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Is there a list of Hacker News clones?

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Re: Is there a list of Hacker News clones?

#11

Post by genieyclo »

texjer wrote: post #10
genieyclo wrote: post #7

The most prominent I know of are quant.ly and forlue.com There was also nickb's New Mogul, but that's dead. There was also another education HN clone by the person behind BrainRacer, but that's also dead.

Do you know why they die out so quickly? Is it just because they didn't generate enough interest? It doesn't seem like it'd be costly or time-intensive to maintain.

Well in New Mogul's case, nickb has been gone for a long time, and has basically vanished. The domain expired a while ago and he stopped paying the bills when he vanished.

BrainRacer's edu news site was shut down due to a lack of traction mainly, but it would probably be best to actually ask the founder as to why exactly.

Fwiw, I also ran a short-lived HN clone for a few months (also for education news) but killed it; mainly because of a lack of traction, and I didn't care too much to keep it up. Only about 15 registered users were on it, and only 4 active submitters, including myself.

Re: Is there a list of Hacker News clones?

#12

Post by dholowiski »

texjer wrote: post #6
dholowiski wrote: post #2

Hacker News works for programmers because programmers work in text and Hacker News is pure text. I don't think it would work for artists, I think you need something much more visual.

Text is still the best way of discussing ideas, even among artists. My concern is that a similar service won't get any where near the critical mass in terms of its user-base... which may be because we're more visual ;)

Hm, what about a subreddit? It's a bit more visual, and comes with (at least the potential for) a built in audience.

Re: Is there a list of Hacker News clones?

#13

Post by texjer »

I think I should correct myself -- when I say that I want to create a clone news community "for art", I really meant "for artists".

On hacker news, you don't see a lot of articles called "Look at this awesome new app!" -- instead you see stuff about the guys who made this "awesome app" and all the successes and failures that they've overcome.

As an artist, there comes a time where you don't want to look at other people's "awesome new art". You want to read about what drives them, or how they got started (and in the process learn about their awesome new art). I want to read about what's going on in the art market, and what people are predicting for the future of art. I want to read articles from the curator's perspective, from the collectors' perspective, the viewer's perspective.

I think the best way to get this is a non-visual system user-driven aggregation system like HN. Y'all have an awesome community of smart people submitting compelling articles... I'm simply jealous.

Re: Is there a list of Hacker News clones?

#14

Post by texjer »

genieyclo wrote: post #11
texjer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know why they die out so quickly? Is it just because they didn't generate enough interest? It doesn't seem like it'd be costly or time-intensive to maintain.

Well in New Mogul's case, nickb has been gone for a long time, and has basically vanished. The domain expired a while ago and he stopped paying the bills when he vanished. BrainRacer's edu news site was shut down due to a lack of traction mainly, but it would probably be best to actually ask the founder as to why exactly. Fwiw, I also ran a short-lived HN clone for a few months (also for education news) but killed it…

Yeah, I'm afraid to put a ton of work into learning how to do this if it's just going to fail when I don't get that critical mass of users.

Re: Is there a list of Hacker News clones?

#15

Post by texjer »

soult wrote: post #9
texjer wrote: post #3

I found a few: http://www.uberlook.com for web design and graphics. http://bitlynews.com/ looks like its for trashy news. And here's some defunct ones that were mentioned: markenomics newsmogul

Bitlynews was a contestant in the bitly API contest. They take the most popular shorturls and display it using an interface similar to Hackernews.

Ahhhhh, I get it now.

Re: Is there a list of Hacker News clones?

#16

Post by texjer »

dholowiski wrote: post #12
texjer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Text is still the best way of discussing ideas, even among artists. My concern is that a similar service won't get any where near the critical mass in terms of its user-base... which may be because we're more visual ;)

Hm, what about a subreddit? It's a bit more visual, and comes with (at least the potential for) a built in audience.

Brilliant idea, I've never been very far below the surface of Reddit. I'm a big fan of the @newsycombinator twitter account for mobile reading -- do you know if there's a way of making something similar for the reddit subgroup?

Re: Is there a list of Hacker News clones?

#17

Post by genieyclo »

texjer wrote: post #14
genieyclo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in New Mogul's case, nickb has been gone for a long time, and has basically vanished. The domain expired a while ago and he stopped paying the bills when he vanished. BrainRacer's edu news site was shut down due to a lack of traction mainly, but it would probably be best to actually ask the founder as to why exactly. Fwiw, I also ran a short-lived HN clone for a few months (also for education news) but killed it…

Yeah, I'm afraid to put a ton of work into learning how to do this if it's just going to fail when I don't get that critical mass of users.

Well, it's very simple to actually run a site running on news.arc

The guide here http://arclanguage.org/install

and the how-to-run-news file you extract make it simple to have it up and running in under a couple of minutes. It's just a question of whether you want to run it. I just did it to try out arc and see how HN ran in the back, but it got expensive to run it in aws all the time with no actual users or tangible benefit.

Re: Is there a list of Hacker News clones?

#18

Post by texjer »

genieyclo wrote: post #17
texjer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm afraid to put a ton of work into learning how to do this if it's just going to fail when I don't get that critical mass of users.

Well, it's very simple to actually run a site running on news.arc The guide here http://arclanguage.org/install and the how-to-run-news file you extract make it simple to have it up and running in under a couple of minutes. It's just a question of whether you want to run it. I just did it to try out arc and see how HN ran in the back, but it got expensive to run it in aws all the time with no actual users or tangible…

Thanks for the guide, it looks perfect. What server/host did you use?

Re: Is there a list of Hacker News clones?

#19

Post by genieyclo »

texjer wrote: post #18
genieyclo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's very simple to actually run a site running on news.arc The guide here http://arclanguage.org/install and the how-to-run-news file you extract make it simple to have it up and running in under a couple of minutes. It's just a question of whether you want to run it. I just did it to try out arc and see how HN ran in the back, but it got expensive to run it in aws all the time with no actual users or tangible…

Thanks for the guide, it looks perfect. What server/host did you use?

AWS with an Ubuntu 10.04 32 bit ami

Re: Is there a list of Hacker News clones?

#20

Post by myearwood »

texjer wrote: post #16
dholowiski wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, what about a subreddit? It's a bit more visual, and comes with (at least the potential for) a built in audience.

Brilliant idea, I've never been very far below the surface of Reddit. I'm a big fan of the @newsycombinator twitter account for mobile reading -- do you know if there's a way of making something similar for the reddit subgroup?

I can build a twitter bot for you based on your subreddit . Email me . my email is in my profile .
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