NewsCred Launches - would love feedback on my startup

[shafqat]

We're still in Private Alpha, so you'll have to register:

http://www.newscred.com/private/invitation/by/shafqat

Many of you know that I've been around the HN community for a while learning, discussing and asking a lot of questions around the different aspects of building a startup. So we've finally done it an launched!

We've been covered in some tech blogs, but what I'm really looking for is honest feedback from the HN community. Specifically, what would it take to make you a happy user? ;-)

And what would we have to add/change/improve to make you use the site as a daily news source?

[natch]

Are you trying to goad the nyt by aping their design style? Well done, in any case.

Love the credibility concept, but it will be challenging to pull off.

For one thing, people will treat the 'credible' button as an upvote button, and use it for stories where they agree with the headline or think the headline should be seen by more people. Nothing wrong with that, except that the site isn't providing anything new.

Also people can be misled about credibility because the content comes from a branded site they already agree is credible, but that could be wrong too -- see how the New York Times messed up the Wen Ho Lee story.

Also the herd tends to miss a lot, so I'm not sure sorting which news I see and don't see based on the (distorted, see above) herd consensus is a good thing. We already have plenty of sites that do that, and they are riddled with rickrolls and two girls one cup.

[alex_c]

Very interesting. I'm sick of Reddit, so I'm more than happy to give NewsCred a chance.

Some initial nitpicks:

- the tour video loops, it's a bit annoying

- the credibility score is hidden in the main listings (shows up if highlighting text) - is that intentional?

- the up/down buttons next to "CHOOSE YOUR NEWS SOURCES" are a bit confusing, at first I thought that was a drop-down

- you might want to work on the URLs a bit, shorter and more descriptive is good for both users and SEO, http://www.newscred.com/article/list/id/1 isn't great

- the credibility concept is very interesting, but I'm a bit wary of what constitutes a "top story" because I've already been trained to have a "top story" mean "interesting" (and hopefully, if I'm on the right site, "interesting to me"). "Credible but boring" isn't very appealing.

- can I indicate my personal preference for certain news sources over others? I don't mean this in the sense of "this source is more credible", I mean it in the sense of "I personally want to see more from this source and less from other sources, even if other users might not"

- I suspect filtering out duplicates will be essential when dealing with multiple news sources. Unless a user wants to see different takes on the same article... it's an interesting problem.

[truebosko]

What I like: - the ability to EASILY select what news sources I want news from - Rss feeds for well .. ALMOST EVERYTHING! I live in Google Reader for about 2 hours a day so this is great - Slick design, but as some people said yes, very close to NYTimes (Actually thought it was for a split second before I blinked again)

What I don't like / other critique: - The up/down arrows for the "sources" made me think it was to show more, not to hide it. I think a minimize/maximize style box which is more natural for any user would work better

Great service, but I'll still use reddit for finding all the other kind of news. That's the one thing I kind of hate, there's no PERFECT thing out there. Reddit is great for all the various news, fun articles, even random pictures at times and this is great for getting good stories from quality sources, but then you miss out on those fun, obscure extras reddit picks up on. Find some way to get that, and you will win me (and probably others) over. :-)

[notdarkyet]

Well, for starters I would just like to say that the design itself is done quite well. I have always thought that the typography of a website is one of the most important yet overlooked aspects. The strength of this will come from getting as many users as possible, which makes me wonder for the private alpha. Are you going to make the beta public? Also, just a suggestion, but I would actually like an easy way to submit a credible blog to the list (unless I just am not seeing it, which then I would say is a problem). This would promote the blogging community and allow those who deserve to be heard and use quality and ethical journalism skills to not be lost in all of the noise.

[lux]

Very nice looking site, and a really good idea for news delivery in general. Digg/reddit-style ratings for official news sources and for individual journalists could help restore some faith in them.

I tend to not have much time for general news myself and focus more on specific sub-reddits and places like HN so I can filter more effectively, so I may not be the best representative of your target audience. Although, there may be a way to further drill-down for people like me (I like that reddit is so customizable that way), but right now "technology" is a bit too general, and I'd like to do things like drill down further than just "US" or "Europe" as well :)

Anyway, good luck!

[gibsonf1]

Maybe its just me, but I'm no fan of typing in passwords without encryption.

[thorax]

The look and feel of the front page looks a little too close to newyorktimes.com for me.

Personal preference: I wish it used a different font. :(

I'll play a bit more and see what other feedback I have as I know this isn't exactly the most detailed response. Just wanted to provide my first impressions.

Congratulations on your launch!

[shafqat]

Thanks for all the great feedback all. It seems like the design and user interface are the big winners, as is the simplicity of the site. We wanted to introduce the power of aggregation to the mainstream, and so far the ability to customize by clicking on logos has been a big hit.

Understand that voting aspect will be difficult to differentiate from regular Digg-style popularity votes (we're looking for quality votes). We're working on figuring out how best to approach that.

And yes, the beta will be public. We'll be opening the site in a couple weeks to try and build the user base.

[asnyder → shafqat]

Hey shafqat, what service do you use for general news aggregation, basically what newswires service do you get your stories from, not how you store it, or apply proprietary algorithms? I've looked at a bunch of them and there didn't seem to be a clear choice that provides all the sources that you provide here. I had a similar but very different concept some time back and am still looking for ways to get the aggregation easily without infringing on copyrights, etc. Your response would be much appreciated.

[aleo]

How do you calculate credibility rankings?

added:

here's how: http://www.newscred.com/help/credrank

[volida]

top authors is interesting, maybe you could automatically display articles, in the frontpage, from authors whose articles I credited.

[shafqat]

BTW, I'll put the first piece of feedback myself: we know we have to shorten the registration process, and are working on it!

[prakash → shafqat]

wouldn't it be faster to work on that feedback than to write that feedback ;-).