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Show HN: I made an alternative to Google Alerts that listens to social media

pmalerts.com

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Re: Show HN: I made an alternative to Google Alerts that listens to social media

#21

Post by mickdaisy »

rathel wrote: post #19

Nice tool, just in time I sought an alternative to Google Alerts, because they filter out most stuff and are biased towards bigger/news portals. For now something is not quite right, whatever I search for, I only get results for Twitter and when I uncheck Twitter, I get nothing. It'd be also cool to search by language (or would site:pl work to filter by TLD?)

Ack! The onboarding flow only works with Twitter right now, but once you create an alert all platforms will be polled (though some will be polled via search engines until I can fund native search, like LinkedIn). I should add a disclaimer to the onboarding UI...

site:TLD filtering is sort of in place right now but it's not obvious... you can select the "Custom" platform and then use that site:tld syntax (or any syntax supported by Google). Lmk if you run into any issues there, that's a relatively new feature.

Language / geography filtering is on the backlog! hopefully to be funded by paying customers.

Thanks for trying it out!

Re: Show HN: I made an alternative to Google Alerts that listens to social media

#22

Post by mickdaisy »

pknerd wrote: post #20

I am surprised why no one thought about it? Awesome!

Oh I don't want to pretend to be original here. mention, brand24, awario, and lots of other "social listening" solutions exist. I'm just particularly interested in building SaaS products on top of a business model that's designed to redistribute wealth from megacorps to people-in-need, so I don't mind playing copycat until I can fund true originality :p

Re: Show HN: I made an alternative to Google Alerts that listens to social media

#25

Post by jmholla »

mickdaisy wrote: post #3
darrenwestall wrote: post #2

I’m really keen to see how LinkedIn alerts work, I’d love to plug into this by API for our clients. Email in my profile if you’d like to chat?

Absolutely, shooting an email over now! If anyone here on HN wants it for free, just let me know via m@pmalerts.com and I'll give you an early adopter subscription (full product, free for however long it's around).

Wow. That's really generous. I could see myself one day using this, but don't have a use for it now. When I do, this is definitely a product I would happily pay for, and, if and when, will.

Re: Show HN: I made an alternative to Google Alerts that listens to social media

#26

Post by mickdaisy »

jmholla wrote: post #25
mickdaisy wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, shooting an email over now! If anyone here on HN wants it for free, just let me know via m@pmalerts.com and I'll give you an early adopter subscription (full product, free for however long it's around).

Wow. That's really generous. I could see myself one day using this, but don't have a use for it now. When I do, this is definitely a product I would happily pay for, and, if and when, will.

Super appreciate that sentiment. That's what I'm going for - 1) build something valuable, default to freemium 2) pave a clear path to free for those in need 3) have faith in voluntary reciprocation of value

Re: Show HN: I made an alternative to Google Alerts that listens to social media

#27

Post by rom16384 »

rathel wrote: post #19

Nice tool, just in time I sought an alternative to Google Alerts, because they filter out most stuff and are biased towards bigger/news portals. For now something is not quite right, whatever I search for, I only get results for Twitter and when I uncheck Twitter, I get nothing. It'd be also cool to search by language (or would site:pl work to filter by TLD?)

I find Google Alerts great, my only problem is that it picks spammy news/blog sites that keep reposting the same or similar content from press releases in various domains. Flagging as irrelevant doesn't help: There too many of these "blogs".

Re: Show HN: I made an alternative to Google Alerts that listens to social media

#28

Post by lprubin »

Nice work. Have you considered creating a page/blog post the explains how you've used your own tool to find paying customers? Doing that would provide a ton of value I think:

1. You'll (hopefully) find new customers

2. By using your own tool regularly, you'll gain invaluable insight into UX issues and new feature ideas.

3. Potential customers on your site would get to read through a play by play story about somebody successfully using your tool to drive business results. Basically a meta case study.

Re: Show HN: I made an alternative to Google Alerts that listens to social media

#29

Post by mickdaisy »

lprubin wrote: post #28

Nice work. Have you considered creating a page/blog post the explains how you've used your own tool to find paying customers? Doing that would provide a ton of value I think: 1. You'll (hopefully) find new customers 2. By using your own tool regularly, you'll gain invaluable insight into UX issues and new feature ideas. 3. Potential customers on your site would get to read through a play by play story about somebody…

I LOVE this thinking. I have a small write-up about "how I'm using PMAlerts to drive growth for PMAlerts" here:

https://www.karma.fm/p/BcMEfxQ/frequently-asked-questions

But it's not presented as a formalized case study and doesn't provide the value you're proposing (to me or others). I'll do it!

Re: Show HN: I made an alternative to Google Alerts that listens to social media

#30

Post by mickdaisy »

rom16384 wrote: post #27
rathel wrote: post #19

Nice tool, just in time I sought an alternative to Google Alerts, because they filter out most stuff and are biased towards bigger/news portals. For now something is not quite right, whatever I search for, I only get results for Twitter and when I uncheck Twitter, I get nothing. It'd be also cool to search by language (or would site:pl work to filter by TLD?)

I find Google Alerts great, my only problem is that it picks spammy news/blog sites that keep reposting the same or similar content from press releases in various domains. Flagging as irrelevant doesn't help: There too many of these "blogs".

+1

If you're curious about how PMAlerts addresses this and other Google Alerts shortcomings, I wrote a small piece about that here: https://www.karma.fm/p/0SZfbtW/9-reasons-why-you-should-stop...

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