Like music, news is a super tough industry to compete in (read @jason's post on it here). Nuzzel has some similarities and does a pretty darn good job (🙌 @abrams).
Curious what makes Lumi particularly different. Looking forward to giving it a try myself. 😊
@rrhoover@jason@abrams thanks for your interest Ryan!
I think consumer demand for discovery and consumption of news is still amazingly underserved. Facebook and Twitter are good at network–based discovery, but offer abhorrent reading experience (Instant Articles are but a minor improvement). Pocket and Flipboard are great at consumption, but with limited discovery. Prismatic was only good at recommendations (content–based discovery). Nuzzel takes some of the pain out of consuming news on Twitter, which is enough already for many to be loyal fans.
Lumi News is very strong in two areas: backend and user experience.
Lumi UX
– zero friction
– no decisions what to click or read next
– little to no loading time
– encourages involved reading vs skimming / browsing
Lumi Backend
– relatively simple (zero chance of AI self–awareness)
– fast and scalable
– very good at topic modeling, especially for news and stories
– combines the best of network–based and content–based approaches
There's still a ways to go for Lumi from «unique» to «indispensable», but for me the experience is already a mix of the best features of many other apps. Personally, I still use Twitter + Pocket more to find and read news, but this has been gradually shifting as Lumi News becomes smarter and niftier.
@rrhoover@jason@abrams Hey Ryan, you hit the nail on the head! We did the music thing and came out smiling. Now recommendation and discovery is a core feature of any music app (hey @flaneur at https://www.producthunt.com/tech...). We like tough spaces, it shows that there is a need.
The News space is in need of a shot in the arm. And yes, many people try because they also see that need. We think we have a unique approach which is based on two things: 1. Show users stuff to read straight away, using the best in machine learning to make sure it's the right stuff, and 2. Only show them one thing at a time so they're not distracted by the endless supply of the interweb.
We are also different in terms of content. We show stuff from 50,000+ publishers but we keep it simple: Users ultimately want a selection from this content, not thousands of choices to make and boxes to tick. We give them a simple stream to read and don't expect any other input from them. After reading some time on Lumi we have enough data to figure out what you like. Connecting Twitter or Facebook makes it learn faster but is not required.
Sorry got longer than I thought. Give it a try...
@buttobasefm What is the precise pain point that is so large that's going to get people to try a new news app to solve it? Personally, I believe most general news is irrelevant, and am constantly looking for ways to read less and less of it. B2B/industry news is completely necessary, but for me the industry blogs/publications do a fairly good job of curating that. (I'd actually argue even they cover too much). @rrhoover@jason@abrams@flaneur
@drewmeyers You are right, there is constant battle to find the interesting bits, this is where our first point comes in: relevance. Our second one is: no setup and maintenance , Lumi just learns from what you read and keeps on giving you the good stuff without you having to do anything extra. No optimised rss/twitter setup necessary. Basically news discovery for my mum (hint: she is not very tech savvy) @buttobasefm@rrhoover@jason@abrams@flaneur
@mainstream1001@buttobasefm right, that's the model Hinge tried to follow as well in the dating space. But eventually, results get less and less relevant because the reality is there aren't enough relevant results...the option becomes either a) show me nothing or b) show me irrelevant people. Pretty much every app takes path 2... which as a user, isn't what I want.
I understand there are different type of users of course, so maybe there is indeed a big market for this I'm not aware of.
The Lumi News iOS app represents the MVP of the Lumi Social News Android app. But here a spoiler alert: hold tight, because our iOS team is very motivated to overtake and lead on what we are planning next on the product. This is very exciting time for all of us. We invite you all to try the app and get it touch with us via the "Send feedback" link in the app. I strongly believe we can learn from the best to take this project to the next level and since I don't see any better candidate than the ProductHunt community for that, I thank you all in advance for giving us this opportunity!
@partialmark thanks for that. Yes, speed is a critical feature often under-invested in. Look at Google chrome and how they made that feature a first class object. If I remember correctly their feature set was fast, easy, and safe.
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