Ask HN: Why is Techmeme so successful?

#1

Post by seestraw » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 3:04 PM UTC

Looking at Techmeme, it looks like a simple product. Very well done, yes. It looks like they spend a lot of time curating the news, no doubt assisted by software. But still, a simple product with low barrier of entry.

Why then is there close to zero competition? I don't see any site coming even close to their product.

I have a sense that I am missing something. Is this business harder than it looks?

Re: Ask HN: Why is Techmeme so successful?

#2

Post by gigatexal » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 3:18 PM UTC

I hadn't heard of it until the TechMemeRideHome podcast fwiw

Re: Ask HN: Why is Techmeme so successful?

#3

Post by shawnpang » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 3:29 PM UTC

I am a huge fan of a similar product in China - https://tophub.today/

Wish someone could have made a better version. https://techurls.com/ has better user interface but seems like some contents are not being updated.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Techmeme so successful?

#4

Post by lbhdc » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 4:12 PM UTC

gigatexal wrote: post #2

I hadn't heard of it until the TechMemeRideHome podcast fwiw

I have never heard of it either. Looks like a news aggregator. At first glance, even though I like aggregators, I think I prefer the HN style aggregators that prioritize discussion.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Techmeme so successful?

#5

Post by spansoa » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 6:10 PM UTC

Any aggregator will be successful since people don't want to manually search for news & trends. The real trick is aggregating the aggregators. That's still a hard problem.