HN Notify

by josephwegner • 13 years ago

120 47 13 years ago

pfarrell2• 13 years ago

Ahh. I had a similar desire to code something like this up, but didn't because I found there was some sort if service available on your account called notifo. Wonder what happened to it...

Gl with this service. I definitely wanted it when I've done "ask hn" type things.

How sure are you that the message will get to the notified's inbox? Email delivery is not easily done.

pfarrell2• 13 years ago

Well a little ddg-ing and I got my answer. Looks like notifo is no longer.

Samuel_Michon• 13 years ago

Thanks for taking the time to check up on it. Also, I love DDG, but I haven’t found an appropriate verb to describe the action yet. So far, I’ve been using ‘duckducking’.

keeperofdakeys• 13 years ago

Notifo was around two or so years ago, and I believe it was a startup that went through ycombinator, designed to be a "central notification center". It worked quite well for the short while I was using it.

They didn't take off though, and after saying they couldn't afford to keep servers running much longer, became silent. Any decent message notification system would require integration, so there is definitely an area left open.

bryanh• 13 years ago

Very cool! Any chance to open source it?

I've been running HN alerts via Zapier (my startup) + a webhook polling trigger with a URL like http://api.thriftdb.com/api.hnsearch.com/items/_search?&q=yo... (which is of course hnsearch.com's API). You can get them delivered via SMS/Twilio, IM/Gtalk/Jabber or plain jane email.

adamnemecek• 13 years ago

It's super simple to write your own. Periodically check https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments and when a new comment appears, get the parent's author and send a notification.

bgar• 13 years ago

Just wanted to say, thank you for this! I've been using it for a while and it's so useful :)

marquis• 13 years ago

Thanks from me also to the author, I can't remember since when I've been using this - super useful.

Mithrandir• 13 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3004254

siong1987• 13 years ago

I created HNMention (http://www.hnmention.com/) a while back.

It will notify you when someone mentions you in comment like how mention works on Twitter (@username).

hayksaakian• 13 years ago

was literally just thinking about this earlier today

would be nice if there was a chrome extension that added this via reddit-like functionality instead of having to send me an email

oblique633• 13 years ago

Surely I can't be the only one wondering why this kind of functionality isn't just built-in already (with option to enable/disable accordingly)? I mean, the site has been around for about 7 years now, and the whole 'community' aspect seems to be a big selling point, so it just seems odd...

nodesocket• 13 years ago

An interesting thought. Perhaps users constantly coming back and checking their comments for replies, increases time on site, and the possibility users will interact further and view other posts.

But, the reality is probably that pg is just super busy and does not have the time and bandwidth to build features out. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Reddit does not send notifications on comment replies either.

oblique633• 13 years ago

But, the reality is probably that PG is just super busy and does not have the time and bandwidth to build features out.

I totally get that, it's the reason I mentioned the 7-year time window though. You'd think that something like that would've been done at some point during all that time by some interns or something by now, even if it was a super low priority. I'm guessing that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy must just be really strong with PG in that case. Or possibly have some deeper reasoning like you mentioned.

Reddit does not send notifications on comment replies either.

It doesn't send out notifications to your email or whatever, but it does still have a little inbox notification that lights up when you get new replies. Does something similar to that get unlocked here with enough karma? If that's the case, then I wouldn't know...

alecsmart1• 13 years ago

Maybe that's the case. But as a new user, I find it very difficult to keep track of comments. Let alone any other standard social features that you expect from a community based site. Have a look at SO and see how friendly it is in comparison. HN even throttles link posts for new users; it's quite frustrating. When I post links from certain IPs (presumably because of my country), they don't get posted at all. The same links posted using a US based IP go through.

lobster_johnson3• 13 years ago

Reddit doesn't, but it does have the "orange red" envelope indicating new activity. And there is RES (browser extension) which adds notification that's visible even if the browser isn't focused. Reddit's API allows tools like Orangered (Mac status bar icon/notifier) and Alien Blue to built, as well.

Wingman4l7• 13 years ago

Perhaps users constantly coming back and checking their comments for replies, increases time on site, and the possibility users will interact further and view other posts.

Joel Spolsky wrote a piece on Building Communities with Software back in 2003.[1] He reasons that allowing email notifications is "the best way to kill dead any young forum" and that such "checking back" as you describe helps a forum to achieve critical mass and survive.

[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswi...

DavideNL2• 13 years ago

The question is not only if it can be easily implemented (technically) but also whether it would have a positive impact on the quality of the comments...

(notifications = faster replies = more emtotion = less thinking = less value)

eksith• 13 years ago

I think this really is the focus of it.

This is also the big reason there is an increasing delay on nested replies as you go to deeper. It forces you to calm down and think a bit more before coming back with an emotional reply instead of a thoughtful one.

StavrosK• 13 years ago

There's a huge non-sequitur there. You're assuming that people who aren't getting notified of their replies are thinking about what they're going to say on the topic. I don't think that's true. You see the reply to your comment, then you start thinking, then you reply to it. The time from seeing the comment to writing the reply doesn't change with getting notified or not.

Udo• 13 years ago

I remember at some point HN had built-in support for notifo, which was a notification startup at the time. When that went away, so did the notification feature.

zbruhnke• 13 years ago

I was just thinking the other day how much I missed notifo doing this.

would be nice if it could send notifications via one of the HN iphone clients or at least text message though

scrrr• 13 years ago

I definitely don't need more notifications! :)

I don't, but I like projects that expand the functionality of an application. For example things like https://www.hnsearch.com .

Jugurtha2• 13 years ago

Nice! What would also be cool would be the following:

-1- Being able to follow a thread you haven't commented on. -2- Being able to follow a comment that is not yours.

The reason behind number 2 is that sometimes, you see an interesting comment and you'd be interested to know what people think about it, so you'll follow it and be notified whenever people reply to it.

bambax2• 13 years ago

From the form, it seems you can "subscribe" to any HN handle, not just your own...?

I don't know if you can use the same email for different handles, but with gmail for example you can produce an infinity of different email addresses.

Jugurtha2• 13 years ago

I tried to put my e-mail address and "bambax" as HN Username, it returned "bambax is already a registered user of HN Notify."

So you can't use it if the person you want to "follow" is already registered.

Now, I tried "pg" and it subscribed me. The result of this is that if "pg" wanted to subscribe, he wouldn't be allowed.

I tried to unsubscribe. Unsubscription is e-mail based and not handle based. i.e: You can't unsubscribe from just one user, you unsubscribe from all the users, since you're taking out the root (e-mail address).

Now I have to subscribe again to get my own replies.

PS: Been notified of your reply by HNNotify :)

DjangoReinhardt3• 13 years ago

This is truly super!

I did something similar for RSS feeds and twitter: http://update-me.herokuapp.com - it is an RSS reader via Twitter. It DMs you post updates to feeds you subscribe to.

Could I request access to your API? I'm thinking of adding a HN subscription feature to @updt_me, something along the following lines:

1. User sends a tweet subscribing to thread ID, e.g. @updt_me START HN 6499036

2. @updt_me pings hnnotify with a callback to setup a subscription for the thread.

3. hnnotify pings @updt_me with thread-updates via the callback. POST payload, I think?

4. @updt_me DMs update to the user's twitter inbox! YAY!

I'm sure there's a simpler process than the one I outlined above. If you have any ideas, I'll be glad to hear them! :)

tomasien3• 13 years ago

You should make one for Stack Overflow: when you ask a SO question, you're literally stuck until someone answers it.

DjangoReinhardt3• 13 years ago

Do SO questions come with their own RSS feeds?

If yes, then try using http://twitter.com/updt_me to 'follow' the questions - you'll get a DM whenever there are new answers in the RSS/Atom feed! :)

It's a self-learning project I built over a weekend, so it's kinda rough around the edges, apologies in advance! Do let me know what you think.

tomasien3• 13 years ago

They do! Also, it turns out you can turn on email notifications to your answers for any question at any time, but only every 3 hours, ever day, or every week. I want them the second they happen, so I'm gonna try your RSS function!

wpietri• 13 years ago

Say, what's the etiquette with scraping Hacker News? I thought it was forbidden, and I've seen HN-based tools that closed down because they got blocked. But if this tool is going to crawl HN regularly, presumably they've got that figured out.

davidgerard• 13 years ago

Nice service, well done!

Needs a verification email, though. I get people signing up my email for pissweak revenge, and I have someone who signed up to iTunes using my email addres by mistake, and Apple spam doesn't have an unsubscribe link ...

HN Notify

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