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Reverse engineering my #1 Hacker News article

danielwirtz.com

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Re: Reverse engineering my #1 Hacker News article

#41

Post by dylan604 »

codetrotter wrote: post #40
dylan604 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at this point in time, but the rule is too specific. "One just needs to write $currentTrendingFad to get the same effect" Not too long ago it could have been crypto/blockchain, or rewriting $app in $lang That's the thing of viral is it is just trend following, so recognizing the trend helps the changes of going viral

The general sentiment on HN against cryptocurrency and blockchain has always been pretty negative as far as I can can remember. A quick algolia search seems to support that too. Most of the highest voted stories about cryptocurrency and blockchain are negative news and opinions. There are a few highly voted stories about cryptocurrencies and blockchain too, but far fewer. If you search for something specific like Bit…

To go viral doesn’t mean it’s always a positive reception. If you’re shopping karma points, it just takes getting people engaged and posting something that is known to grate people is the easy play. Just look at all of the drama on Wordpress. Just look at all of social media algos.

Re: Reverse engineering my #1 Hacker News article

#42

Post by elevatedastalt »

dowager_dan99 wrote: post #26

I don't want to discourage this type of retrospective, but we (science-type humans) love to look for causal explanations, and can do a great job of reverse-engineering rationale. Even though I think you did do a bunch of things to encourage engagement, it seems like it's more boosted your luck of getting traction from a very small fractional percent to a slightly larger but still very small fractional percent.

I think we should. This sort of hustling is exactly why most of the internet is now completely unreadable. I didn't see the original post but if I had, I'd have probably flagged it for the clickbait content-less title.

Re: Reverse engineering my #1 Hacker News article

#43

Post by AndrewStephens »

fallinditch wrote: post #30
AndrewStephens wrote: post #21

My highest rated HN link was a sarcastic troll post about the MacBook Touch Bar in 2016. Nothing I have written since has even gotten close to the same level of attention. Someone reposted a more recent article from my blog over the weekend that gathered 4 upvotes and a few hundred views. It's nice to be noticed but I don't live for attention. I think that unless you want to form a cabal to get something on the front…

Looks like the best way to accumulate kudos is to have a bot that watches for new announcements from Apple, OpenAI, etc and then immediately submits the links to HN.

There are definitely accounts that do this. I occasionally submit stuff to lobsters, usually it appears in the feed here within a minute or two.

Re: Reverse engineering my #1 Hacker News article

#44

Post by cafeinux »

numinix wrote: post #19
cafeinux wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being viral, for content, is not always bad: it can make an otherwise boring or tedious subject engaging and enjoyable (and on the other side, a fun subject might appear boring if badly written), which I think is what this article is about :-).

The title "I've acquired a new superpower" might have the most virality, but it's not a great title for users. Chasing viral content doesn't have to be bad, but you do often get this imbalance between clicks vs UX.

I don't mind a "viral" title for a good article (not those kind of "You won't believe what this woman did to..." or other clearly clickbait titles), but of course, you don't know before clicking if it's a good article, or a clickbait one, indeed.

In this case though, it's a dude posting on his own blog. I'm fine with whatever title he found cool.

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