How would you build this?

October 30, 2018

Imagine this...
A daily email newsletter collating story headlines from relevant sections of a selection of news websites...

1. Story sourcing

Likely method: Scraping platform.
To get only stories from the last 24 hours - likely method: constraint carried out at scrape time.
Data would then be available to me as XML, JSON, CSV or RSS, all remotely hosted and accessed through API key.

2. Email to subscribers

Here's the bit I'm most curious about.
How would you make the content available to subscribers?

Imagine skipping a website and going straight to email.
But preferably to paid-up recipients (Stripe?)

Thanks.

parakeet

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So you need to scrap stories send them via email every 24hrs?
- Write a script add app that scraps stories .. My choice would be to use puppeteer ( it has all features you need such as navigating directly on sites and scrapping them)
- Write a script that cleans up content
- Install Mljs , a library for creating beautiful email with the data you scrapped
- Create a cron job that counts 24hrs send new content to users
- Also setup functionality for creating registering users, I would use firebase store there to store my users with an Express app as backend
- Lastly, Shipppp!!!!
Gilbert Mpanga

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8 years ago
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I don't follow - its an email with a bunch of headlines? Or a bunch of headlines with a little blurb?

Either way, when you say "how do you make content available to subscribers", isn't it via email?

andrew iyer

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8 years ago
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1. 1
  
  @bharal - headlines plus blurb
  
  I'm talking about the practicalities/technicalities...
  
  The material is available as data...
  What sort of technical process/options are available to pipe that in to a paid-for morning mailout?
  
  parakeet
  
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  8 years ago
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  1. 1
    
    do you mean "how do i email people programmatically"?
    
    if you have all the data and the mailing list, then its not very hard to setup code to email people. Given you won't be starting with 1mm people - probably not even 1,000 - then I wouldn't bother with any fancy mailchimp nonsense, just use the mail command of whatever programming language is handy to do that.
    
    andrew iyer
    
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    8 years ago
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I like news themed projects...

However... I think you are should take into account several factors that came to mind as I read your post .
1. Your method of product delivery should be reconsidered .
Why...because...by the time your users get your email...the news will be old...its called NEWS for a reason..its new information .
I read the news because it contains information that affects me & my world ….therefore using your delivery method ,your NOT delivering news..your delivering a NEWS letter .
1. Yahoo , Google , CNN , MSN ,Reuters, etc all have live up to the minute news coverage I can get for FREE .
But your concept is to charge me a FEE for my news..and then deliver it in an email ?
1. New business models to deliver news are being created daily
  This is what your EMAIL newsletter is competing against & its free .
http://news-explorer.mybluemix.net/

Just click on any of the words and let the page load

I found this one as well .

Using it you can create video news feeds & embed them in emails
and other messages .

To facilitate this, IBM Cloud Video has provided functionality to its SDKs to support this, including example source code for developers to create their own news feed. New SDK features, such as the ability for content to both autoplay and for video content to pre-buffer, help to build this news feed .

Create Video News Feeds Using Player SDKs | IBM Cloud Video
https://video.ibm.com/.../create-video-news-feeds-using-player-sdks

In short as a product designer with years of experience in building
products , I would not build it .

And so.... I leave you with these immortal words...

Minimum VIABLE Product .
SUPERVILLAIN

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8 years ago
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