Charlie

Meet your new, personal journalist

103 followers

AI Chatbots•Activity tracking•News•Mental Health

What if the news was written just for you? ⠀ Meet Charlie - a balanced, stress-free way to understand the news stories that matter.

Charlie: Meet your new, personal journalist | Product Hunt

Free

Launch tags:

Android•News•Artificial Intelligence

Launch Team

Jim Morrison

Nourish - Healthy Media

Maker

Hi folks, I'm Jim 👋 - founder of Charlie. Please ask me, @onesub_lor and @jason_scott2 anything you like. 💬 We're building Charlie as a way to take the stress & anxiety out of reading the news. We're on a mission to help people get a balanced perspective of the world around them... and Charlie is our way of delivering on that mission. 🤖 What is Charlie? Charlie is new way to read the news. A pro-active personal assistant with a deep understanding of the current news cycle, Charlie works to bring you a culturally and politically diverse sample of the day's news. 🤷‍♂️ Why do I need Charlie? Most people today read news in one of three ways: 1️⃣ They only read a few publishers. 2️⃣ They let a social media algorithm feed them articles. 3️⃣ They just don't. People in the first two categories miss a great deal of what's happening in the world, while believing they know what's happening. Perception is skewed by what the publishers - or social algos - choose to focus on. Whole perspectives are lost because important stories don't reach the top of a daily news cycle. Charlie's approach is different. Because our algorithm really understands the news - and what what's previously been discussed - Charlie is able to let you know where there are gaps, where you're reading too much on a particular topic or where you're only seeing one side of a debate. And because you're having a discussion with Charlie, your decisions to dive deeper can be lead by calm, genuine interest - not by loud headlines, flashy photography and the content priorities of those who are really just trying to feed you adverts. 🏆 Does Charlie pass the Turing Test? Charlie is still extremely young and has a lot to learn about how you want to communicate, what you want to ask and how to answer all of your questions. While you can ask anything you like, Charlie won't always be able to answer with the alacrity we might expect from a real journalist. If you get lost, please know that Charlie's understanding is improving every day and just by asking new things you're helping their growth. 🙌 Is that everything? Absolutely not. There's SO much I could tell you about how Charlie works, what our aspirations are for their future or what social impact we hope to achieve in the long term. Why not take a quick look - and then come back here to ask me what's on your mind. I will be around all day to answer questions. Thank you so much for taking a look - and thank you @chrismessina for sharing Charlie with the Product Hunt community.

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3yr ago

Laura Linham

@jimbomorrison Where is Charlie on the The Voight-Kampff test? :D

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3yr ago

Jim Morrison

Nourish - Healthy Media

Maker

@laural Do you really want me to answer that?

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3yr ago

Chris Messina

Ambassador

Hunter

Launching soon!

I love the premise — getting news that's informative and personalized to you, without the hyperbole and doomscrolliness is so needed in today's hyperconnected, 24-7 livestreamed world. Whether it's a pandemic or the verging on the precipice of World War III, we all need to take a break while still staying informed. @jimbomorrison — tell us about your journey to getting to launch today!

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3yr ago

Jim Morrison

Nourish - Healthy Media

Maker

Thanks @chrismessina! 🙌 It's been such an epic year building Charlie. I'm so excited to show them to the world and let people discover a better, calmer way to read the news. You're a gem - thanks again for your support. 💎

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3yr ago

Antonio Autiero

Kula

Congrats on the launch!! The concept looks super interesting, wondering what kind of work (if any) you're doing on fake news and verifying sources.

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3yr ago

Jim Morrison

Nourish - Healthy Media

Maker

@antonio_autiero Thanks. Thanks a *REALLY* interesting question. For the moment we're focused on building a great product for the end user - something that takes the anxiety & stress out of staying informed, while making sure nothing important is missed. In large part this approach is defined by the constraints of being a ~boostrapped*, 3-person team start-up... ... so what we're doing at the moment is ensuring that content we recommend is originally sourced from what we understand as being reputable sources (see below) that operate under some level of national legislative oversight. It's risk mitigation, not a solution. We rely a lot on the relationships we've built up with academics, research from the Reuters Institute, research work we've done with NESTA and others to cross-check and validate this approach. Now, Charlie may appear quite facile at the moment. You can see, from our stats (shared here, just now) that they don't understand plenty that people ask them... .. but underpinning Charlie's conversational layer is an increasingly advanced modelling engine which is really concerned with "thing that have happened" - a lower-level construct than just headlines & copy. When we look at things at that level of abstraction it actually becomes easier to identify anomalous assertions. If 99 historically "reputable" sources state and cross-corroborate an event and one source states the opposite, that becomes quite interesting. Of course everything is always more nuanced... but hopefully you see what I mean. One aside (sorry, I don't do quick answers) is that we don't *just* pull data in from our public sources. We're also always looking at a second set of data from places we consider to be less reputable, for research purposes, and .. we also have a Chrome Extension which has a much broader scope of domains on which it will operate and analyse content. The Chrome extension, even with it's moderate little install-base, gives lots of data for research purposes too. Links, if they're useful: ➜ Our Publishers ➜ Our Chrome Extension (under the OneSub brand, fwiw) *bootstrapped: technically we raised GBP~106k in ~2019 - but as you can imagine, that doesn't go very far when people (and servers) have to eat... We feel bootstrapped anyway! 😆

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3yr ago

Laura Linham

@antonio_autiero @jimbomorrison There's a list of all the publishers we've sourced news from over the past 7 days here, too :) https://onesub.io/open/publishers

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3yr ago

Riia Jarvenpaa

@antonio_autiero @jimbomorrison @laural It's great that you list your sources, how much you get from each, and where they are based. People can then decide for themselves whether the mix is balanced from their perspective. It also gives credit to the journalists who write the content: many even risk their lives to cover wars and disasters around the world.

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3yr ago

Do you use Charlie?

4.6

Based on 10 reviews

Review Charlie?

Charlie is praised for its personalized approach to news consumption, offering users a balanced and stress-free way to stay informed. Users appreciate its ability to provide insights from diverse outlets without leaving the app, enhancing their understanding of current events. While some minor grammar issues are noted, they don't detract from the overall experience. The app is seen as innovative and engaging, with users excited about its potential to evolve and improve. Overall, Charlie is well-received for its unique and effective news delivery.

Summarized with AI

Pros

diverse news sources (2)

insightful content (2)

personalized news (2)

Pros

Cons

Reviews

Helpful

Lee Price

•1 review

Innovative new take on following the news — engaging, tailored, and at your own pace. Could change the nature of mobile news consumption forever.

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3yr ago

Jim Morrison

Nourish - Healthy Media

Wow Lee, thank you so much. We hope so! 🍻 Here's to a calmer, more informed world.

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3yr ago

C B Heeringa

•2 reviews

I've followed the team since OneSub (still using that). I believe Charlie - a new front end - will help people get a good overview of the news in a personalised manner. Well done and keep it going.

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3yr ago

Jim Morrison

Nourish - Healthy Media

Thanks Chris! I think you're absolutely right. With all the amazing feedback we've had this week we're going to take what we - and Charlie - have learned and use it to revamp the OneSub homepage etc. One of the things OneSub always struggled with was communicating the hyper-personalisation in a way that didn't flummox and confuse the reader. In a way, Charlie started out as an experiment to solve that UX challenge...

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3yr ago

L L

•4 reviews

I've loved using Charlie to manage the way I read the news. The insights are so helpful, and I love the way that I get to see the news from outlets I wouldn't usually go to, without having to leave the app. Can't wait to see more from the team!

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3yr ago