The Rise and Fall of Venture-Backed News Readers in One Chart

Re:The Rise and Fall of Venture-Backed News Readers in One C... by ghaff on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @12:05PM (#10778845)

That's probably fair. The quest for personalized news predates most people being on the Internet [1] and I think it's fair to say that no one has really come up with top-notch, personalized curation that blows people away. In practice, it's easier to let social media, RSS readers, and sites like this one provide you with a river of potentially interesting content that you skim and dive into as appropriate.

I'm also not sure how much people would be willing to pay even for really good content curation even if such a thing exited. And the reality is that curation is hard because my interests on a given day depend on so many factors from how busy I am to my mood to some event that piqued my interest.

[1] http://news.mit.edu/1994/newspaper-0309

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Rise and Fall of Venture-Backed News Readers in One C... by doff on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @02:48PM (#10779898)

I found that Zite did an incredible job of presenting high-signal content for me. I became so reliant on it that I would have paid a significant amount to subscribe, probably on the order of a spotify subscription. But that was after years of use and training; I can't imagine anybody selling me on a curation service at any price without that experience.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Rise and Fall of Venture-Backed News Readers in One C... by azinman2 on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @12:52PM (#10779149)

I pay for curation -- it's my subscriptions to the economist and the nytimes (for which I only read the front page).

[ Parent | on HN ]