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Ask HN: Anyone gained traction on HN *without* any of their friends upvoting?
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Re: Ask HN: Anyone gained traction on HN *without* any of their friends upvoting?
#2Has anyone submitted their project on HN, and without any friends' help, reached front page?
My hope is at least on HN, if your project is cool, it will get traction without asking friends to upvote your entry (which happens a lot most of the times). Am I too idealistic?
Please share your story if you used to be a nobody and just posted your project/startup on hacker news, and it got significant traction just because people thought the project was cool, without any social factors involved. I think a lot of people on HN wonder about this too, and it needs to be demystified. Thanks!
Re: Ask HN: Anyone gained traction on HN *without* any of their friends upvoting?
#3Sorry buddy, no conspiracies here. If your project is interesting (or generates some form of controversy) then you can certainly gain some traction. If not, then prepare to get ignored.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone gained traction on HN *without* any of their friends upvoting?
#4I've had one blog post of mine and one link to another's post make the front page so far. I was surprised how few upvotes (if they are in a short period of time) it takes to make the front page though, and I don't doubt some people do this (or dummy accounts).
I think it is a bit of a crap shoot whether or not a good story on the /new page will get traction though. It requires a bit of luck and timing for the right people to be reading /new at that time and take interest and read it
On the other hand I see a lot of things making the FP that seem to be mostly title bait. I wonder if some people simply upvote some things just to save it for late basically voting on the title only.
I wonder how an experiment with randomly displaying an item from the /new page at the top of the front page would work. Reddit does this and while I'm certainly not advocating becoming more like reddit, I can see the value of it.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone gained traction on HN *without* any of their friends upvoting?
#5Sorry buddy, no conspiracies here. If your project is interesting (or generates some form of controversy) then you can certainly gain some traction. If not, then prepare to get ignored.
I'm not implying that there's any conspiracy. Some facts I do know:
1. I know for a fact many people do this and it ends up being successful.
2. I have tried this in the past and it worked.
3. I have been observing /new and several really interesting projects just go ignored because of bad timing, or lack of promotion, or whatever.
So it's not just the question of whether it's interesting or controversial. It requires more than that, and that's what I'm trying to learn.
Anyway, what I am curious about is not whether this type of thing happens or not (because it does happen, quite often, unlike you think).
What I am curious about is: are there any couter-examples? Has anyone just put their stuff on HN without telling their friends to upvote and it got traction? I am specifically asking this question to those who have made the front page. My projects have made the front page in the past a couple of times, but I still don't know the answer because most of the times I tweeted or emailed my friends to check it out after posting on HN.
I'm wondering if a completely isolated person can come along and make it on HN.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone gained traction on HN *without* any of their friends upvoting?
#6I've had one blog post of mine and one link to another's post make the front page so far. I was surprised how few upvotes (if they are in a short period of time) it takes to make the front page though, and I don't doubt some people do this (or dummy accounts). I think it is a bit of a crap shoot whether or not a good story on the /new page will get traction though. It requires a bit of luck and timing for the right p…
Thanks for sharing your experience. Just to confirm, you just posted your post here and didn't tell your friends to come read it, right?
Also, would be nice if you could share around how many upvotes there were, and how quickly it happened. Thanks :)
Re: Ask HN: Anyone gained traction on HN *without* any of their friends upvoting?
#7I hit #1 on my first submission without knowing anyone.
No conspiracy. Just an original article.
Here it is: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3328619
Re: Ask HN: Anyone gained traction on HN *without* any of their friends upvoting?
#8The real question I think is how often do people visit the 'new' section and upvote stories they like (perhaps we should have a poll on that).
Before Hacker News I used to be big in the digg community where to get to the front page it was "easy", but you needed to build a huge network of friends to do that and upvote each other. I hated that. When I came to hacker news a year ago I vowed to never do that and hoped this community was pure... which.. well I think is what you're questioning here.
Anyway according to my stats it looks like I've submitted 46 links.. 5 or 6 of them (I think) hit the front page (they have more then 10 points). Other then one or two (not the ones that hit) I don't share the links around.
At the end of the day again I think we should have the poll. As members of the community we need to make sure we're going over the 'new' section.. I try do it at least a couple of times a week myself.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone gained traction on HN *without* any of their friends upvoting?
#9I submitted an article I wrote 14 days ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3497512). As far as I know, none of my friends voted it and it got the the front page with 21 points.
I'm not sure how long it stayed there but I received around 5000 visits during the first 2 days and I keep getting 30 or 40 per day to that specific article. I got almost a hundred new RSS followers from this and a dozen or so Twitter followers so I think this was more than enough "traction".
Re: Ask HN: Anyone gained traction on HN *without* any of their friends upvoting?
#10Sorry buddy, no conspiracies here. If your project is interesting (or generates some form of controversy) then you can certainly gain some traction. If not, then prepare to get ignored.
I'm not implying that there's any conspiracy. Some facts I do know: 1. I know for a fact many people do this and it ends up being successful. 2. I have tried this in the past and it worked. 3. I have been observing /new and several really interesting projects just go ignored because of bad timing, or lack of promotion, or whatever. So it's not just the question of whether it's interesting or controversial. It require…
I guess I'm just not understanding where you're going with this question.
It seems like you're trying to figure out all the variables that go into a high profile post. Quite frankly, I don't see the point in that.
Is it possible for an unknown to get on the first page and get exposure? Of course it is. Does that mean he's "made it on HN"? I don't even know what that means.
In the end, my point is simply this; stop spending so much time worrying about how people make the front page of HN and focus on your project.
This is a forum for discussion, not Valhalla.