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Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News

hntrends.jerodsanto.net

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Re: Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News

#11

Post by solipsist »

These trends are fairly interesting...

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=pg

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=y+combinator

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=pg%2C+tptacek%2C+patio11%2...

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=2007%2C+2008%2C+2009%2C+20...

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=android%2C+iphone vs. http://www.google.com/trends?q=android%2C+iphone&ctab=0&...

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=show+hn%2C+ask+hn%2C+tell+...

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=mac%2C+gruber%2C+steve+job...

Don't forget thought that these trends include the user's own comments and submissions in addition to mentions of them in other users' comments.

suking, this is truly awesome. It immediately joined my bookmark folder of favorite HN tools. I'd be curious, though, if whether or not it would be possible to filter out user names when counting how many times a word has appeared on the site. Or would that be too much of a challenge?

Re: Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News

#12

Post by pvilchez »

I searched for my own username expecting a flatline, but there were a few hits in the last few years. Flattering, but I'm fairly certain that hackers have not been talking about me. ;)

Perhaps you should only query titles and text, not usernames?

edit: for example, searching for pg would include his own submissions as well as mentions and Ask PG subs.

Re: Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News

#14

Post by suking »

sant0sk1 wrote: post #9
edge17 wrote: post #5

first of all, very cool. how is it normalized? every single thing I type in has an upward trend, which to me just suggests that interest in Hacker News has increased over the last few years... and I don't really need a chart to tell me that since I live in silicon valley :)

Good point. I wasn't really thinking about normalization as I was more interested in comparing trends on multiple terms, but I don't think it'd be too much work to change the algorithm to account for HN's growth.

Yah, you could easily do it by total # of posts to account for the growth. Cool stuff man.

Re: Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News

#15

Post by retube »

edge17 wrote: post #5

first of all, very cool. how is it normalized? every single thing I type in has an upward trend, which to me just suggests that interest in Hacker News has increased over the last few years... and I don't really need a chart to tell me that since I live in silicon valley :)

Came to say exactly this. The chart seems to start (by default anyway) at the beginning of 2007. I'm guessing the user-base and thus activity of HN has increased considerably since then. So yes it would be good to be able to re-normalise in some way. By the number of registered users would probably be the simplest. By number of comments posted would be another, by number of submissions or even number of words would all be interesting.

Btw - my suggestions got me thinking - I assumed this is looking at posts and comments. Whether just submission titles or if includes comments will affect best way to normalise.

Re: Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News

#16

Post by sant0sk1 »

pvilchez wrote: post #12

I searched for my own username expecting a flatline, but there were a few hits in the last few years. Flattering, but I'm fairly certain that hackers have not been talking about me. ;) Perhaps you should only query titles and text, not usernames? edit: for example, searching for pg would include his own submissions as well as mentions and Ask PG subs.

Strange, I didn't expect the search API to return results for a name that's in the by-line of a comment, but it sure does:

http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=pvilch...

This is something I should definitely work around in the future. Thanks for bring it to my attention!

Re: Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News

#19

Post by iamwil »

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=fuck%2C+shit%2C+cunt%2C+co...

I put in 5 of the 7 George Carlin dirty words. Looks like 'motherfucker' has a recent surge.

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=piss%2C+tits%2C+cunt%2C+co...

If you want to see it without the top two words dwarfing the other five.

Re: Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News

#20

Post by akavi »

sant0sk1 wrote: post #6
ntoshev wrote: post #4

Awesome work! Can you normalize it against total text volume? Number of mentions always goes up with time as HN grows, % of posts mentioning will be a better measure of mindshare.

Thanks so much! Hmm, good idea on % of posts, though most of the value I believe is in comparing multiple terms, in which case the raw number of mentions isn't as important as the relation of the trend lines.

That's not entirely true.

For example, the first thing I searched for was "Haskell", curious to see if it had gained or lost popularity in the past couple of years. The graph has an upward trend, but without knowing what the trend for total volume on HN is, that information is useless.

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