Comments on: Revver Founder Launches Thoof: Personalized News Service

By: Psst, Want to Buy a Thoof? - GigaOM

Psst, Want to Buy a Thoof? - GigaOM — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:31:44 +0000

[...] Thoof combined community features like those offered by Digg, whereby users could vote on the news they were most interested in, with wiki functionality that allowed people to edit articles. Through visits, the site’s recommendation software learned what a reader wanted, and over time strove to deliver a personalized list of news to users. [...]

By: Social reading is a win « Assetbar: drinks and recipes

Social reading is a win « Assetbar: drinks and recipes — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 10:37:39 +0000

[...] Earlier this year, Michael Arrington said it ever so clearly: “I think people usually want to read news and then discuss it with friends.” [...]

By: Mini-post: Thoof : The Name Inspector

Mini-post: Thoof : The Name Inspector — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 03:21:03 +0000

[...] any earnest discussion of its strengths and weaknesses. A commenter on TechCrunch said it sounds like a potato gun being shot. What more is there to [...]

By: Thoof Is Close But Not Nearly Close Enough « Network(ed)News

Thoof Is Close But Not Nearly Close Enough « Network(ed)News — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:13:55 +0000

[...] Mike Arrington’s concern, inspired the fact that “web is littered with failed or stagnant personalized news [...]

By: Read/WriteWeb

Read/WriteWeb — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 20:08:29 +0000

Thoof: A New Social News Startup…

Yesterday Richard opined that Digg could use some editors so that if someone submits a story with a nonsensical description or lame title it could be fixed instead of seeing a good story get buried. Thoof, which is a new……

By: A Way To Improve Digg’s Data

A Way To Improve Digg’s Data — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 14:52:29 +0000

[...] and it’s something I’ve seen with a few other startups. Thoof, for example, which we wrote about last month, allows users to change any story in a wiki-like fashion. Changes are then voted on by the [...]

By: A Way To Improve Digg’s Data

A Way To Improve Digg’s Data — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 14:52:29 +0000

By: Thoof Now in Public Beta

Thoof Now in Public Beta — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 07:51:19 +0000

[...] Social news site Thoof, privately launched nearly two weeks ago by invitation only, is now open to anyone. Our launch post is here. [...]

By: Daily Cilantro

Daily Cilantro — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 22:10:40 +0000

Thoof launch…

I’m currently demoing Thoof, the news personalization company launched by the Founder of Revver, Ian Clarke. Their launch was profiled in TechCrunch last week. So far, I can’t really get a good handle on how the product works. I know…

By: Darin

Darin — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 16:20:42 +0000

Mike … got any invites … i’m interested!

Darin

By: Giedrius

Giedrius — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:48:48 +0000

The merging/updating concept is interesting in itself, however we will see how good it will be in the real life. I am for voting system and niche “diggs” instead of adaptive algorithms for picking news.

By: Thoof Invites - News With Artificial Intelligence

Thoof Invites - News With Artificial Intelligence — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 00:00:17 +0000

[...] caught this new personalized news service on TechCrunch the other day and thought I would give it a shot. Thoof is another personalized news service, [...]

By: Andres Alterini

Andres Alterini — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 17:24:09 +0000

Leonard, We just launched http://www.Keegy.com that integrates content from newspapers, blogs and news sources, reads your location and show the relevant content near you based in tags categorization… The important thing is that an IA Algorithm make all for you. We will launch new user friendly functionalities in the next days… Thank you!

By: Rachel Sterne

Rachel Sterne — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 19:30:25 +0000

Mike, you’re dead on: “people usually want to read news and then discuss it with friends. So what is considered “interesting” is influenced by what everyone else is consuming that day.”

This explains why people decry the media but still follow it– it’s how you participate in society. Over-personalization implies that people want an isolated news experience, when the opposite is true. The philosophy you hit on is actually driving the next development phase at GroundReport.

By: Charbax

Charbax — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 08:31:13 +0000

I liked the http://linkedfeed.com recommendations engine inside of a news feed aggregator that looks like Netvibes a bit..

I hope Thoof is a great product, I would like to try it out and see what it can recommend me to read.

It’s hard work to look through my hundred feeds in Google Reader, and Google News doesn’t seem to make news really personalized the way I would really like it.

By: jeffer lee

jeffer lee — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 06:44:15 +0000

it is hardly to copy a succesfully model. and there are too many web 2.0, i don’t like the name web 2.0! i think a website helpful to people will be success.

By: Leonard

Leonard — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 05:41:55 +0000

Is there any service that I could use that scrapes content from newspaper sites and aggregates it all for me?

By: How many people here believe WWE is real?

How many people here believe WWE is real? — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 03:20:43 +0000

lol… it’s soo fake…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....mp;search=

By: Satish

Satish — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 03:20:00 +0000

Would love an invite when those role around!

By: whoopee

whoopee — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 03:06:01 +0000

no one cares to spend three months training these systems. they will never take off as standalone sites, but perhaps culled from a more populous log corpus like google or yahoo

By: mike

mike — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 02:16:27 +0000

Wow… this is like the worst startup of the month. Mike, you need to start giving awards for them like Kaplan did. This “Thoof” thing has NO chance whatsoever. Is today a slow news day or something?? This is the best startup to come across your desk today?!

By: I don't get it.

I don't get it. — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 01:09:16 +0000

That user interface cost $1 million dollar to make. You can make wikis in your own. all you have to do is buy PHP server and upload wikis. What’s so hard about that?

Can anyone tell people why VC would throw money on highly educated people?

By: Mr Video

Mr Video — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 00:40:04 +0000

The precise reason that news works is that people want a filter.

“Here’s what will interest you” is a great model. CNN, and Google News by default, offer the most interesting stories that we all can chat about around the “water cooler” wherever that may be.

News stories connect us. Good news is filtered for a mass audience. And in G-news case, by a mass audience.

What makes good news? Context, context, context. And context is lost in a user defined filter.

By: timmy macfeee

timmy macfeee — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 00:38:52 +0000

I think you are a shit head, digg is a piece crappy shit as well i really think you a dickhaed

By: Nicholas Macias

Nicholas Macias — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 00:21:43 +0000

Ian (27), thank you for the considerate followup. It does sound like you have a relatively rigourous product design process in place, and that should serve you well. Best wishes.

I feel I might still miss the serendipity of reading a newspaper. Maybe there’s a feature in “opposition” (though, so much of the world falls into the grey area in the middle).