Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 70 posts

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#31

Post by drtse4 »

Impressive uniques progression... what did you do on day 1? I mean, what strategy did you employ to launch the meme? I guess you launched it on codingrobots blog/newsletter/twitter, did you do anything else?

Regarding the spreading, a tweet from some real author will be great (how?). And what about publishing some real-time stats about the results? i.e. 30% of our users write like Dan Brown, 10% like xxx, etc...

EDIT: "Margaret Atwood, who is in our database of famous writers, tweeted about it (apparently, she doesn’t write like herself… oops :)" Already happened... enjoy the exponential growth in visits :)

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#32

Post by dchest »

drtse4 wrote: post #31

Impressive uniques progression... what did you do on day 1? I mean, what strategy did you employ to launch the meme? I guess you launched it on codingrobots blog/newsletter/twitter, did you do anything else? Regarding the spreading, a tweet from some real author will be great (how?). And what about publishing some real-time stats about the results? i.e. 30% of our users write like Dan Brown, 10% like xxx, etc... EDIT…

Yes, newsletter, Twitter and blog. First "outside" referrals were from reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/cnmny/what_famou...) and my HN comment on "What are you working on today?" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1501078). Total of 132 visits on the first day.

Currently:

  facebook.com 20.75%
  tumblr.com   8.24%
  twitter.com  5.57%
Of the popular writers, Margaret Atwood tweeted about it (apparently, she doesn't write like herself -- she is in the database :) http://twitter.com/MargaretAtwood/status/18463485898 and William Gibson http://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/18450533599

I don't track any stats regarding results of analysis, I can only see which result pages get more visits.

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#33

Post by dchest »

niels_bom wrote: post #27
dchest wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, just like almost every meme, it's short-lived.

A lot of the memes on the web are short-lived, however there's nothing about memes that makes them inherently short-lived. Some memes live extremely long.

I'd be interested to see examples of long-lived memes like this.

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#34

Post by vinhboy »

Dude, you have no facebook Like, Tweet this, Buzz it, links?

.... oh wait.... they do exist...

Umm ok... How about you use the regular icons for familiarity sake?

I also like the "bio" idea. Seeing a name I don't recognize makes the experience a bit hollow.

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#35

Post by forcetenhen »

wlievens wrote: post #17

I fetched a document I wrote and entered several paragraphs, and got a different author each time. What does that say about me (or your algorithm)? Congratulations on the traction though!

I tried a couple of times, got Raymond Chandler, Margaret Atwood, Stephen King and... Dan Brown. All for different elements of the same page. In turns inpsiring and soul-crushing..

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#39

Post by dchest »

ankeshk wrote: post #21

1. Quickly send an email to the Top 20 writing sites out there. And make them an offer: they could get a white label version of your script to be on their URL with their logo for a fee. Strike while the iron is hot. 2. On the results page, quickly create a form that asks for peoples email id. And then publish a newsletter that helps folks become better writers. Capturing email ids also give you a big base of folks wi…

2. Done. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#40

Post by AgentConundrum »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #38

I know you said you're not discussing the algorithm, but to me, the biggest proof of silliness (I won't say "nonsense") is that when I entered 7 different blog posts of mine, I got 6 different results.

I tried two different posts I wrote (in fact, the entire contents of my rebooted blog, since RSI has kept me down lately), as well as one half-written post, and apparently they all appeared to be Dan Brown works.

I'm not quite sure what to think of that, but at least it was reasonably consistent for me.

Post reply on HN