Three Months to Scale NewsBlur • Hacker News Board

Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#101

Post by electic » Mon, Mar 18, 2013, 5:40 AM UTC

Roritharr wrote: post #7

electic wrote: post #5

I tried out NewsBlur and sadly, Feedly seems leagues better.

Could you atleast describe what is better about Feedly, so not only the creator of NewsBlur, but also anyone looking to spend money on an RSS Solution gets your informed input?

I love NewsBlur but I found it a bit busy in the UI. It seemed like a lot for what it really needed to do. That being said, Feedly's minimalistic UI was far better. However, Feedly is a bit slower when there are tons of stories on the screen.

Overall I found Feedly to be better.

Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#102

Post by tommoor » Mon, Mar 18, 2013, 5:49 AM UTC

rssident wrote: post #69

jbigelow76 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked at Feedly and Newsblur last week as I look for my eventual Google Reader replacement. Feedly turned me off because it has no open web implementation, it runs through the Chrome web store. Aside from some developer related plugins I refuse to use a completely superfluous wrapper around a website if I am on my PC. I've tried Newsblur but it's just so "busy" (I know where my mouse is on the vertical axis thank…

Try http://rssident.com The UI needs work but it is very simple. Scalability will not be an issue. It was designed from the start to be scalable. Just add servers.

Got it the first time you posted on this story ;)

Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#103

Post by pestaa » Mon, Mar 18, 2013, 6:33 AM UTC

est wrote: post #56

mynegation wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to install NewsBlur, but instructions were not very helpful. I tried to get as far as I can, editing fabfile and installing gajillions of new python modules, but still failed. Don't get me wrong, it is wonderful and very commendable of you to open source NewsBlur! Nor do I feel entitled to the source code or free ride (I will probably end up paying for the hosted solution). Just providing some feedback, given…

> I tried to install NewsBlur, but instructions were not very helpful. NewsBlur should distribute in an .egg form, or via PIP directly, with VirtualEnv and everything.

There is a difference between open sourcing a product and releasing it through multiple channels as binaries. I do not think the latter is in the best interest of the developer.

Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#104

Post by RaphiePS » Mon, Mar 18, 2013, 7:04 AM UTC

recuter wrote: post #30

amix wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With currently only 3400 paying users it's only 80K pr. year of revenues (and the profits are probably much lower). It's still far from a good business and this kind of money does not have any kind of guarantees.

> "Since the announcement, NewsBlur has welcomed 5,000 new premium subscribers and 60,000 new users (from 50,000 users originally)". That's at least $200,000/yr with high margins.

That math doesn't seem to work out. 5000 subscribers * 24 (dollars/year)/subscriber = $120,000/year.

Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#105

Post by mikro2nd » Mon, Mar 18, 2013, 7:11 AM UTC

tcwc wrote: post #42

UberMouse wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't it have to fetch feeds to determine there are no new articles?

Feed readers can send If-Modified-Since or If-None-Match as part of the request so the server only sends back the full feed if there's something new (Otherwise a 304 Not Modified)

Assuming that the feed implementer bothered... many news CMSs don't bother. The world of RSS is a horrorshow of standards noncompliance; Atom only somewhat better. (My experience is, admittedly,a couple of years out of date, but feed generation tends to be a minimum spend item for news organisations.)

Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#106

Post by jonknee » Mon, Mar 18, 2013, 7:20 AM UTC

RaphiePS wrote: post #104

recuter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Since the announcement, NewsBlur has welcomed 5,000 new premium subscribers and 60,000 new users (from 50,000 users originally)". That's at least $200,000/yr with high margins.

That math doesn't seem to work out. 5000 subscribers * 24 (dollars/year)/subscriber = $120,000/year.

5,000 new subscribers...

Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#107

Post by tempestn » Mon, Mar 18, 2013, 7:49 AM UTC

A tad off topic, but I'm hoping the fastest way to get an answer: How does one move or delete multiple feeds at once in newsblur? There must be a way to do this, right? Say I import 100 feeds from an OPML file, then realize I actually want them all in a folder. At the moment the only way I can figure out how to do that is to click on each feed, click move to folder, click the folder dropdown box, click the folder I want, click save. Times 100. Or I can save one click each by deleting them all then re-importing. But there must be a faster way. (In Google Reader settings, one could filter all folders with a keyword pattern, and bulk move.)

Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#108

Post by jbackus » Mon, Mar 18, 2013, 8:18 AM UTC

qoo wrote: post #47

"I had been preparing for a black swan event like this for the last four years since I began NewsBlur." And then the black swan event comes. And then fire everywhere.

Same paragraph:

> I did not expect it to come this soon.

Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#109

Post by wilfra » Mon, Mar 18, 2013, 8:22 AM UTC

klox wrote: post #28

amix wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With currently only 3400 paying users it's only 80K pr. year of revenues (and the profits are probably much lower). It's still far from a good business and this kind of money does not have any kind of guarantees.

3400 is only the number of new paying users in the last 24 hours. The amount of annual income from this product will now end with "million".

revenue, not income - he's going to have high server costs now and if he wants to keep this scaling up, i suspect he'll need to bring on another person soon. at the very least, a customer service rep.

still should easily net him a nice recurring six figure salary.

Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#110

Post by lucaspiller » Mon, Mar 18, 2013, 8:37 AM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #77

sdfjkl wrote: post #44

That was surprisingly clueful of PayPal. Usually that part of the story is way more dramatic and ends up with alternate payment options.

Only in the stories. The majority of situations where PayPal calls probably end just like this. I've taken that call myself and didn't have a problem. The stories we read are almost all about people doing things they shouldn't with any payment processor; that's why it only gets worse when the processor learns the details.

Agreed, when the company I work for was just one guy, he had the same thing. They put a hold on funds (he had a lot of declined payments, nothing dodgy, just users not knowing how to use company credit cards), but as soon they'd checked all the paperwork they released it after a few weeks.