We spent a lot of time making all kinds of features for our news curation app, Inside, but the numbers kept saying the same thing: people just wanted to quickly browse the top news. So we made a simple, streamlined app called TL;DR to just give you the news right f*cking now, with conversational, jokey headlines to make it fun to read.
Take a look. Would love some thoughts and feedback.
@clarkvalberg@jason thanks pal... means a lot coming from the product expert who built the product we built TLDR in!!!!!! I think you just ripped a hole in the space-time-product continuum!!!
I haven't even checked out the product yet (I will a bit later today) but my favorite part is that @jason stayed up to post this himself and then hang out to answer comments. You've had your f'u money exit + worth an additional 10s if not 100s of millions on the Uber deal. And yet still hungry for product feedback and engagement with users. Respect.
@mishachellam i'm in it for the Hunt comments..... always! can i interest you in the LAUNCH Incubator or This Week in Startups while we're at it?!?! #hustle #neversleeps
@brianoflondon that is odd... ping adam AT inside.com and we'll figure it out.
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No problems in Germany on a Mac.
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@jason@brianoflondon seem that I'm having the same problem. I am also from Europe. Launching the TL;DR on iphone6 and no news loads, only have a blank white screen with a line and the setting icon.
Nice! I was going to ask what sets you apart from other instant news apps out there, but I just installed and loved how I didn't have to *do* anything to start reading quick news. It was just there for me - no signup or "pick my interests". Loved it.
The headlines are a nice touch too - just a little bit of irreverence without pissing anyone off. Are you guys handwriting those? Or pulling from elsewhere & programmatically modifying them for use in the app?
@sphmrs we write the abstracts and we pick the stories with humans making $14 an hour.... almost everyone else uses social signals, a community (reddit) or keywords/algos (google) and some just slap an RSS on it. This makes us a little slower, but we have higher quality. we will see if it works!
@sphmrs I was actually delighted to find that our team really embraced writing irreverent, fun headlines. Seemed like it'd be a challenge to get more serious, journalism-oriented people to cut loose like that, but it was pretty easy. The hardest part is striking the right balance between being sort of cheeky but not offensive or obnoxious. Glad you're enjoying it!
@sphmrs I was delightfully surprised at how quickly our normally straight-laced writing staff started cranking out funny headlines. You wouldn't think being just the right amount of quippy would be that common a skill. As you suggest, the toughest part is striking a balance between being fun but not obnoxious or inappropriate. Glad you're enjoying it.
Also, consider this an AMA about news, product & startup life! Please do... ask me anything and give me a little feedback/love for my new little experiment.
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@jason Where's the launch ticker tab? That's all I care about haha
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@jason love it, I'm using CycleTab to cycle between your TL;DR extension and the PH extension. A quick feature request/idea too - marking stories as read and hiding them from view
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@jont@jason Same here. CycleTab help us to end this big dilemma! eheheh
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@jason I love inside on my phone. It's a great example of an app that's valuable just for the notifications. Question: How do you think about cooperation with competitors? I'm thinking about as a startup works on a really hard unsolved problem there's certainly things to be learned from others trying to solve the same problem. For you personally, how do you think about cooperation with others doing news, conferences, etc.?
@jfilcik@jason generally speaking, startups are so focused on doing one thing right in the product/market fit phase there is no time for partnerships. However, if you have product market fit, well, sure.... it's time to rock and roll and find partners.
Thanks @jason, you just ruined my productivity! Chrome extension is slick and way too effective. Would be nice if one of the top stories is automatically expanded on the top with the first few lines of the story. Makes it even more immersive when opening a new tab.
@woutervanlent The designs for a single top story is in the works. Glad you guys confirmed the idea, cause it was a bit of a debate at the Inside office. It's a go now!
I'm with @mishachellam on this: to me, the fact that @jason not only stayed up to post this, but is doing feedback AMA-style, underscores his palpable interest in journalism. The former (sometimes current) journalist in me loves that; additionally, I love that there's now seemingly an addition to Inside's app, I'll need to check out this one in the morning.
I suppose one question I have that I'm always curious about is your view of where journalism is going in the next decade or so. You touch on a variety of mediums in your own work (blog posts, podcasts, video casts, etc.) and I'm curious as to which of these you feel have been the most beneficial (beneficial in this case might mean something other than sheer numbers; could mean which medium(s) do you feel have made your journalism better).
@adammarx13 great questions....
1. I love investigative journalism because it's important.... and no one does it no more. Frontline is my favorite. I dream of buying Frontline and running it. I love how they took on the NFL recently... just amazing work.
2. I love podcasting because anyone can do it -- and if you keep doing it you might actually build a huge audience (I did!).
3. I love events as a way of building community.
4. I love email newsletters
5. I love curation
So many ways to make journalism work, but it's so noisy and hard right now. You need to also have a growth and high/low (i.e. fun) strategy.... which is what I'm experimenting with here. How fun can we make the news, while sneaking in the important stuff. We'll find out I guess!
@jason@adammarx13 Thanks for taking time to answer! As per your responses..
1. I agree that investigative journalism has taken a hit in the last decade or so, but also think that there are a lot of promising writers taking on bigger stories right now solo, able to do things basically on their own sweat which would have been so much more difficult to do before without the aid of a big publisher. To me, that's one of the best things I'm seeing lately.
2. Discovered the same dynamic on my college radio show (arguably a form of podcasting)! (Smaller audience too, I assume ha).
3. This is a big thing for me, and I could see it was for you as well. I was at LAUNCH back in March and really liked the way you ran your interviews, particularly your ones with Fred Wilson and Chris Sacca. Definitely an extension of the dynamic you have on your podcasts (complete with riffing!) which made them equally as entertaining as informative.
Interesting approach regarding "fun" (but informative" news; I'll be interested to see how this works out, especially as it begins (hopefully) to carve out its own brand beside Inside. Thanks again for the AMA (and for the patince at a long set of questions)!
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This will kill my productivity. I'm addicted to news and restrict myself to only consume it in little breaks over the day. This extension will probably kill my productivity - love it! ;)
Still @jason - Any plans to integrate an on/off switch (e.g. for working hours)?
@svenle That's a really cool idea. We've been playing with a few toggle ideas...but time based hasn't come up. I'll add that to the list.
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@raydawg88@jason Thanks guys!!! Would be awesome. After actively testing it for a day I have to deactivate the plugin. It's too much energy to "force-focus", especially in research phases. Which means you actually did a great job with this - tempted to click an article every time I'm opening a new tab... ;)
@spinoodle in the main @inside app you can set preferences and the alerts are absurdly granular. Folks don't want to set things up.... so, i think we are going to try just being AWESOME on an editorial basis for a year, and then maybe add in a little machine learning (provided this gets traction).
@spinoodle Curious...are there any topics/preferences you're feeling like are missing? Obviously we want to make sure everyone gets what they want from this type of product.
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