Comments on: Prismatic wants to be the newspaper for a digital age http://gigaom.com/2012/05/03/prismatic-wants-to-be-the-newspaper-for-a-digital-age/ Sat, 25 May 2013 05:51:20 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Coleman Foley http://gigaom.com/2012/05/03/prismatic-wants-to-be-the-newspaper-for-a-digital-age/#comment-839127 Sun, 06 May 2012 23:05:00 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=517634#comment-839127 This problem can’t be completely avoided, but it can be lessened by looking at the user’s activity elsewhere on the web. Prismatic looks at your Twitter activity to personalize your feed before you start using it. They seem to be planning to use Facebook activity, too.

For me, the recommendations were good enough right away. I suspect that most people would feel the same.

]]> By: Joe http://gigaom.com/2012/05/03/prismatic-wants-to-be-the-newspaper-for-a-digital-age/#comment-838944 Sun, 06 May 2012 04:38:49 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=517634#comment-838944 This will fail

]]> By: Greg Golebiewski http://gigaom.com/2012/05/03/prismatic-wants-to-be-the-newspaper-for-a-digital-age/#comment-838880 Sat, 05 May 2012 18:45:23 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=517634#comment-838880 What if the content I am interested in is paid, behind a paywall or micropayment gateway?

]]> By: William El Kaim http://gigaom.com/2012/05/03/prismatic-wants-to-be-the-newspaper-for-a-digital-age/#comment-838826 Sat, 05 May 2012 12:03:01 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=517634#comment-838826 I’m using it for some time and this site provides me lots of new information I never got before. My main issue is that I use it now more as a discovery tool …

]]> By: Mathew Ingram http://gigaom.com/2012/05/03/prismatic-wants-to-be-the-newspaper-for-a-digital-age/#comment-838714 Sat, 05 May 2012 01:29:51 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=517634#comment-838714 That’s a fair point — although almost any service takes some getting used to and customizing before it feels familiar and works the way you want it to. I don’t know of any way around that.

]]> By: The PolyCapitalist http://gigaom.com/2012/05/03/prismatic-wants-to-be-the-newspaper-for-a-digital-age/#comment-838711 Sat, 05 May 2012 01:27:44 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=517634#comment-838711 A barrier you don’t mention towards the adoption of prismatic, and sites like it, is the need for users to make a significant time investment in teaching prismatic what one likes and does not like. Further, this time investment has to be made by the user without any guarantee that it will result in high quality recommendations.

Other than widespread word-of-mouth testimonials like this writeup which advertise that sites like prismatic work, is there a way around this problem?

]]> By: Jenny Finkel http://gigaom.com/2012/05/03/prismatic-wants-to-be-the-newspaper-for-a-digital-age/#comment-838446 Fri, 04 May 2012 00:28:29 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=517634#comment-838446 (note that it will take up to a day to process your twitter stream and deliver your invite)

]]> By: Coleman Foley http://gigaom.com/2012/05/03/prismatic-wants-to-be-the-newspaper-for-a-digital-age/#comment-838445 Fri, 04 May 2012 00:18:49 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=517634#comment-838445 Prismatic differentiates itself from Zite and others by allowing different levels of personalization. You can jump from your super-personalized version of the news to the global feed, which is more like a traditional newspaper. The global feed is the stuff that’s news to everyone, not just you. The global feed also learns from your feedback, but it still gives more serendipity than you can get from Trapit or Zite.

There are a few ways Prismatic could improve, though. For one, you should be able to group feeds and topics. So you could make a tech section, a sports section, etc. I like to follow only certain topics in tech (content discovery, personalized news, etc.) so right now I have to jump around to read everything in that topic. I could just follow technology, but that includes too much that I don’t care about. This kind of organization would make the transition easier for people coming from Google Reader, too.

Second, Prismatic is a little overwhelming. The news feed feels endless. I like how Zite shows you just the top few stories of the day for each topic. Of course, Prismatic should make it possible to see all the stories, but it should also make it easier to see the top 10 or so stories of the day. The exact number doesn’t matter. The important thing is for it to feel more finite.

At the same time, it should be possible to see every single story from publishers if you want to. That is, if I subscribe to GigaOm, I should be able to see every single post, instead of just the ones Prismatic thinks are most relevant. The focus on designating your favorite sources is an advantage Prismatic has on other personalized news readers. It bridges the gap between news that’s organized by source and news that’s organized by topic. They need to take it a little farther to put Prismatic way ahead of the competition.

Making firehoses available makes it easier for people to leave RSS readers behind completely. Many people want to see every single story from certain sources.

For more discussion of what the ideal news reader would look like, see this excellent thread on Quora: http://www.quora.com/What-features-would-the-ideal-news-reader-have

]]> By: Steve Ardire http://gigaom.com/2012/05/03/prismatic-wants-to-be-the-newspaper-for-a-digital-age/#comment-838434 Thu, 03 May 2012 22:48:41 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=517634#comment-838434 Nice writeup !

> So what makes Prismatic special? Cross says it is the data analysis and algorithms and other processes that it is able to apply to that massive stream of content that flows through a user’s social graph — and hence, the quality of the suggestions that it can make about topics or stories of interest

I agree and why I use Prismatic vs flipboard, pulse, taptu, wavii, zite.

> Matt says for me, it — along with Twitter itself — has become a replacement for my RSS reader, which I wasn’t using much anyway.

Nope not for me Prismatic is very good but not yet an uber interest graph but I have very high information synthesis needs and standards ;)

]]> By: Mathew Ingram http://gigaom.com/2012/05/03/prismatic-wants-to-be-the-newspaper-for-a-digital-age/#comment-838430 Thu, 03 May 2012 22:04:01 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=517634#comment-838430 Thanks for that, Jenny!

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