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Show HN: A news aggregator service curated by the leading experts in tech, AI

forereads.com

14 points by cam_pj 10 years ago · 9 comments

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cam_pjOP 10 years ago

Just a bit of background on this service...

As a preamble: I was really struggling to keep up with the news. There is just so much, and so much noise. It’s not easy to find out what articles are the most important ones and it’s time consuming.

I thought a simple and efficient approach would be to analyze what the leading experts themselves read and recommend. And Forereads was born :-).

Forereads generates specialised “news round-ups" to help people navigate the constant flow of stories published every day. The curation is done by the best experts on the premise that if several of them share the same article on social media, it is likely an important read. And Forereads does not just feature links, it adds context as well: what did these experts say when they shared a specific link? Can it help me understand the article better?

Let me know what you think. Thanks!

  • sophie2hamilton 10 years ago

    I totally identify with the problem you are describing. I have been trying to use Twitter for this, but a- there's a lot of noise b- I don't really know who to follow. E.g. in AI: I don't really know the experts. The fact they are "pre-selected" in Forereads is super helpful.

    So I like what you have done here a lot. Congrats.

akramhussein 10 years ago

I've been fortunate enough to have been beta testing this for over a month now. What struck me most was a week or so in I noticed I had been (and have been ever since) reading the daily email every day without fail.

Interesting news in West Coast/SV is published right around the time we settle down for bed in the UK so when I wake up I check my inbox and get a snapshot of what happened which saves me scrolling through Twitter and checking other sites.

  • cam_pjOP 10 years ago

    Thank you so much for your kind words. I have been very impressed (and frankly... surprised!) by the open/click rates the email digest has been getting. People who have decided to try the product seem to find it very valuable, which is really encouraging.

shaneleonard121 10 years ago

How do you decide who are the experts?

  • cam_pjOP 10 years ago

    I am using the same algorithms I developed for Game Of Angels (http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/25/game-of-angels/), where I was mapping the tech influence networks.

    In short, it looks at a bunch of social media signals to see who interact with who among people in a certain industry.

    • shaneleonard121 10 years ago

      Thanks. Love the experts.

      How they range from helpful, extracting the key data, to.... just plain b!tchy and cynical :)

      • cam_pjOP 10 years ago

        Yes, you are right, especially in Tech (Finance for instance is a bit more "formal").

        But what I like about it is - I think - it gives a good "idea" of the general feeling about a certain piece of news. Sometimes a bit of irony is... welcome!

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