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HN accounts for 12% of Social Bookmark referral traffic

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Re: HN accounts for 12% of Social Bookmark referral traffic

#21

Post by JacobAldridge »

statictype wrote: post #18
JacobAldridge wrote: post #3

I had a phone call this morning with our national GM, where I had to explain why HN is noted as consistently in our top 5 referring sites (which is to say I had to explain what HN actually is). That's attributable to the fact that I'm active in this community, so I was surprised to see it accounting for so much traffic on a larger sample, but there's certainly evidence that even links that get no votes and no comment…

I suspect that getting a lot of visits from 'Hacker News' doesn't sound very comfortable to many people.

Yes, I note the OP refers to YCombinator rather than Hacker News, but as the profile of both grow outside of the tech community not making the distinction will become more and more inaccurate.

Re: HN accounts for 12% of Social Bookmark referral traffic

#22

Post by jacquesm »

joshu wrote: post #17
jacquesm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is many things to many people, and to some it is definitely a social bookmarking site. It even has something called a 'bookmarklet', if you have a description of HN that does not include the social bookmarking aspect (posting links and discussing them) then I'm very interested in to what you think HN is.

It's a forum. Most of the threads are started with a link to discuss but not all. I mean, how is it useful as bookmarks, social or otherwise? Are you able to save something so you can return to it later? There are lots of bookmark lets that have nothing to do with bookmarking. It's just a way to execute some JavaScript in the context of a page. Most of the sites there aren't social bookmarking, either. SU has the fun…

Check the 'saved' link on your profile page.

So, yes, you can return to those pages at a later point in time.

Re: HN accounts for 12% of Social Bookmark referral traffic

#23

Post by joshu »

jacquesm wrote: post #22
joshu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a forum. Most of the threads are started with a link to discuss but not all. I mean, how is it useful as bookmarks, social or otherwise? Are you able to save something so you can return to it later? There are lots of bookmark lets that have nothing to do with bookmarking. It's just a way to execute some JavaScript in the context of a page. Most of the sites there aren't social bookmarking, either. SU has the fun…

Check the 'saved' link on your profile page. So, yes, you can return to those pages at a later point in time.

I'm not even sure how to get stuff on or off that list.

Again, in what way can you use this site as your bookmarks? You save an obscure documentation page and a mod deletes it, and then what?

HN (like digg, reddit, etc) is social news, or something. People who confuse the two think so because the delicious front page and digg looked similar, or whatever.

Re: HN accounts for 12% of Social Bookmark referral traffic

#25

Post by jacquesm »

joshu wrote: post #23
jacquesm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check the 'saved' link on your profile page. So, yes, you can return to those pages at a later point in time.

I'm not even sure how to get stuff on or off that list. Again, in what way can you use this site as your bookmarks? You save an obscure documentation page and a mod deletes it, and then what? HN (like digg, reddit, etc) is social news, or something. People who confuse the two think so because the delicious front page and digg looked similar, or whatever.

Obscure documentation pages are most likely not going to survive, I agree with you there. But I definitely do use it to 'bookmark' technology news and it is very rare that a link gets deleted.

The bigger risk for deletions seems to be not tech related stuff but rather non-tech related stuff that manages to get a couple of upvotes.

HN is social news simply because the audience can define it as such.

The main ingredients, the ability to post links and to discuss them and to revisit them at a later stage makes it such that some users will come by and use it in that way.

All the stuff you submit and upvote goes on that list, you can't remove stuff from the list if you've upvoted it, you can't remove stuff from the list after a certain time has passed.

Re: HN accounts for 12% of Social Bookmark referral traffic

#27

Post by pvg »

joshu wrote: post #17
jacquesm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is many things to many people, and to some it is definitely a social bookmarking site. It even has something called a 'bookmarklet', if you have a description of HN that does not include the social bookmarking aspect (posting links and discussing them) then I'm very interested in to what you think HN is.

It's a forum. Most of the threads are started with a link to discuss but not all. I mean, how is it useful as bookmarks, social or otherwise? Are you able to save something so you can return to it later? There are lots of bookmark lets that have nothing to do with bookmarking. It's just a way to execute some JavaScript in the context of a page. Most of the sites there aren't social bookmarking, either. SU has the fun…

When people get into discussions about the meaning of social bookmarking, I often giggle remembering an early del user who wrote in to complain about the inappropriateness of some of the links because he thought 'social bookmarking' meant 'bookmarks on social issues'.

Re: HN accounts for 12% of Social Bookmark referral traffic

#28

Post by joshu »

jacquesm wrote: post #25
joshu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even sure how to get stuff on or off that list. Again, in what way can you use this site as your bookmarks? You save an obscure documentation page and a mod deletes it, and then what? HN (like digg, reddit, etc) is social news, or something. People who confuse the two think so because the delicious front page and digg looked similar, or whatever.

Obscure documentation pages are most likely not going to survive, I agree with you there. But I definitely do use it to 'bookmark' technology news and it is very rare that a link gets deleted. The bigger risk for deletions seems to be not tech related stuff but rather non-tech related stuff that manages to get a couple of upvotes. HN is social news simply because the audience can define it as such. The main ingredien…

Since when are discussions necessary for social bookmarking? Delicious doesn't have this.

Like I said, it's a forum.

Re: HN accounts for 12% of Social Bookmark referral traffic

#29

Post by pg »

joshu wrote: post #24

This data is sounds biased. Delicious did in the BILLIONS of monthly PVs when I left - I really doubt HN throws more traffic in aggregate.

Their numbers do sound high.

HN gets about 60k unique visitors on weekdays. We used to have about 750k pageviews on weekdays, but I just cracked down on crawlers that were killing performance, and the number is closer to 650k now. I've heard from several people that HN is a source of referral traffic out of proportion to its size, presumably because its concentration means more articles are interesting to more readers. But it would have to be a traffic source way out of proportion to its size to get the kind of numbers they're quoting in this study.

Re: HN accounts for 12% of Social Bookmark referral traffic

#30

Post by jacquesm »

joshu wrote: post #28
jacquesm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obscure documentation pages are most likely not going to survive, I agree with you there. But I definitely do use it to 'bookmark' technology news and it is very rare that a link gets deleted. The bigger risk for deletions seems to be not tech related stuff but rather non-tech related stuff that manages to get a couple of upvotes. HN is social news simply because the audience can define it as such. The main ingredien…

Since when are discussions necessary for social bookmarking? Delicious doesn't have this. Like I said, it's a forum.

They're not necessary but they don't hurt either.

As the coiner of the term, you may want to update the wikipedia article which, after listing the basic requirements says: "As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks".

So there seems to be a convergence of terms and services here.

I think the major difference between social bookmarking sites (of which I see HN as one, and you obviously don't) versus a forum is that on a forum the vast majority of the topics is not started with a link.

On HN the vast majority of the topics is started with a link.

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