creators to _claim_ their profiles as well
| and make changes /edits. So in theory, a creator that doesn't
| want to be indexed could hide all the content on their profile.
|
| Does that address the concern? open to any other ideas you
| might have!
| sneak wrote:
| I think most stalking is simply aggregation of totally public
| data.
|
| As such, I think "stalking" is a bit of an overblown term for
| it, but it remains the fact that in the common usage one
| could engage in this so-called "stalking" consuming only
| publicly available data.
| stevenicr wrote:
| Maybe ""stalking" is a bit of an overblown term for it" as
| the term for what they are doing..
|
| however when this is done for nefarious purposes it's
| called doxxing (sp) by some - and that is usually done with
| the intent to defame and to push others to do other
| harmful, often offline things, with the combined info.
|
| Which is worst than stalking imho / in most cases.
|
| Luckily it seems that this service is not doxxing everyone
| on the internet -
|
| I hope it will not have a field where people can enter a
| name and have it auto-dox people - and there would be some
| tripwires for when people may add porn stars / onlyfans /
| cam girls - stuff like that or example.
|
| I guess it could also get nasty if certain (right/left)
| wing people were combined with ill intent - especially if
| you could trick the system into adding some things that
| were not true.
|
| random thoughts, not completed.
|
| I have a semi-old business idea that could use the tech
| stack this is putting together that would be helpful and
| easy to monetize - not huge scale like twitter, but
| certainly could be pop enough to make recurring money
| without much human hands on.
| iMuzz wrote:
| Well that's a fair point!
|
| We're trying pretty hard to not come off as professional
| stalkers while still building something useful :)
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I like the concept. But I found myself thinking "who that I
| follow is prominent enough to be listed". I'd love to say "this
| is my Twitter account, tell me who of the people I follow is
| listed on your service". Note that you _shouldn 't_ need to make
| me link my Twitter account or give you any permissions to do
| that; the list of people I follow is available to anyone with a
| Twitter account.
| jonathancai wrote:
| Yep, we do need to improve our onboarding flow a bit. We plan
| to include that Twitter followers list integration, and also
| suggest you people based on your interests. Thanks for the
| feedback.
| noway421 wrote:
| Not sure if I want more alerts in my life, but i absolutely LOVE
| a picture of Paul Graham with anime eyes!!
| sydneyliu wrote:
| This is epic! Just subscribed to a few of my faves!
| vertoc wrote:
| Looks amazing, great job!
| baskire wrote:
| +1 awesome!
| steventey wrote:
| Have been following Alias for over a year now and am truly
| impressed by the amount of progress that you guys have made in
| such a short period of time!
|
| One quick feedback that I have is on the homepage when you click
| on "Show More", maybe display more than just 1 row (3-4 would be
| idea) so I don't have to click it multiple times! :D
| iMuzz wrote:
| Thanks! Agreed -- and simple enough for us to fix. :)
| worldsoup wrote:
| cool service! you might want to checkout courier.com, would be a
| great service to offer alerts across different channels
| Maubry wrote:
| Good work Alias team.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| I tried to follow mitsuhiko (flask creator) but did not work. Sad
| because interesting person to follow
| thegabez wrote:
| Looks awesome and the concept is great.. One comment, the first
| person I clicked into, ralph-merkle, the most recent content is
| dated October 1st, 2021 then when clicking the link shows a paper
| dated from 4th Quarter 2008.
| iMuzz wrote:
| Ah, thanks for the heads up. Our scripts still mess up the
| dates sometimes. It's harder than you'd think to pull dates
| from papers.
|
| Just fixed. Thank you!
| thegabez wrote:
| Definitely understand, parsing and converting dates/time is
| tricky.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| Nice idea but some glitches still. Tried to follow the flask
| creator but both on name and twitter alias no hits and no
| feedback. Hope it will improve
| kunalrye wrote:
| Great stuff! Loved using alias to find interesting essays on
| crypto and videos on some other topics!
| [deleted]
| jonathancai wrote:
| Probably like a lot of you on HN, in my downtime, I closely
| follow people that I think are high-signal in their various
| domains (science, computers, startups, longevity, philosophy,
| cryptocurrencies, etc).
|
| Once I find someone, I consume all their content obsessively,
| reading all their books, tweets, essays, and watch their
| videos/podcasts.
|
| But I noticed a few problems: 1. A person's content is scattered
| around the web on multiple platforms. 2. Twitter is too fresh and
| noisy. It's hard to find someone's most seminal work across the
| years. 3. It's unusually difficult to be told/notified every time
| they release something new. People don't always like to self-
| advertise all their podcast appearances, or panels/interviews
| they've done.
|
| So we built alias to address these issues - we've indexed all the
| content on some of the best creators in many fields, for you to
| subscribe to, which means you get an email whenever they release
| content.
|
| For info on how this is built - Some of the indexing is done by
| cron jobs that fetch from RSS feeds, utilizes the Twitter API,
| and scrapes the web, but also some of it is manual, performed
| data contractors.
|
| We'd love to hear your feedback and also - whose profile would
| you like to see on the site next?
| egberts wrote:
| Useful for tracking citations of your favorite white papers.
|
| Or in one extreme case of mine, to monitor for that obituary of a
| certain folk who refuse to sell their rusted classic car on their
| property. (Because, I covet it).
| iMuzz wrote:
| we sincerely hope you get that car of yours!
| clircle wrote:
| Seems to be heavily biased in favor of silicon valley
| personalities.
| iMuzz wrote:
| For now, but we're trying to not be! Who are some folks you
| think we should add? I'd be happy to get them indexed.
| jonathancai wrote:
| Again, like stated in my other comments, we initially started
| out with these people because they were the people we mainly
| read, but we plan on expanding outside of the bubble.
|
| Let me flip it back on you - which types of people would you
| want to see?
| marc__1 wrote:
| Can't you build workflows for auto addition? This way, your
| platform would have exponential more content and therefore
| interest
|
| - if more than x ppl searching for a person then add
|
| - if more than x followers on twitter
|
| - if more than x citations on google scholar
|
| You get the point.
| Nowado wrote:
| How is it different from, well, Google Alerts?
| iMuzz wrote:
| It actually works! I've found Google Alerts to be extremely
| noisy and alert me for content _about_ certain people.
|
| Alias only notifies you if the person actually
| participated/appeared on it vs. _being covered_.
|
| We're also _deeply indexing_ folks and their content so you 'll
| be able to do conditional alerts.
|
| Example: "Notify only me when Elon talks about battery prices"
| or "Notify me when Stephane Bancel (Moderna CEO) talks about
| Delta Variant".
|
| Hope that makes sense!
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Sorry, but Google Alerts fucking blow.
|
| Let's say I want to "subscribe" to Malcom Gladwell, how do I
| get all his brand new ORIGINAL content, without it Google
| Alerts pulling every time he is quoted or mentioned?
|
| I had to unsubscribe from Google Alerts on my own name because
| it was overwhelming junk, and I wouldn't qualify as even a Z
| List Internet Personality.
| iMuzz wrote:
| Yup that's exactly right. Alerts are only sent out when
| original content is released.
|
| Mentioned this in the earlier reply but you'll soon be able
| to do _conditional alerts_ as well.
|
| Some Examples:
|
| - "Notify me when Elon talks about battery prices"
|
| - "Notify me when Stephane Bancel (Moderna CEO) talks about
| Delta Variant"
|
| - "Notify me when Gladwell releases a new a book." :)
|
| Who are some people you think we should add? We're looking to
| add more people every day :)
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I wanted to follow two people who are not super-famous. They have
| written blog articles and been interviewed on podcasts. But I
| could not find them in your search.
|
| The folks who you recommend are pretty famous, so their stuff
| comes across my Twitter feed from multiple sources anyway.
| jonathancai wrote:
| Who are the two people if you don't mind me asking?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Emailed you
| pastrami_panda wrote:
| I was surprised Jim Keller and similar giants in hardware
| wasn't on there. Cool idea though!
| jonathancai wrote:
| Thanks - will add them to the queue of people to consider
| indexing
| codetrotter wrote:
| Looks pretty good. The icon for the Essays category on the alias
| page for Paul Graham looks like the Medium logo to me, even
| though he is publishing his posts on his own site not hosted on
| Medium.
| jonathancai wrote:
| Yep. We've been meaning to change that for a while, thanks for
| reminding us.
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