The HN Digest trial

The HN Digest trial(hndigest.wordpress.com)

24 points by juliancorlet 12 years ago | 19 comments

brianchu 12 years ago |

It isn't the article that I usually spend the most time reading. It's in the comments where most of HN's learning value lies, and thus where most of my time is spent. If the summaries included an outline of the opinions/takeaways/great resources mentioned in the comments, that would make the product that much more worthwhile.

I also tend to hoard links. If there's a great thread on Haskell, for example, I'll bookmark it (save it to Pocket), with the intention of going back to the thread if/when in the future I decide to learn Haskell.

Ultimately, though, the problem is that whether or not I pay for this depends on whether this tool actually weans me off HN. If the summaries are so high quality as to get me off HN (except to post comments myself), I would pay $50 a month for this. If I still find myself reading threads by myself on HN, I wouldn't pay anything.

juliancorlet 12 years ago | |

A couple of excellent points there! You're right, so much of the value is in the comments. I guess it comes down to scale. There is a minimum threshold required to justify producing the summaries. The more subs, the more features can be justified.

To your point on hoarding links, a comment came through from the form that they would like to see tagging functionality. I wonder if there's something there?

alexvr 12 years ago |

I love the idea, but I don't know why your poll didn't include a $0 option. Personally, I would prefer to simply "be interested" in an ad or two on your site every once in a while if I enjoy the service. I think you need to show people that your digested articles are worth >= $3 per month before you start charging. Get some dedicated readers who really value the service by doing it for free/with ads at first, then change to a subscription-based service. Maybe even offer a short "early adopter" program where those who sign up early can read for free after you start charging. Just my opinion.

juliancorlet 12 years ago | |

Hi Alex, I think a free option would be a great idea for a summary service with a larger market, I just don't know if the HN audience could sustain it. If I get a ton of responses who are just curious but not many willing to pay I will come back to that as a concept.

On gauging the quality of the service, I've included a sample digest on the site which I hope helps. However I take your point. People may well want to see that the level of quality is sustained.

dy 12 years ago |

If this service interests you, you can also subscribe for free to my Hacker News daily summary at http://hnsummaries.com/

(the summaries are automatically generated)

samjc 12 years ago |

What's the difference between this service and the Hacker Newsletter I already get for free? http://www.hackernewsletter.com/

edit: "free" in the sense that I do not pay anything. However, there usually is a sponsored ad (obviously geared towards the HN community) with the weekly email.

jayro 12 years ago | |

Hacker Newsletter is simply a weekly coalition of curated links. HN Digest would aim to provide a short summary for every article that makes the home page. So, if say fifteen of the articles on the home page look interesting to you, but you don't have time to read them all (because actually you do have work to do ;)), then you can just read the summaries for all but the two or three most interesting. Anyway, that's how I'd use it.

juliancorlet 12 years ago | |

Hi Sam, Hacker Newsletter provides a list of the most popular links, whereas HN Digest summarises those posts. The idea being, you might want to get the gist of an article without reading the whole thing. I'm pretty sure Hacker Newsletter has been around for quite a while, so it's interesting that they have been able to make the free model work.

samjc 12 years ago | | |

Are all these summaries going to be hand-written? Who will be writing them, how many people would you have on backup in case you can't write the summaries for that day? -- Since, you know, people would be paying for the service.

With the Hacker Newsletter, if I don't get it sometimes, I don't really care, since it's free. However, if I were paying for a service I might feel different about it.

I wouldn't mind trying it, but I don't think I'd pay for it. But, who knows, others might! Good luck to you.

jayro 12 years ago |

I would love to see this fly. I can't count the number of 1000+ word articles I've read that could have been reasonably summarized in a paragraph or two. Sure, there are long articles that are so engrossing or relevant that you wouldn't want to skip a sentence, but in my experience they turn out to be the rare exception.

juliancorlet 12 years ago | |

Thanks Jayro, five people have expressed interest in the few minutes this post has been up, so fingers crossed!

juliancorlet 12 years ago |

For Techzing (techzinglive.com) fans, this idea came out of Jason and Justin debating the merits of a 'TL;DR for Hacker News' service on a recent podcast. I figured it would be simple enough to test, hence, HN Digest.

vimhacking 12 years ago |

I have a small app which provides you daily archive of HN http://ankushhn.herokuapp.com/days?date=20130501

hayksaakian 12 years ago |

instead of asking people what they would pay, just ask them to pay.

asking people what they would pay is so weak in the age of the internet and stripe.

eranation 12 years ago |

If this manages to summarize well, including explanation of complex long technical articles, and top comments - SUATMM