6 ms·

Subjot: A Topic-Based Twitter, Without The Noise

50 points by giffc 15y ago

mdebenedittis 15y ago
I've been enjoying Subjot's the private beta for a few months now. A few of my friends are on as well. I'm very happy to not have to listen to them drone on about a couple of topics that usually dominate their twitter feeds.
rwolf 15y ago
Since every thread on HN about google+ has a top comment about how google+ should have this (self-tagging, able to follow user+topic in addition to being able to follow user), I'm glad someone has written something like it. playing with subjot will give me a feel for how this concept plays out in practice--well done!
- joshu 15y ago
  IMO self-tagging fails in broadcast mechanisms, because people are massively incentivized to distribute things as widely as possible. we're thinking about how to add categorization to jig, so i am thinking about this a bunch.
  - ccarella 15y ago
    joshu I love your work and would love to talk to you more about this in general. There is a disincentive to using a more generic subject and broadcasting out-of-context on Subjot, which is that people unfollow you. I saw one user doing that in our private beta and I unfollowed him, since the entire premise of Subjot is having a feed of stuff that is interesting. We have a very unfollow friendly culture, so it's not a faux pas to unfollow a subject that you don't find interesting. It is not a one size fits all solution but it has been working for us. Just like you wish you could unfollow your friend who live tweets the entire episode of Gossip Girls, on Subjot you can easily unfollow specific aspects including a broadcast subject.
    - joshu 15y ago
      sure, that makes sense. i feel like you will have to have aggregate topic categories (everything about topic x) to get enough traffic in that topic. remember that there is typically a 10:1 reader:poster ratio (or more!) and that is what will get spammed. my gut sense is that if you make topic directories for people to sign up to you are adding transaction costs to get people into the system. i'm not at all sure what the solution is, though. on cluedb i made it so that multiple people had to use the same tag on an item before it showed up. cluedb has approximately zero traffic, however.
      - akkartik 15y ago
        "multiple people had to use the same tag on an item before it showed up." Alternatively allow people to vote on tags? Adds complexity to the UI, but it may be possible to keep the buttons subtle but discoverable.
      - ccarella 15y ago
        Definitely. We currently have higher level topic areas here - http://subjot.com/explore#featured http://subjot.com/explore#featured but that whole system is still a work in progress. We have been playing with some ML/NLP type stuff to cluster subjects that are the same. So we can tell if your post about Football is actually NFL or Premiere League... but we're a super small team and its a bit to early to put that stuff into production yet.
Ade_Lack 15y ago
If you want to try Subjot you could start with HN on Subjot: http://subjot.com/all/hn http://subjot.com/all/hn OR tell us about your startup: http://subjot.com/all/startup http://subjot.com/all/startup and the feedback tag is getting lively too: http://subjot.com/all/feedback http://subjot.com/all/feedback
Ade_Lack 15y ago
Been on the Subjot BETA for a couple of months and have only been totally impressed. May have a few scaling issues around topic tags but from what I have seen so far no reason why this team couldn't tackle it. Great work!
andredieb 15y ago
I tried to use it for a while but gave up when I couldn't find a simple way of finding my twitter follows that also have a Subjot account. Did anyone tried/succeeded doing this?
- ccarella 15y ago
  This would be the url to use http://subjot.com/explore#friends http://subjot.com/explore#friends You can find it via Explore in the header and then People on the sidebar.
  - andredieb 15y ago
    Thank you for your reply! ;) It seems I don't have any twitter friends on Subjot, yet.. Congratulations on Subjot! I really like the idea. Are there plans for some kind of 'reputation' for people in specific subjects they talk about?
    - ccarella 15y ago
      We don't have a solid design for that but we've definitely kicked around the idea. If I want to find the top jotters on NFL, it would be great to see some sort of ranked list.
xyzzyb 15y ago
Looks a lot like byteposts: a subject-oriented twitter/irc hybrid.

50 points by giffc 15y ago

I've been enjoying Subjot's the private beta for a few months now. A few of my friends are on as well. I'm very happy to not have to listen to them drone on about a couple of topics that usually dominate their twitter feeds.

rwolf 15y ago

Since every thread on HN about google+ has a top comment about how google+ should have this (self-tagging, able to follow user+topic in addition to being able to follow user), I'm glad someone has written something like it. playing with subjot will give me a feel for how this concept plays out in practice--well done!

joshu 15y ago
IMO self-tagging fails in broadcast mechanisms, because people are massively incentivized to distribute things as widely as possible. we're thinking about how to add categorization to jig, so i am thinking about this a bunch.
- ccarella 15y ago
  joshu I love your work and would love to talk to you more about this in general. There is a disincentive to using a more generic subject and broadcasting out-of-context on Subjot, which is that people unfollow you. I saw one user doing that in our private beta and I unfollowed him, since the entire premise of Subjot is having a feed of stuff that is interesting. We have a very unfollow friendly culture, so it's not a faux pas to unfollow a subject that you don't find interesting. It is not a one size fits all solution but it has been working for us. Just like you wish you could unfollow your friend who live tweets the entire episode of Gossip Girls, on Subjot you can easily unfollow specific aspects including a broadcast subject.
  - joshu 15y ago
    sure, that makes sense. i feel like you will have to have aggregate topic categories (everything about topic x) to get enough traffic in that topic. remember that there is typically a 10:1 reader:poster ratio (or more!) and that is what will get spammed. my gut sense is that if you make topic directories for people to sign up to you are adding transaction costs to get people into the system. i'm not at all sure what the solution is, though. on cluedb i made it so that multiple people had to use the same tag on an item before it showed up. cluedb has approximately zero traffic, however.
    - akkartik 15y ago
      "multiple people had to use the same tag on an item before it showed up." Alternatively allow people to vote on tags? Adds complexity to the UI, but it may be possible to keep the buttons subtle but discoverable.
    - ccarella 15y ago
      Definitely. We currently have higher level topic areas here - http://subjot.com/explore#featured http://subjot.com/explore#featured but that whole system is still a work in progress. We have been playing with some ML/NLP type stuff to cluster subjects that are the same. So we can tell if your post about Football is actually NFL or Premiere League... but we're a super small team and its a bit to early to put that stuff into production yet.

Ade_Lack 15y ago

If you want to try Subjot you could start with HN on Subjot: http://subjot.com/all/hn http://subjot.com/all/hn OR tell us about your startup: http://subjot.com/all/startup http://subjot.com/all/startup and the feedback tag is getting lively too: http://subjot.com/all/feedback http://subjot.com/all/feedback

Ade_Lack 15y ago

Been on the Subjot BETA for a couple of months and have only been totally impressed. May have a few scaling issues around topic tags but from what I have seen so far no reason why this team couldn't tackle it. Great work!

andredieb 15y ago

I tried to use it for a while but gave up when I couldn't find a simple way of finding my twitter follows that also have a Subjot account. Did anyone tried/succeeded doing this?

ccarella 15y ago
This would be the url to use http://subjot.com/explore#friends http://subjot.com/explore#friends You can find it via Explore in the header and then People on the sidebar.
- andredieb 15y ago
  Thank you for your reply! ;) It seems I don't have any twitter friends on Subjot, yet.. Congratulations on Subjot! I really like the idea. Are there plans for some kind of 'reputation' for people in specific subjects they talk about?
  - ccarella 15y ago
    We don't have a solid design for that but we've definitely kicked around the idea. If I want to find the top jotters on NFL, it would be great to see some sort of ranked list.

xyzzyb 15y ago

Looks a lot like byteposts: a subject-oriented twitter/irc hybrid.