12 comments

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  Ingrid

  2 years ago

  Rogel, I have not ventured into the many tools that people use for their sites/blogs and rss feeds is one of them. Plus, I prefer to go to a person's site (it being 'personal') anyway. Now, pardon my technical ignorance, but could the people from that project just have you type in keywords that fit your interests (like this google feature) rather than the most clicked on story? That's what came to mind anyway,
  Ingrid
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  Rogel

  2 years ago

  Ingrid,
  Their are many service that will give you now the most clicked, or highest rating, post. Technorati doing good job in this respect.
  The challenge that outbrain took is to build for you personalized newspaper that will be tailored to your own taste and interest. They also trying to do so without drugging you into their site but in your "natural" environment - the one you are using now.
  In a way they are trying to take RSS to were it belongs - back stage, and bring the news to the front.
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  Yaron Galai

  2 years ago

  Rogel - thanks for the post!
  
  Ingrid - As Rogel pointed out, we're trying to help readers find the most *personally* interesting items in the most non-obtrusive way. We try to do that in the environment you are already used to using. Whether it's your RSS reader, or just blogs you happen to read regularly.
  
  Outbrain is definitely NOT a replacement for your favorite blogs. We all have a bunch of favorite blogs we continue reading as usual. This is more of a discovery/sorting/filtering technology for the 99.99% other blogs that you can't track manually but would still want to find the best nuggets in them.
  
  If you have any other questions, shoot me an email at: galai (at) outbrain (dot) com
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  Phil McClure

  2 years ago

  I don't think I'm following the concept of your program.
  
  Digg, and some of the social sites are bad because they use "collective wisdom" to elevate the importance of a story and that's bad.
  
  Your program is good because people can vote up relevant stories.
  
  How is what you're doing with this any different from what digg et.al. are doing? It seems to be the same to me except your users are "meta-moderating" the moderated content from other providers (to borrow a slashdot phrase).
  
  Am I just not getting it? Is there something to it that I'm just not picking up on?
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  Rogel

  2 years ago

  Two clarifications Phil:
  First Outbrain isn't my program. I'm only a fun and an alpha user.
  Second: the different between Tech.Meme, Google news, etc. and outbrain is that outbrain tries to much news for your personal interest. The ranking done so it can "learn" what you are interested in and much it too what other, with similar interests, liked.
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  tek

  2 years ago

  RSS isn't a protocol it's a format (XML, the protocol mostly used to access RSS is HTTP over TCP/IP). Just thought I'd let you know. :)
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  Charbax

  2 years ago

  Do you know http://linkedfeed.com
  
  If a lot of users use linkedfeed to rate feeds and news items, it can provide recommended feeds and items.
  
  Though I am looking forward to Outbrain!
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• 

  D

  2 years ago

  The problem with these types of sites is that people do not want to be flooded with information that they are interested in. It is better to read a general magazine, website, etc. that has a FEW articles that interest you - that way, you dont get overwhelmed. And the best of those sites will chose those FEW articles that interest you soo much that you keep coming back for more. Also, this allows you to learn about things from those other articles that you might not have had the opportunity to learn about if you were only presented with information that you already told some algorithm to present you. Just my thought.
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  free tv

  2 years ago

  Interesting concept nonetheless!
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  popoyaya

  2 years ago

  "RSS is great, mostly if you are a software"
  
  well that rules me out, i'm a human being, not a "software".
  
  Thanks anyway.
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  Rogel

  2 years ago

  popoyaya, this is exactly my point - human being should consume news/information while the software behind consuming RSS. The problem is that in today's world we are subscribing to RSS feeds instead of to interest subjects / specific writers etc.
  
  Being human doesn't rule you out, quiet the contrary.
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  learn.hypnosis

  3 months ago

  Nice article Rogel, your concept is clear and the way you expressed your thoughts it's like a small piece of literature.good job.
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