[samjc]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[samjc]

Here's an Idea: See how many people show interest in paying for it, and how many do not want to pay for it. If it's worth it, let the people not wanting to pay for it summarize it for "free" access to your service, now you don't have to write the summaries, you just approve others' summaries.

Just an idea, also sounds like a fun project :)

[juliancorlet]

Awesome, awesome idea. Love it! Maybe they get a bio link out of it or similar.

[samjc]

Maybe if a user writes 5-10 summaries in a month, and his summary gets picked, he/she get's access for free the next month. Can't wait to see what you do now :D

[juliancorlet]

Yes, all of the summaries will be hand-written. At first it will be me with my significant other as backup, however I would be trialling writers with the aim of outsourcing so long as the quality/reliability was there.