You know those obnoxious ads at the bottom of news stories? The ones that link to spam sites? Well, we're replacing those ads with the best content from around the web.
The difference is amazing... let me know what you think!
@jason the simplicity of this idea is striking to me. one of those "it makes so much sense!" concepts, and something i could really see myself using, particularly on a busy day when i don't have the time to go looking for new material to read. this combined with Pocket could reintroduce a serendipitous effect to an industry (news) that is fast becoming mostly about curation and personalization. sometimes i don't know what news i'll find intriguing until i'm presented with it, so this seems like an ideal way to kill two birds with one stone (wow, what a violent metaphor ha).
@jason Be careful what we wish for. Ad blockers - or worse, "replacers" - are Carthaginian Peaces for people that care about good content. No, I don't care to find out how to "stop Googling names" and the other low grade linkbait that is increasingly ubiquitous. So I don't click on it. But they're apparently a major revenue stream, and a choice for the creator to make.
I tested the ad blocker and on Business Insider its not giving me additional information from Business Insider, as implictly suggested above, it's directing me to competitive sites to BI. (If they had been effective: for what its worth I'd say the links are pretty bad. On BI: Science the blocker is giving me links to Dancing with the Stars, a dead Fifth Beatle, and Sepp Blatter has an emotional breakdown: not much better than Taboola.)
Effective adblocking inevitably means lower quality content over time, and spam will move deeper and deeper into original content. You produce very good content yourself - I love Twist. If someone feels hearing about Walker Corporate Law is the equivalent of spam celebrity news (I'm happy with my lawyer, I don't need Scott) and writes a podcast ad blocker, what would be your grounds for objecting to that?
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I would love to see something similar that just targeted Outbrain and Taboola "recommended from around the Web" ads with ads for meaningful causes. But this is a good step.
@ugo_alves +1 on this - the taboola and outbrains are very sales driven and promise monetization, but monetization through them is ugly and barely generates revenue while diluting the brand. Would love to see this as an alternative - it literally could be dropped into the same ad slot and placement that they work in!
@craigzingerline@ugo_alves Only if done poorly or if you're trying to do it for the wrong type of product. I've seen Taboola and Outbrain work really well for folks.
@pvptowers thanks.... we think this is just the start. It's going to learn what you click on in the next version and blow your mind with suggestions. The web will be cleaned up..... and intelligent!
I'm sure some folks are not going to be happy, but it's *your* browser and you can do what you want! :-)
@jason@pvptowers TLDR is a great - people are seeing it on my screen asking "what is that" so that's usually a good sign! @lons - off topic but for TLDR enabling users to set a preference for topic would be helpful (i.e. I could set 'science & tech' to open by default). Great work on getting two awesome products out in what two weeks?
@craigzingerline@pvptowers We have some more personalization stuff coming soon for TLDR...but if you go to the "Science & Tech" category...it remembers what category you have it on...so the next time you open a tab it will open S&T by default.
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I'd like to/could see this going beyond the format of content here, currently other news or editorial articles, and expanding into possibly 3rd party content integrations with things like 1. related Quora questions/answers, 2. Medium replies related to the current story, 3. Twitter Moments, videos, etc., or even REALLY go crazy and create a backchannel commenting system layered atop content providers they can't govern. Oh oh.
@akhanukov These are great ideas. I love the idea of Quora integration, maybe even by topic? (Find the 3 most relevant recent Quora threads tagged with the same subject as such-and-such blog post.) Could be pretty powerful, and certainly better than 4 Things You Didn't Know About Cranberries or whatever would normally be there.
@akhanukov That is cool...and could lead to some cool ui design elements as well...mixing in interaction items...instead of blocks of content. That's going on the board :)
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@lons Thanks. Yes, exactly. The two biggest problems with news sites is 1. the spam ads and 2. the horrible comments, which are usually just the same trolls rehashing the same argument over and over, if comments exist at all, yet, there are impactful and/or practical related conversations occurring at places like Quora and Medium just to name a few at 4:06 am, and most readers would never think to jump over there and see the topic in another context.
Just gave it a whirl on Huffpo and it worked like a charm. Now, if only you could build one to replace horrible articles with better journalism! But really though, it makes me think of lots of other applications and uses of this 'browser trickeration', from securing children's browsing experiences, to corporate public wifi networks, all the way to letting SJW have safe spaces right in their browser!
@mrsenorhill For now, it's based on me and my editorial team picking out the stuff we think is most interesting. But over time, we've got lots of ideas about ways to tailor or customize that feed.
@lons@mrsenorhill Very cool! I'm curious how many times I double take after installing. I've trained my brain not to look at ads... What sorts of ways do you differentiate visually?
@mrsenorhill We added a little border and a message letting you know who brought you these awesome links, but really, we don't want it to be very loud and distracting. I like it mainly for the feeling of security - no matter where I am on the page, I can just click anything that looks cool without worrying that I'm now going to be sold protein supplements or something.
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@lons I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with that feed. This is great. If you could learn my preferences over time and customize it for me, I'd be reading your content more than the page I started out on.
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@jason Is this essentially TL;DR applied to ad blocking? Looking forward to giving it a whirl!
@brendanbeirne EXACTLY! we were like, hmmm... look at all this spammy content, I wish it was just high-quality stuff... and BOOM! a new category that's BETTER than AdBlocking... AD***REPLACING***
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