Idea: 10
Saturday, 10 January 2015
By. Francis Pedraza
TLDR
Too Long? Don’t Read. Use TLDR instead. Forward long emails you don’t have time to read. Talented human writers will summarize them for you. Simple as that. Go ahead, try it. Send them to summarize@tldr.com. Just ten cents per word.
Pricing
Trial: First 300 words free
Standard rate: $0.10
Premium rates: Various. Extra cents per word. Depends on use and variables, below.
Discounts for pre-purchasing, large volume, or flexible turn-around
Experience
- Client sends content to TLDR, along with any initial instructions (via email forward, attached document, or web link — see uses, below)
- Client immediately receives automated response via-email with a questionnaire form
- Form asks questions (see variables, below)
- Team writes summary to spec
- Client receives finished product via e-mail
- Card is charged (if no card on file, results wait)
- Feedback is requested to tailor future requests
Uses
- Email Threads
- Documents
- Research
- Webpages
- Technical
- Legal (idea from random tweet)
- Scientific
- Medical
- Etc.
Initial Target Market
E-mail discussion threads. Long back-and-forth is overwhelming. An extract is valuable, often not just for the customer, but for the other participants; increasing not only the value, but also the growth, of the service.
Variables
- User Objective
- Turn Around Time
- Writing Quality Level
- Technical Requirements
- % Words Reduced
Research
Similar products:
— Blinkist (summarization for books),
— Circa (summarization for news)
Human (HI) summarization:
— Traditional model (lame),
— CliffsNotes (summarization for homework)
Machine (AI) summarization:
— Quora discussion,
— Sentiment analysis,
— NLP API,
— Simple text summarization
— there’s even a tool built into OS X (intriguing but not that useful)
Human + Machine summarization: Would fit Peter Thiel’s “Palantir for X” thesis, but none found. This seems like an area where humans are still so far better than machines, that collaborating with machines on the summarizations doesn’t add value yet.
