Apply HN: Browsed – Make Sharing Obsolete

[SITZ]

Vision?

http://browsed.xyz/blog/2016/02/01/what-is-browsed/

Crux of the idea?

Get rid of FOMO. Focus on building a people network and, content will follow. Rather than going to a bunch of websites to finding stuff your folks share everywhere, get them via one stream. Always be implicitly aware of what people in your network are interested in rather than what they want to appear when they choose to share selectively.

How it works?

- Install Chrome/Safari/Firefox extension for your favorite browser.

- Signup using Facebook (Or, some other online network) where you have built your social group.

- Every time you discover new stuff online (links, text, images, videos etc) they are transmitted to people in your network anonymously and vice versa.

- Initially, software will display content to you in the order of frecency with an expiry of 24 hours. But, because extension has access to your local browsing history, it will evolve to digest that data to always order the content based on your recent interest.

- This may include options to allow sharing by applying filters and type of content user wants.

- Also, sharing data exists just in your browser and, platform memory lasts for the period of delivery, similar to Whatsapp.

Concerns?

- Privacy

AFAIK, Most people would love to have a read access to their network info but, will be concerned about providing read access. It is likely that if you intimately know someone, you might be able to pinpoint the person it's emanating from but, that should be OK in future where people are willingly sharing most stuff about them via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etal. There has always been tradeoff between privacy and access and, I, personally believe that we are moving towards the direction where latter trumps former.

PS: I have been thinking about this idea for few months now. I'd love to get your feedback on this. And, if this sounds something few people will be interested in, can get to work on this.

[JayNeely]

So basically, I install a browser extension, do social sign in so you get my friends list, and now any time I go to a page not previously in my browser history, it's anonymously added to the feed of any of my friends who also have the browser extension installed? And the hope is this stream of passively broadcast stuff from your friends is more interesting than Facebook or Twitter's streams of stuff your friends have curated and chosen to share?

Ignoring all privacy issues and ways to deanonymize, one big area of risk I see for you is in your ability to filter content. One of the main benefits of people actively sharing is that they tend to add context as they do it. They comment on it, add tags, editorialize the title, and even based on where they're sharing it you can assume a little more about the content.

Without all of that, your only option for "applying filters" and determining "type of content user wants" is to do some kind of machine analysis. How reliably are you really going to be able to provide that? Especially for images, which on platforms like tumblr and imgur are often shared without any context (even titles or tags).

[SITZ]

I agree that getting all this browsing data from users will rather decrease the signal-to-noise ratio early on. But, that simultaneously provides a way to explore much more content on web that remains simply unknown to most people because of a lack of discovery medium. From personal experience, Most people share a mere fraction of stuff they discover online. So, even though that might find some rare gem on web, they will share only items which they would be rather associated with in contrast variety of things they might be interested in.

Although, I haven't ironed out exact details, IIRC, Deep learning techniques have improved significantly to make sense out of data if fed a huge chunk of it. Basic Video and Image comprehension techniques are pretty advanced too. I'd like to believe that this system will evolve to serve the purpose too.

[GFischer]

Looks interesting, it's certainly something that, well executed, could add a lot of value.

Do you have a mockup of how it would look like?

I'm currently thinking of a meld of stuff like Delicious or Stumble Upon or Longreads. Being more passive than Delicious or Stumble Upon should be a win, but would also increase the noise ratio.

I don't understand the " what people in your network are interested in rather than what they want to appear when they choose to share selectively" - for example, if I'm researching technical stuff, I'm not sharing because I KNOW that people in my network don't want to know the latest about obsolete 4GL languages. Or embarrassing StackOverflow queries :) . Would those be shared?

[SITZ]

Thanks. I think so too.

Don't have a mockup on paper yet. But, It will have minimal presence in Browser and, notifies the user subtly whenever the top recommendation changes.

That is exactly the case that misses out with current sharing platforms available. So often, when talking to a person, I come across tangential topics / ideas, which would never have thought of looking up otherwise. Same thing when you notice something on accidently snooping on a random persons' screen and notice something completely whack that you start digging in right away. Such instances make me believe that there is scope for properly showcasing all this data being generated in a usable way.

[SITZ]

Clickable link from the post: http://browsed.xyz/blog/2016/02/01/what-is-browsed/