Show HN: Subtome – Universal subscribe button

http://www.subtome.com/

by julien • 13 years ago

47 27 13 years ago

Xion• 13 years ago

From the cursory glance at landing page, I cannot really tell how does it work or what it is from user's PoV. Is it an RSS feed? An email digest? RSS-to-social-media feed converter?

It could really use a more specific description, and maybe a diagram too.

julien10• 13 years ago

It's a button. Maybe you could have clicked on it :)

Wilya• 13 years ago

You could make the button "Try" a bit more obvious. It's the only uncolored button, I find it a bit weird.

JangoSteve• 13 years ago

I clicked on it and nothing happened. Using chrome on android. I still have no idea what it is.

EDIT: [I realize you may not be the author, so this isn't necessarily directed at you] Also, the button says, "Try it, Subscribe", which implies that by clicking the button I'll be subscribing to something. I want to know what the button is and what it does, I don't want to have to subscribe to something to figure it out. Now curiosity got the best of me and I clicked anyway, figuring I'd just unsubscribe (whatever that means) if I needed to. Of course, I clicked several times and nothing happened, so now my curiosity is gone. The point? A demo button should not make someone feel like they're committing to something (unless that's the intention). And when someone asks what it is after reading the page, it's best to answer them and maybe add it to the page.

Inufu• 13 years ago

I don't really understand the purpose of this. How is it different from the subscribe bookmarklet provided by Google Reader?

julien10• 13 years ago

What if one does not use Google Reader?

dylangs10303• 13 years ago

That's a good enough answer, but then take it a step further.

If your application and Google's cost the same, why use yours over Google Reader?

Google is a powerful brand and it's free. What can SubToMe offer to gain users?

I understand this is open source so you're not thinking about things like market share but just a helpful thought.

ChrisNorstrom• 13 years ago

Very nice. Btw, you should use capital letters to separate the words in the name.

Like this: SubToMe

Otherwise I read it as "sub-tome".

julien10• 13 years ago

Good idea. We are also looking for a logo that could work well. Any idea?

dylangs10303• 13 years ago

Use a logo that incorporates symbols normaly associated with subscribing buttons, an "S", and symbols associated with universality and cross-platform utilization.

This will give you a springboard for incorporating your project's name, and illustrate that it's universal (a central point) along with showing its main purpose - subscribing.

I would recommend something like an S with an infinity symbol overlaying the top curve of the S, and the lower curve curling into an arrow pointing down towards the bottom of the screen.

Hope that helps :)

dylangs10303• 13 years ago

I was wondering about this. Thanks for clarifying the pronunciation.

d0m• 13 years ago

Sorry, wanted to try but I really don't get it.

webwanderings3• 13 years ago

Like many others showing confusion as to what this does, allow me to add mine as well.

You have to look at this from the reader's perspective, an average reader. Everyone wants to, or should subscribe the web content, but not everyone subscribe equally or subscribe through the same means. Some use email, some RSS, some Twitter, Facebook, browser addon, extension etc. What I am looking for an answer to "Where does this service meet the common-denominator subscriber?" Does it meet them only if they know RSS, or email for that matter? A universal subscribe button for that matter, should be answering such a question.

julien10• 13 years ago

We're obviously not clear enough, because this is exactly what this button does: allow each web user to subscribe thru the app of their choice, rather than force them own one specific choice.

Of course, this requires the "readers" (whether their RSS reader, Twitter, Facebook, etc...) have to "register" (see the developer section) or the list of defaults will be showed.

Most specifically, I see on your blog that you have a "Follow by email" field. This is great, but if you had a SubToMe button instead, people interested in following by email could still do it (using an app that does so) or maybe follow by SMS, or by IM (I use that personnaly). People using Google Reader could also do it easily... etc. As a blogger, you don't have to decice how people are going to subscribe to your content :)

webwanderings3• 13 years ago

May be you should consider having a different kind of launch for this service, if what you describe above is exactly what you are offering. But either case, IMHO, it would take a whole lot of people (a movement altogether) to get people to shift their perspectives on how the "subscribe" thing should work on the web. All the more power to you for attempting to solve this.

PS: the reason I have subscribe email button is because Blogspot provides it by default through Feedburner. So I have opted for the platform's native service instead of anyone else. I will give your service a try anyway but asking people to subscribe to a service .... to subscribe to a service...well you know where it leads.

solox3• 13 years ago

You know how Opera does it, and how much simpler your solution can be? http://i.imgur.com/mehY4Hw.png

Kerrick• 13 years ago

At first glance, this seems like a non-compatible subset of Web Intents [0] that only pertains to subscriptions. Why use the SubToMe button over the Web Intents shim?

[0] http://webintents.org/

julien10• 13 years ago

Well, we actually wanted to use WebIntents to do that, but then WebIntents disappeared from Chrome, so we decided to create a similar approach which would work specifically for subscriptions :)

ricardobeat• 13 years ago

Event after reading most of the website I was under the impression that this somehow bypassed RSS or something, started wondering about polling/crawling...

in case you didn't get it either: it allows you to add feeds to GoogleReader/NewsBlur/etc from a single button.

Show HN: Subtome – Universal subscribe button

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