Being useful. Yes you can use many tricks, and they work. But in the end of the day you are not different that a czsino, a drug dealer or a tabloid magazin w

Being useful. Yes you can use many tricks, and they work. But in the end of the day you are not different that a czsino, a drug dealer or a tabloid magazin when you use them. It is more economically efficient to trick the user into staying in the short run. But in the long run, we are using google and stack overflow because they are the most useful, not for tricks. Among tricks, some useful ones are also often badly implemented and become armful. Ex: notifications are only useful if it result in more productivity than distraction. I hate most notifications, they disturb my flow, but I like being request them for specific cases to save me time. A light gamification can be fun, but if it's at the price of my main usage of the site I'll leave. Basically give me want I want, quickly and in a useful way, and I'll stay. Save me time and energy and i may even pay. Unfortunately, hn readers are not a good sample for user behavior. We all have ad blockers, we boycott sites with behavior we dislike and we know how to by pass stupid tech decisions. But if you manage to engage hn users with the same content and design than regular user, your model has a good base to be sustainable because it has credibility. Credibility is harder to build than addiction. It's not quickly as rewarding, but it more reliable. And more satisfying for you.