Techtronium: startup news in a simpler format.
Techtronium is a news stream from hundred of startups and tech companies coming directly from their blogs. There’s no edition, no votes, no community, just news in chronological order.
For years, people, myself included, have consumed tech news in these fundamental ways: Microblogging, Tech blogs, Communities, Feed readers. They have their virtues and shortcomings. Techtronium is a new way to get tech news without these shortcomings.
THE STATUS QUO
Microblogging (alias Twitter). The problem is that there’s too much noise. Companies can create tweets in 2 minutes and there’s no way to just get the “meaty” tweets from a company without getting all the marketing fluff and replies to clients. I loved Twitter at the beginning… well, I still like to follow some people, but at this moment Twitter’s signal vs noise ratio is very low when following companies and it’s not longer an interesting source of news for me.
Tech blogs. I loved the first years of TechCrunch and Mashable. I followed with expectation the rise of Youtube narrated by Arrington and I still visit some tech blogs from time to time, but they aren’t my preferred source of news now. The main problems here are: clickbait titles, drama-fueled stories, too much speculation, overdose of Apple/Google/Facebook (and the current flavour of the month) stories.
Communities. I still love Hacker News (and some Reddit subs) and I visit them very often, the discussions are enriching in those places. The problem here is the voting system, there are news that stay on the front page too much time, and other news that don’t reach it, of course I could browse the “new” (vs the popular) tab but anyone can post there… and not everybody is interesting enough. There is also a very broad spectrum of topics because the “anything of intellectual interest” clause and I want a place focused on startup news. Finally it’s a hive mind, that forgets easily (at this point there aren’t posts about Etsy or Flickr) and focuses on new shiny things (too many Magic posts some months ago).
Feed readers. I know lots of people who love their feed readers, but I never liked them, there’s too much responsibility in subscribing to the feeds I like and there’s no serendipity. I want to find surprises and feed readers just rely on myself.
THERE SHOULD BE A BETTER WAY
Then I created Techtronium, for the information seekers like me, for the lurkers than don’t need to have an account and that just want the raw information, without speculation, discussion, criticism or praise. It’s not perfect for everybody, but it’s the tech news stream I wanted for years.
In some way it’s like a big Twitter follow list, but there’s just meat because posts aren’t tweets, posts need to be thought and prepared, posts are expensive. In some way is like the tech blogs, covering the technology world. There isn’t a voting system here like in the communities, but it’s a meritocracy because just the best companies are present (startups from the top accelerators, companies with a decent funding, the IPO giants and the internet darlings).
In some way it just works for me and I hope it’s also the case for you.
