Ask IH: Should I build an MVP for this idea: A "news discovery platform"
Howdy Hackers,
I'm after some external thoughts on a product I'm considering building an MVP for.
Problem: Discovering the best news sources (podcasts, newsletters, blogs, aggregators) for specific subjects.
Example: I discovered the wonderful Stratechary blog about a year ago, it had been running for years before that and yet I'd never come across it despite reading tech news almost every day
Solution: A platform where users can create their own "news stack" of all the sources they regularly consume along with a short comment. A sort of Product Hunt for news. Over time news sources get categorised and popularity could be inferred. I could also see the "news stacks" of people I follow / respect and discover new news sources that way.
I made a super-MVP in the form of a blog post here to see if it's the kind of content or info that people get value from: https://neilcameron.me/posts/my-2018-newsstack.
Would love to hear any thoughts, thanks in advance -- Neil
Test if you can get emails from your visitors and whether they would be willing to subscribe to such a service.
Yes, great idea, though not 100% sure I'd want to see the news sources some of the people I know are using! It's a bit like election time when you suddenly find out your friend is a alt-right troll and the irl friendship is tainted.
You could do some interesting stuff though like have a browser plugin so that you can track the visits users make to each site to develop charts of how they divide their own news attentions online, and highlight interesting things from their favourite sources. By that I don't mean 'here's the top BBC article today' cause a lot of people hate website showing them stuff they've already seen or found on their own time, but more like 'here was the top BBC article from 10 years ago today' or something novel like that :)
Hey blunicorn, thanks for the feedback and idea around the browser plugin. Making the generation of a user's Newsstack as frictionless as possible is important to me. I was considering processing their Twitter timeline, but doing it via a browser plugin could work too.
Hey, Neil!
It's an amazing idea. I always wanted a website where I could discover books/movies/podcasts/apps/tv shows recommended by people.
Your idea targets 'news sources' and it's a great way to start (and a good idea by itself, if you don't plan on adding other categories). I would love to create my own list. You can call it News Stack or 'MyStack' and make 'news stack' a sub-category (MyStack can have other sub-categories like 'Book Stack', 'Movie Stack', 'Podcast Stack', etc.)
Good luck! Do keep us posted on your progress via Founder News (news.earlystageblog.com) :)
Hi Adith, thanks for your encouragement and kind words! I'll defo keep you updated and let you know when you can create your own Newsstack. I'll add it Founder News too when I have a something new to share.