[HN Gopher] Show HN: A better way to read blogs
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Show HN: A better way to read blogs
Hey HN, maker here. It was a serious 4-6 months of effort to build
this. I have never poured as much love, attention and detail into a
project before. So I really appreciate you having a looksie! The
homepage has a fresh list of articles every hour and is open to
all. Still, I recommend signing up so you can add stuff to your
reading list and follow blogs. My initial plan was to monetize
this with subtle ads, but that didn't work out as the traffic to
the site isn't nearly enough for that. That said, I have a fair bit
invested in this and I need your help figuring out a way to make
this sustainability profitable. If this was yours, what bits would
you charge for? Are there any features I could add to a "pro"
subscription? Appreciate any help and support!
Author : khet
Score : 91 points
Date : 2023-09-06 11:12 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (boredreading.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (boredreading.com)
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Very cool! Also the first time I've come across
| https://maxbittker.github.io/broider/ being used in the wild (for
| the border effect of the navbar).
|
| This was previously discussed in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34553190 for anyone
| interested
| gsuuon wrote:
| I'm not sure why, but the patterned background is making the text
| more difficult for me to focus on or read - I'd like to try this
| out but I'm struggling to even get through a sentence. Otherwise
| the design aesthetic is nice!
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Show HN: A Google Reader-inspired RSS reader_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35402979 - April 2023 (58
| comments)
|
| It's probably too soon for a follow-up Show HN unless there's
| something significantly different here - see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ibdf wrote:
| Looks really nice, but asking me for an account after I click on
| a category is a huge turn off. Why do I need an account?
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| I also think this looks very nice. But I 100% agree, it's off-
| putting to ask for an account to view something that is clearly
| already filterable without personalization. It makes it
| difficult to browse and decide if I want an account. (Imagine
| if Reddit only let you view the front page without an account.
| I'd never have touched it!)
| interestica wrote:
| Break up the vertical flow with some sort of visual anchors --
| else it all becomes a blur for what's a too-long list. That's
| your chance at this stage to educate/sell to your user: tell them
| what the heck this site is.
| mraza007 wrote:
| Looks clean and nice. I really like the UI
| vinaypai wrote:
| This looks great! How do blogs get into the "blogs" tab? I see
| the "suggest a blog" link... are they all hand-curated from
| there?
| mgsk wrote:
| Yeah
| conductr wrote:
| Based on feedback here, sounds like you hit on something. I'd
| keep it free and open as long as possible to see if you can build
| up usage. This has no value until it does, so you're locking
| people out too early with the required regulation stuff.
| outcoldman wrote:
| 1. Donations 2. Sponsors for the topics. Mark those articles as
| Sponsored. Let companies only to post sponsored content. And
| promote them. Obviously you have to limit that seriously to make
| sure it is not going to take the whole feed.
| [deleted]
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Well I went to the trouble of registering after clicking Discover
| only to find that there is no search function, no way of
| filtering other than a predefined set of "hash tags".
| dsgnr wrote:
| This looks great! I'll make sure to check it out regularly. It
| brings back memories of old Reddit, and like the old Reddit, it
| could really benefit from a mobile-friendly design. I'd love to
| be part of creating that!
| crtxcr wrote:
| Interesting, but almost every click on the site requires an
| account (with an email). I would love to be able to assess it a
| bit more before creating an account.
| mgsk wrote:
| Reading the posts doesn't require an account. Seems fair that
| other functionality (voting, reading list, custom blogs, etc.)
| would require an account.
|
| Edit: I got an account. The "blogs" page is a mix of blogs you
| follow and default blogs. I guess that shouldn't really need an
| account to see the default blogs.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Love the integrated reader, that is something Tildes and YOShInOn
| are really missing.
| zerojames wrote:
| I like the design of this site! The icons and typography are
| especially cool! There is a neat idea in here. I already use an
| RSS social reader (https://monocle.p3k.io/), but I can see this
| being a cool firehose to skim that I can curate. Do you offer RSS
| feeds of feeds on the site?
|
| I would love if there was a "simple mode" that let you only see
| the titles, just like the HN homepage. There is a lot of
| information on the feed pages and I find it a bit overwhelming.
|
| Also, it would be great if I didn't need an account to see the
| blogs, curators, and popular pages.
| solardev wrote:
| It's like reddit but without comments?
| wpietri wrote:
| I'd strongly suggest you demonstrate more value before you
| require auth. I looked at the front page and none of the 3
| visible articles grabbed me. So I clicked on "blogs" to see if I
| found anything interesting there. That gave me the registration
| wall, so I bounced.
|
| I'm sure that feels unfair given the work you've put in. But
| registration is a hassle that people don't go through unless
| they're expecting at least as much value or have built up a more
| significant relationship with the site. Especially these days,
| with endless popups asking for my email and registration walls,
| I'm strongly habituated to close the window when I see that.
|
| In your case it looks like the marginal cost of serving more
| pages is very low, so I'd make as much as possible public and
| only require registration for features that need identity. I'd
| even try letting people vote on articles before registering, as
| for you that's valuable signal about article quality.
|
| As to what I'd pay for, I'm already a NewsBlur subscriber, so I
| think there's a market for a personal front-end to blogs, the
| news, and the like. For me the valuable part is keeping track of
| the hundreds of niche authors I follow, plus knowing what I've
| read. The discovery component, which you've foregrounded here,
| isn't very valuable to me, but might make a nice freebie to draw
| people in.
| latexr wrote:
| Especially true when you consider the website is called "bored
| reading". Having to register for a service is even less
| appealing when you're bored.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| If you scroll aaall the way to the bottom there's a tiny link
| to https://boredreading.com/what-is/ that's really easy to
| miss. That mentions the ability to create your own personalized
| reading lists, which, in my mind, is the killer feature that
| compels signup.
|
| But the lede is definitely buried. I'd suggest placing this at
| the top
|
| edit: never mind, it's in the navbar also, I just missed it
| khet wrote:
| The articles update every hour, so please check back again. The
| articles are from blogs that were deemed high quality, but even
| high quality blogs can churn out filler content. But in
| general, I think you'll always find one or two really
| interesting things to read at any given time, if not on the
| homepage, then on the blogs you follow.
| interestica wrote:
| > The articles update every hour, so please check back again.
|
| Is that apparent to a user? You want ppl to stick around just
| a bit longer? Put a countdown clock to your master reset. Get
| it in their mind to come back and check again. Add just a
| touch of FOMO.
| Michelangelo11 wrote:
| Similar thoughts here. I'm looking for AI-related reading, so I
| was really interested when I saw you have an #AI tag -- but
| when I clicked it, I got a registration wall, so I bounced.
|
| I'd be happy to register if I used the service regularly, and
| to pay if it was really good, but asking me to register before
| I can even see if you have what I want -- a reliably good drip
| of AI news -- is a total turnoff.
| khet wrote:
| It's funny, you (the user, and everyone else that commented
| about registering) say it's not worth your time registering,
| but if you look at it from my perspective, it's not worth
| putting in all this effort for someone who isn't willing to
| even register for free, let alone pay for the service that cost
| months to build.
| jsunderland323 wrote:
| But you did and people don't want to register. So do you want
| to iterate towards a model that works for you and your users?
| I think OC left really good feedback. I've been in your shoes
| before and I really can empathize with your situation deeply
| but I'd try to lose the defensiveness asap. It sucks when the
| model of the universe in your head gets dashed by reality at
| launch but I think not taking the feedback is a mistake.
|
| I'd also challenge your line of reasoning about what
| constitutes a user for your service. I hear what you're
| saying about ignoring bad (non-paying) users in the case of
| SaaS products etc. but this is literally a blogging
| aggregator without a network. Get the network going by
| reducing all the friction in the world and worry about the
| rest later. 6 man months is not a lot of time for a product.
| There's a whole "free" internet just a click away.
|
| The good news is it does seem like there is market for this
| and as OC pointed out there are ways to make iterations and
| improvements that could get people to sign up. Keep moving!
| Good luck!
| duncan_mcisaac wrote:
| The majority of users are not going to look at it from your
| perspective. The HN crowd is likely to be your highest intent
| audience, and your comment suggests they don't feel your
| product expresses enough of a value prop ahead of the
| registration wall. If you want this to grow organically,
| you're going to need to take a user-centered design
| perspective. It's not sufficient to say you yourself
| represent a user persona because you're biased by your desire
| to see a return on investment.
| creer wrote:
| You are getting really good answers to that position. Hope
| you notice them.
|
| For mine: the registration wall is the same as thousands of
| others which I dismiss just the same - because if I'm asked
| to register this early it's because my registration is the
| product - and not the alleged value that is used to scam me
| in. And that's from someone who has worked on plenty of
| marketing efforts. The request for registration is not a
| signal of quality. The content offered before that
| registration would be - and there isn't much of that. Your
| site may be high value and totally deserving of registration
| but the bar for my registration is much higher than that.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| It is not the user's fault that the user experience you built
| was bad.
| dangoor wrote:
| > it's not worth putting in all this effort for someone who
| isn't willing to even register for free
|
| Keep in mind that most products are not successful and thus,
| in theory, "not worth putting in all this effort".
|
| The feedback from people saying that they bounced because of
| registration is a signal that you can choose to address or
| ignore. If _enough_ people bounce before they can see the
| value, then ignoring the signal means you're effectively
| giving up on this becoming viable. Another alternative,
| though, is to find more ways to demonstrate the value before
| registration is required to make sure you're not losing
| people too early in the sales funnel.
|
| I feel like asking people to look at it from your perspective
| is not a great attitude in product management, which is more
| about figuring out the prospective customer's perspective and
| making sure you're offering something they want.
| luag wrote:
| You know your work's worth, the users don't know yet. OP
| simply wants to know more about your product before willing
| to put in the time and effort for registering.
| yungporko wrote:
| after enough times of trying to read something that came up
| on google or somewhere similar, being forced to create an
| account to read it, handing over my personal information,
| going back to try and read the article with an account, being
| told that i now have to download an app or pay a monthly
| subscription to read the article, then having to figure out
| how to delete the account that i didn't want to make, yeah,
| i'm not registering for shit anymore unless it's something i
| already use or have some kind of relationship with, or it's
| something special and i can tell it's going to provide more
| value to me than i provide to it.
|
| the mainstream web is unfortunately a cesspit mostly made up
| of predatory sites that provide a barely useful service which
| is easy to live without, which only exist as a way to hoard
| peoples data or lock them into subscriptions in the hope that
| they'll forget they're paying it. if your site is different
| and you want people to actually care, you'll need to show
| them.
| bachmeier wrote:
| This part of your answer is suspicious:
|
| > from my perspective, it's not worth putting in all this
| effort for someone who isn't willing to even register for
| free
|
| How does free registration benefit you? It's just more cost
| for you (time to deal with problems, money to store the login
| information, and additional load on your server). The only
| way your statement makes sense - and the only reason you'd
| care that much - is if you're planning to monetize the
| information.
|
| Good luck, but it's too shady for me.
| gessha wrote:
| Whenever I share something that requires a login like reading
| a Twitter thread, my friends say they find the initial tweet
| interesting but they can't continue since they don't
| have/don't want to make an account. It adds friction with
| finding utility in a site. They need to be really motivated
| to continue using the website. Counterexample is TikTok:
| anyone can see a TikTok, no login required.
|
| As another example, I was interested in Matter/Readwise
| reader apps. Matter has a very limited freemium version,
| Readwise doesn't. I tried Matter, I liked it, gave them my
| money. Maybe Readwise is better, who knows, but I didn't even
| give it a chance since I wasn't able to check if it's going
| to be useful for me.
|
| Maybe I'm a cheapskate so I don't want to "screw" myself with
| paying for a month of Readwise and checking what it offers or
| maybe the freemium model really works better.
| khet wrote:
| Registering is free though. People use their email to
| signup for newsletters all the time. So I feel like it's a
| fair ask to signup to read some really high quality curated
| articles with an unparalleled reading experience.
| interestica wrote:
| Yes, but a user has no inkling that they will have to
| sign up to keep reading. It feels dishonest and they pull
| a 'revenge-bail'. You don't get to decide if the articles
| are high quality or unparalleled reading experience --
| let them make that determination.
| Michelangelo11 wrote:
| OK, but how do I know I'm getting "really high quality
| curated articles with an unparalleled reading
| experience"? I can't see what I'd be getting unless I
| sign up, hence the issue.
| thealistra wrote:
| I feel that in HN crowd it may be easier from registered
| to paying than from unregistered to registered. You know,
| tech privacy-aware crowd.
|
| I also bounced after getting signup clicking #programming
| FYI.
|
| Either make those 3-5 categories free or make them with
| like 24h refresh because so far I saw that your page has
| 5 not interesting articles and wants me to create an
| account.
|
| This is too little to give you my precious email address
| or apple throwaway mailinator email.
|
| From my perspective I still have a backlog of 200 items
| in my rss reader for today. It would be better for you to
| show slightly more value of what your product gives us.
| As from the comments it seems that it was interesting for
| a lot of people to at least try and open the page!
| wiseowise wrote:
| You're the one who is trying to grab user's attention, not
| the other way around.
| KronisLV wrote:
| I wonder where you're getting all of the blogs from, whether it's
| just user suggestions or lots of personal favorites. Sounds like
| a bit of work but I'm glad that people are trying to do that sort
| of thing and helping others discover more articles!
|
| I built the Hacker News Personal Blogs site a while ago, after
| people shared their blogs in an Ask HN post and then someone
| compiled those into an OPML file on GitHub (those that had
| Atom/RSS feeds): https://hn-blogs.kronis.dev/ The List Of Blogs
| page might be relevant to discover a few more blogs to add, if
| anything catches your eye. That site of mine is pretty basic and
| I just threw it together in a day or two because it felt
| possible, but I hope that your site actually goes somewhere in
| comparison!
|
| Also, embedding the blogs inside of iframes is pretty cool, I
| wonder how common people preventing that with X-Frame-Options or
| frame-ancestors is. It was actually interesting to see posts from
| Substack and other sites being captured as screenshots instead,
| as a workaround.
| [deleted]
| davepeck wrote:
| This is neat, thanks. I was looking at your HN OPML file on
| GitHub [0] and noticed that the `xmlURL` and `htmlURL`
| attributes are the same for each entry; the `htmlURL` currently
| points to the feed rather than the site. Do you happen to have
| the original HTML URLs available? Would be nice to have both.
|
| (Secondarily, I'm guessing some of the `type` attributes should
| probably be "atom" rather than "rss"?)
|
| [0] https://github.com/outcoldman/hackernews-personal-
| blogs/blob...
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Nice. This reminds me of Digg, when it became popular. There were
| too many of them after Digg's success.
| Pr0ject217 wrote:
| Hmm, the background is way too distracting.
| RistrettoMike wrote:
| Seems cool! I saved a link that looked interesting to me and
| bookmarked the top-level "About" page so I can spend some more
| time browsing around sometime soon.
|
| Thanks for making something focused on reading & the small web.
| :)
| HaZeust wrote:
| This is just the kind of thing I've been looking for! Between
| techemails, Researchgate, and tons of random compilations of
| people's own blogs; I've really been looking for something that
| empowers a distribution of people's best-found blog articles.
| Will be adding this to my Daily Firefox startup window, and
| contribute when I can - thanks for sharing!
| dmje wrote:
| I really love how it looks, and congrats on getting it live.
|
| Immediate feedback:
|
| - a page, obviously linked from a banner / menu which describes
| what this thing is, how it works and who it is for. It may be
| obvious(ish) to HN but don't assume anyone else will know what
| you're trying to do - more images. - some way of marking stuff
| read, otherwise you always get the same list - the "in app"
| reading is interesting, I don't know how this affects any traffic
| to included links? You may run into friction if all the reading
| happens here on your app?
| gilli wrote:
| That's a nice way to bring attention to the many interesting
| blogs that exist.
| khet wrote:
| FYI: Don't forget to try the keyboard shortcuts!
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| This is really nice, I thought about doing something precisely
| like this, I'm guessing your are taking advantage of RSS?
| rus20376 wrote:
| Nice! Reminds me of a very early version of Slashdot.
| ydant wrote:
| Your email for verifying email address fails on Fastmail's spam
| rules: X-Sieve: CMU Sieve 3.0 X-Spam-
| known-sender: no ("Email failed DMARC policy for domain")
| X-Spam-sender-reputation: 500 (none) X-Spam-score: 5.2
| X-Spam-hits: BAYES_20 -0.001, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS
| 0.249, ME_HAS_VSSU 0.001, ME_QUARANTINE 5, ME_SC_NH
| -0.001, ME_SENDERREP_NEUTRAL 0.001, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE
| -0.0001, SPF_HELO_NONE 0.001, SPF_PASS -0.001,
| UNPARSEABLE_RELAY 0.001, LANGUAGES unknown, BAYES_USED user,
| SA_VERSION 3.4.6 X-Spam-source: IP='143.55.232.5',
| Host='pc232-5.mailgun.net', Country='US',
| FromHeader='biz', MailFrom='org' X-Spam-charsets:
| plain='utf-8'
|
| Clicking the link the first time gave me a default nginx:
| 502 Bad Gateway nginx/1.22.0 (Ubuntu)
|
| The link worked the second time.
| selmetwa wrote:
| Really cool, can anyone contribute articles? I made a site
| recently focused on social bookmarking.
| https://huntergather.website/
| gessha wrote:
| The idea of social bookmarking is really cool. Thank you for
| sharing.
| [deleted]
| delusional wrote:
| Your background interacts poorly with Dark Reader. I know you're
| not to blame for that, but I'd imagine some number of your
| potential user base would be put off on that initially.
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(page generated 2023-09-06 20:03 UTC)