[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Browser Buddy (YC W24) - A recommendation...
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Launch HN: Browser Buddy (YC W24) - A recommendation system for
Internet writing
Hey HN! We're Arnav and Jeremy and we're building Browser Buddy, a
recommendation system you can chat with to find quality Internet
writing based on your interests and aspirations. As we've grown
up, this writing was a source of inspiration that helped us
discover ideas and opportunities we didn't even know we were
looking for (ex. applying to YC because of PG's essays). But
despite so many new creators and websites coming online, the best
of the open Internet remains hard-to-find, scattered across
personal sites (https://www.paulgraham.com/,
https://www.eugenewei.com/), niche publications
(https://www.noemamag.com/, https://worksinprogress.co/), and
various independent publishing platforms (https://bearblog.dev/,
https://substack.com/, https://medium.com/). Outside of "social"
media platforms, there's very high friction to get into a new
subject or stumble upon credible people who write about your
interests. We feel there should be an easier (and mobile-friendly)
way to find fantastic media and curate this intentional,
interesting information diet for yourself. Browser Buddy is an iOS
app that curates this interesting, thought-provoking writing for
you from across the Internet. It's particularly good to explore
topics like programming, startups, math, philosophy, machine
learning, and design. Here's a demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmEeo4mjc7U Here are some example
recommendations: "I'm trying to grow my early stage consumer
internet company": https://cdixon.org/2015/01/31/come-for-the-tool-
stay-for-the... https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-the-biggest-
consumer-... "I want to learn how to build beautiful web
interfaces": https://frankchimero.com/blog/2015/the-webs-grain/
https://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design/ "Teach me
the history of the Internet": https://www.mic.com/impact/how-
geocities-webrings-made-the-9...
https://computerhistory.org/blog/history-of-the-future-octob...
"I'm trying to read more about games and game theory":
https://franklantz.substack.com/p/playing-balatro
https://joecarlsmith.com/2022/03/16/on-expected-utility-part...
"I've been getting into network science and network theory":
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/10/27/warrens-plazas-and-the...
https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/seeing-like-a-network We
trained a language model to recommend webpages how people do
through hyperlinks. Hyperlinks can be an expressive way to describe
a webpage (https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/07/01/the-rhetoric-of-
the-hy...), but there's a lot of spam and low-quality linking
online that would serve as bad training examples. We found the
structure of the link graph to still be a fantastic way to
understand what content is salient, and used it heavily to filter
and build our dataset. The resulting model is best for expressive,
exploratory queries where you describe what you are looking for
(like a prompt to an LLM) rather than entering in keywords (like a
search on Google). This model is the main "curation" step in our
system that picks from our index of ~150 million (and growing)
webpages. We built Browser Buddy to try and recreate the feeling
of getting a thoughtful recommendation from a smart friend. Our
early users have described it as a "refreshing stream of timely and
timeless writing", "serendipitous discovery", "rabbit holes that
feel joyfully unfunneled". We are iterating on the concept and how
it's presented, but we really value the HN community and would love
to hear what you all think: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/browser-
buddy/id6752281959 Thank you for your time and being a part of the
Internet we love! Jeremy (jeremy@browserbuddy.com) and Arnav
(arnav@browserbuddy.com)
Author : alien0006
Score : 30 points
Date : 2025-12-04 16:52 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.browserbuddy.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.browserbuddy.com)
| thuuuomas wrote:
| My concern with something like this is content marketing or other
| forms of surreptitious advertising.
|
| Will you clearly indicate "boosted" authors/publishers/pieces?
| alien0006 wrote:
| We don't boost any authors/publishers/pieces. We don't have any
| specific plan to monetize right now, but many AI-based products
| seem to work well as paid subscriptions vs using an advertising
| model.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> We don't have any specific plan to monetize right now
|
| YC has changed. It's like we're back in the late 90's!
| wxce wrote:
| Why isn't there a working website? You've been up since 2024
| pickleglitch wrote:
| Seriously, the product focuses on personal and independent
| content, primarily published on websites, but the app only
| works in iOS. That seems like a fundamental mismatch.
| pickleglitch wrote:
| Browser* Buddy
|
| *Not available in a browser.
| swyx wrote:
| lol yeah why not do webapp so much easier than ios
| alien0006 wrote:
| We originally started with a webapp but found ourselves using
| it much more on our phones.
|
| Happy to bring back the webapp if there's strong interest!
| NoelJacob wrote:
| Please do. Also try making a newtab page.
| pickleglitch wrote:
| Well, by limiting yourselves to iPhone you are eliminating at
| least half of smartphone users, and 100% of non-smartphone
| users.
| christoff12 wrote:
| Would be much easier to try. I was expecting a chrome
| extension.
| greazy wrote:
| yes please bring it back. browsers work perfectly fine on
| phones
| nwhnwh wrote:
| Translation: You, Android user, is a second class citizen. And
| you, you are using the browser??? I won't even describe you,
| because you are less than that.
| rd wrote:
| Go Hoos good work Wadehra
| achandra03 wrote:
| congrats arnav, you've come a long way from the balz days :)
| yoavm wrote:
| This is what I'm using Hacker News for. It doesn't require an
| app, it's super fast, the curating is done by real people (not by
| AI), and often the comments add a lot of value to the discussed
| article.
| Jsuh wrote:
| We check hackernews every day too but often have a hard time
| exploring specific interests that are not currently trending.
|
| You're right though, the community/comments add a ton of value
| and its something we're thinking on.
| bakkerinho wrote:
| Not available in my country / region says the AppStore. Greetings
| from Europe.
| Jsuh wrote:
| ah, i submitted some EU trader requirements stuff. could you
| shoot me an email @ jeremy@browserbuddy.com so i can let you
| know when we get approved?
| rishabhaiover wrote:
| Interesting concept, though I'm not sure I'd install something
| called `browserbuddy` on my phone.
| mbreese wrote:
| How much research did you guys do on the name? This might be the
| most amazing product ever, but I'll never know. I'm not inclined
| to install anything with the name "X Buddy". For me, it brings
| the negative associations from this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy
|
| It's not a knock on anything you've done, because it looks pretty
| nice. But, just based on the name, I'm not sure I know what it
| does or why I'd want it. That's a decent amount of inertia to
| overcome to get someone to install an app on their phone called
| "browser buddy". It just screams malware to me... but maybe I'm
| just paranoid.
| alien0006 wrote:
| Yikes! We'd never heard of that.
|
| We picked "Browser Buddy" to name our surfing penguin logo.
| mbreese wrote:
| I suspected you hadn't, which is why I wanted to bring it up.
| It's admittedly a pretty dated reference, but was _really_
| common right around 2000. At least, it was commonly installed
| where I was around 2001. I don 't think it was malware right
| away (it's been a while), but by the end of it's run, it
| seemed sketchy at best.
|
| It's a tough balance to get right... you want to be
| approachable and friendly so that people will try your app.
| But you don't want to come across as a big purple gorilla or
| Clippy. I do like the penguin!
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