Comments on: The Discovery Opportunity http://www.markevanstech.com/2007/02/25/the-discovery-opportunity/ Insight and Analysis from North of the Border Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:29:15 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 By: MoonGlam http://www.markevanstech.com/2007/02/25/the-discovery-opportunity/#comment-3171 MoonGlam Tue, 27 Feb 2007 16:32:07 +0000 http://markevanstech.com/2007/02/25/the-discovery-opportunity/#comment-3171 In the spirit of Napster, check out Goombah. The recommentations and free music are phenominal. Totally based on taste. There's an adventure setting so you can go out of your comfort zone as you like. They first match you to 20 people and you can browse their entire libraries. In the spirit of Napster, check out Goombah. The recommentations and free music are phenominal. Totally based on taste. There’s an adventure setting so you can go out of your comfort zone as you like. They first match you to 20 people and you can browse their entire libraries.

]]> By: dreadsword http://www.markevanstech.com/2007/02/25/the-discovery-opportunity/#comment-3147 dreadsword Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:29:48 +0000 http://markevanstech.com/2007/02/25/the-discovery-opportunity/#comment-3147 Funny you should mention discovery - I've just finished putting together an initial version of "SLANTT.net" - a discovery service based on popular RSS feeds, del.icio.us tags, and the Technorati API. Here's an example of a SLANTTed Digg story: http://slantt.net/news/digg_all/6_Reasons_Why_Sex_is_Very_Healthy_for_You SLANTT indexes the Digg RSS feed, and for each story crawls the Digg site to get its URL. It then bounces that URL off Del.icio.us and gets the related tags, and technorati to get related blogs. SLANTT also maintains an index of the del.icio.us "Popular" items for each tag, which it uses to list related links for any give story. So - from a Digg story, you can see how its been categorized, and find other similar content, relying on the del.icio.us user base for filtering. Its definitely not sophisticated or social-y like SU, but it does bubble up some interesting content, and has interesting potential (ex: I'm working on a tag clustering algorithm to improve link relevance). There's some other issues to work out too - the del.icio.us side relies on page-scraping, which while I've received permission from del.icio.us to do, just feels wrong. I wish they'd release a proper API already. Speaking of API's, the technorati API has a ridiculous low throttle limit. The story volume from the 6 feeds that slantt indexes usually breaks TR's threshold by mid-afternoon. I need to have a conversation with those dudes... Funny you should mention discovery - I’ve just finished putting together an initial version of “SLANTT.net” - a discovery service based on popular RSS feeds, del.icio.us tags, and the Technorati API.

Here’s an example of a SLANTTed Digg story:
http://slantt.net/news/digg_all/6_Reasons_Why_Sex_is_Very_Healthy_for_You

SLANTT indexes the Digg RSS feed, and for each story crawls the Digg site to get its URL. It then bounces that URL off Del.icio.us and gets the related tags, and technorati to get related blogs. SLANTT also maintains an index of the del.icio.us “Popular” items for each tag, which it uses to list related links for any give story.

So - from a Digg story, you can see how its been categorized, and find other similar content, relying on the del.icio.us user base for filtering.

Its definitely not sophisticated or social-y like SU, but it does bubble up some interesting content, and has interesting potential (ex: I’m working on a tag clustering algorithm to improve link relevance).

There’s some other issues to work out too - the del.icio.us side relies on page-scraping, which while I’ve received permission from del.icio.us to do, just feels wrong. I wish they’d release a proper API already. Speaking of API’s, the technorati API has a ridiculous low throttle limit. The story volume from the 6 feeds that slantt indexes usually breaks TR’s threshold by mid-afternoon. I need to have a conversation with those dudes…

]]> By: Jordan McCollum http://www.markevanstech.com/2007/02/25/the-discovery-opportunity/#comment-3144 Jordan McCollum Mon, 26 Feb 2007 16:59:12 +0000 http://markevanstech.com/2007/02/25/the-discovery-opportunity/#comment-3144 Hey Mark, I think you've hit the heart of why SU is so popular. Glad you liked the SU article on MP. One note: *I* wrote that particular Marketing Pilgrim post. I often sniffle over Canadian companies--my dad works for Nortel (in RTP). Jordan Hey Mark,

I think you’ve hit the heart of why SU is so popular. Glad you liked the SU article on MP. One note: *I* wrote that particular Marketing Pilgrim post.

I often sniffle over Canadian companies–my dad works for Nortel (in RTP).

Jordan

]]> By: Mark Evans - If You Can’t Beat ‘em, Join ‘em http://www.markevanstech.com/2007/02/25/the-discovery-opportunity/#comment-3119 Mark Evans - If You Can’t Beat ‘em, Join ‘em Sun, 25 Feb 2007 20:54:43 +0000 http://markevanstech.com/2007/02/25/the-discovery-opportunity/#comment-3119 [...] Can you imagine what would have happened if the music industry has co-oped Napster, which was a wonderful discovery tool (see my earlier post today on the need for discovery tools), instead of treating it like the devil? Napster’s emasculation was a sad development for a service with so much potential. Who knows, maybe Napster could have been a bigger and better iTunes if it was nurtured rather than neutered. Who knows whether the alliance between Bit Torrent and Hollywood will be successful but at least they’re trying. [...] [...] Can you imagine what would have happened if the music industry has co-oped Napster, which was a wonderful discovery tool (see my earlier post today on the need for discovery tools), instead of treating it like the devil? Napster’s emasculation was a sad development for a service with so much potential. Who knows, maybe Napster could have been a bigger and better iTunes if it was nurtured rather than neutered. Who knows whether the alliance between Bit Torrent and Hollywood will be successful but at least they’re trying. [...]

]]>