Funny story about 20 years ago I was at some party for I think EFF or PGP in sf, I had no idea what stumbleupon was and I met the ceo, it was already wildly successful and he described what it was to me and I was like "oh interesting idea, have you launched it yet" and he gave me the most confused look ... still remember it.
I find it honestly wild that so many have been inspired to recreate web discovery platforms in the vein of StumbleUpon at its peak, but not one seems to have really stuck or set a new standard for web discovery. The web is also a much bigger place than it was in 2009, there's so much more to discover, but it's so much harder to sift through what isn't worth paying attention to. I wonder if this speaks more culturally to how we consume new media.
> it's so much harder to sift through what isn't worth paying attention to. I wonder if this speaks more culturally to how we consume
I think it’s culturally how lots of people treat many things in their lives.
People always want the best X, whether it’s a place to eat, or hike, or vacation, or get a selfie. It leads to pathological situations where the neat little backstreet spots become overrun, popular hikes get trashed, and people sit around mulling which restaurant to go to for so long that they go way too late or just give up.
People are afraid of a diversity of experience. I understand that time is limited and the desire to not waste it. But, many times the experience is what you make of it, and there’s some good to find most places, not just those with 4.98+ stars.
> not one seems to have really stuck or set a new standard for web discovery
It's because most content worth seeing these days is behind a walled garden: Twitter, reddit, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and even news articles these days are often paywalled. It's just a fundamentally different internet than it was in 2009. The corporations have definitively won.
One reason I personally like AI is that it at least puts the end-user on the same level (at least automation-, scraping-, and compute-wise) as big companies.
"worth seeing" is subjective, but I can assure you that there are websites way cooler than any Twitter post or TikTok video. People just don't care about regular websites anymore, that's the problem.
Tried going through some random stuff on jumpstick, got like three 404s in a row, and I know Neocities, but it's just kind of meme-y, not really that interesting to scroll through.
There's some genuinely awesome stuff out there, but it's (paradoxically) much rarer imo than it was a decade ago. HN and Twitter is a place where it occasionally bubbles up.
I like the swiping UI from Swurf though. Being shown just one at a time is calming. I did the same thing for my RSS feed reader... it just randomly picks one post from one feed at a time, from thousands of feed sources.
It's tough to make the swipe interface work for content that is so varied in presentation. It works for Tinder, TikTok, and even WikiTok because the content has a consistent form. With this, you have to reorient yourself after every swipe.
I like it. But it keeps freezing — I can't scroll vertically through the sites (on either Opera/Chrome on android) unless I switch to another app and then back. Then it'll work for a page or two before freezing again. Otherwise I like the concept
PS: If you have a blog/site you want people to see - bottom right corner the three dots -> Submit a link. An almost instant way to get eyes on your page.
Feedback: doesn’t work here.
Swiping barely works on an iPhone 11. Swiping with one hand with the left thumb on the left part of the screen does not work at all. Swiping in the horizontal center from right to left can take some time and sometimes does two swipes. If I swipe back I might swipe back in safari and land on hacker news again. Hope this helps, would like to try :)
The site was made for desktop originally. Working to resolve the mobile issues. On mobile you can tap the far right side of the screen and swiping is a bit more reliable.
There are more sites related to LLVM IR than I need to see but overall, this is a fresh browsing experience. Reminds me of reading random pages back in 1994.
Thanks - the set of pages in the feed and on which topics is constantly growing and being molded, so as more swipes/engagement occurs more coverage and interesting topics find their way in.
Yes - there is a content filter in the (...) button. Always improving the protections on this - if you see a page that slipped through you can report it from the same menu.
Thanks for the bug report - being added. As for the learning there are a few components at play but ultimately can be thought of as an interest crawler where pages with higher engagement branch deeper into their on page links and similar work from the author/root. As for what your shown, this is based on your interests, the crowds interest, and some other mechanisms in realtime.
It reminds me of StumbleUpon [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StumbleUpon
Funny story about 20 years ago I was at some party for I think EFF or PGP in sf, I had no idea what stumbleupon was and I met the ceo, it was already wildly successful and he described what it was to me and I was like "oh interesting idea, have you launched it yet" and he gave me the most confused look ... still remember it.
boom, jan 2007: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/01/effs-sweet-16-party-su...
Apparently there's a mitch kapoor connection between the two
I find it honestly wild that so many have been inspired to recreate web discovery platforms in the vein of StumbleUpon at its peak, but not one seems to have really stuck or set a new standard for web discovery. The web is also a much bigger place than it was in 2009, there's so much more to discover, but it's so much harder to sift through what isn't worth paying attention to. I wonder if this speaks more culturally to how we consume new media.
> it's so much harder to sift through what isn't worth paying attention to. I wonder if this speaks more culturally to how we consume
I think it’s culturally how lots of people treat many things in their lives.
People always want the best X, whether it’s a place to eat, or hike, or vacation, or get a selfie. It leads to pathological situations where the neat little backstreet spots become overrun, popular hikes get trashed, and people sit around mulling which restaurant to go to for so long that they go way too late or just give up.
People are afraid of a diversity of experience. I understand that time is limited and the desire to not waste it. But, many times the experience is what you make of it, and there’s some good to find most places, not just those with 4.98+ stars.
> not one seems to have really stuck or set a new standard for web discovery
It's because most content worth seeing these days is behind a walled garden: Twitter, reddit, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and even news articles these days are often paywalled. It's just a fundamentally different internet than it was in 2009. The corporations have definitively won.
One reason I personally like AI is that it at least puts the end-user on the same level (at least automation-, scraping-, and compute-wise) as big companies.
"worth seeing" is subjective, but I can assure you that there are websites way cooler than any Twitter post or TikTok video. People just don't care about regular websites anymore, that's the problem.
Some places to discover those cool websites:
- https://cloudhiker.net
- https://wiby.org
- https://urlroulette.net
- https://jumpstick.app
- https://neocities.org
- https://viralwalk.com
Tried going through some random stuff on jumpstick, got like three 404s in a row, and I know Neocities, but it's just kind of meme-y, not really that interesting to scroll through.
There's some genuinely awesome stuff out there, but it's (paradoxically) much rarer imo than it was a decade ago. HN and Twitter is a place where it occasionally bubbles up.
Content Security Policy broke the use case. Although it would work well as a mobile app.
Very cool, this reminds me of Kagi's Small Web:
https://kagi.com/smallweb/
Reminds me of the Wander network from Susam Pal (https://www.susam.net). His console is at https://susam.net/wander/ and my own instantiation is on https://www.heyhomepage.com/wander/ I didn't look at it for some weeks and now that I did it seemed to have grown more!
I like the swiping UI from Swurf though. Being shown just one at a time is calming. I did the same thing for my RSS feed reader... it just randomly picks one post from one feed at a time, from thousands of feed sources.
It's tough to make the swipe interface work for content that is so varied in presentation. It works for Tinder, TikTok, and even WikiTok because the content has a consistent form. With this, you have to reorient yourself after every swipe.
I like it. But it keeps freezing — I can't scroll vertically through the sites (on either Opera/Chrome on android) unless I switch to another app and then back. Then it'll work for a page or two before freezing again. Otherwise I like the concept
Added Swurf codes to easily transfer your Swurf to any other device or browser without an account
From the (...) menu -> Your Swurf code (shows up after a few swipes)
Thank you to everyone who participated in the launch so far and the great feedback/discussion
PS: If you have a blog/site you want people to see - bottom right corner the three dots -> Submit a link. An almost instant way to get eyes on your page.
Feedback: doesn’t work here. Swiping barely works on an iPhone 11. Swiping with one hand with the left thumb on the left part of the screen does not work at all. Swiping in the horizontal center from right to left can take some time and sometimes does two swipes. If I swipe back I might swipe back in safari and land on hacker news again. Hope this helps, would like to try :)
The site was made for desktop originally. Working to resolve the mobile issues. On mobile you can tap the far right side of the screen and swiping is a bit more reliable.
An update has been rolled out to address this. More improvements to come.
How are the pages loading so quickly. On every swipe I expect next page to take its time to load, but these pages are loading like images.
There are more sites related to LLVM IR than I need to see but overall, this is a fresh browsing experience. Reminds me of reading random pages back in 1994.
Thanks - the set of pages in the feed and on which topics is constantly growing and being molded, so as more swipes/engagement occurs more coverage and interesting topics find their way in.
Nice! I feel like sites with cookie popups deserve to be penalised. How do you know if a page is good or bad - time spent on it?
First site was Steve Madden shop… is that right?
I’m curious how you can show arbitrary webpages within your web app. Do you save a snapshot of each page and serve that?
iframes
it's a good idea, but can you tweak it so that page 1 isn't a flashing naked lady?
Yes - there is a content filter in the (...) button. Always improving the protections on this - if you see a page that slipped through you can report it from the same menu.
Well this is fun!
made me feel like i was on tinder but instead swiping on websites..
This is where the name "swurf" originated from! Swiping X Surfing :)
This feels more satisfied.
amazing haha
I like the idea. Maybe add a very brief explanation about how it learns?
Also please make a tvOS version. It's a perfect fit. :)
Bug report: Copying selected text doesn't work. Mac/Chrome. Via keyboard shortcuts or context menu.
Thanks for the bug report - being added. As for the learning there are a few components at play but ultimately can be thought of as an interest crawler where pages with higher engagement branch deeper into their on page links and similar work from the author/root. As for what your shown, this is based on your interests, the crowds interest, and some other mechanisms in realtime.
Text copying has been fixed