31–40 of 79 posts
What happens to stories that use sensationalism and profanity? Or sensationalism and a new startup?
"If anyone out there suspected that the 'old guard' had given up on HN, this chart proves them wrong." Of the people here since the first year, probably only 25% still participate regularly. Occasionally I'll stumble across some discussion from the early years in Google, and it's crazy how different the site was back then. There are still good comments now, but back then there were entire conversations that were good…
> I don't even bother to write the kind of comments that I used to Please do. Good content is always welcome.
#1 Lesson from all of this: Instead of talking about your product to your prospect, talk about something your prospect cares deeply about to your prospect. I had no idea what you did and didn't really care until you used it in context of something I did care about: Hacker News. Now I know what you do, understand how it applies to me, and best of all, I'm starting to visualize how else I could use it. We should all ap…
If you look at my submission history of my blog then I think it's clear that HN likes things that are original and/or well thought out. My weaker blog posts go nowhere, but ones that are detailed make it. So, if there's a formula for appearing on HN, it's write something original and/or deep.
It wasn't that the post lacked detail or depth, instead, it's a problem of varying interests; few people have an interest in ancient computer system design and history, let alone know what "mercury delay line" memory is.
When you combine a more esoteric interest with the fast queue of the HN '/newest' page, the result is an exposure, visibility, and discovery problem, rather than any real flaw in your content.
Also, robertjmoore, thanks for a great article with data.
- New user growth. I don't think its b/c a 'saturation point' has been hit for the HN community as the article hypothesizes. There was a period in the last few years where there was an conscious choice by HN to restrict user growth in order to maintain a higher signal to noise ratio. Newbies are now marked with green and there is no register link on the homepage. for a while there wasn't a way for new users to sign up.
- The NYT more favored compared to the WSJ? most likely not due to the quality of the writing but b/c WSJ articles are not available to non-subscribers by default.
"I chose to categorize content by the mention of things like big companies (i.e., Amazon, Google), Hot Startups (i.e. Pinterest, Instagram), Sensationalism (i.e. Best, Worst, First), Programming Languages (everything I could think of), and Profanity (which was fun)." What happens to stories that use sensationalism and profanity? Or sensationalism and a new startup?