7 ms·

What I've Learned from Hacker News (2009)

101 points by vinnyglennon 8y ago

ColinWright 8y ago
Original discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=495053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=495053 Another (short) discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19201999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19201999 Discussion about an update: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4285333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4285333 Other submissions without discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8466459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8466459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5730494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5730494
pvorb 8y ago
Why would a site that isn't growing be considered dead?
- BenjiWiebe 8y ago
  Not an answer, but a business that isn't growing is considered a failing/dieing business.
  - retsibsi 8y ago
    Does this apply to businesses that aren't in serious debt, and don't have investors waiting for growth-dependent returns? I'd be surprised if my local baker considered stability to be failure, or a precursor to closing down.
- boxy310 8y ago
  Over time the attrition rate for attention increases. As a result it becomes harder to justify further investments in usability features or content quality because you can no longer leverage the increased attention of more users in the future. This can lead towards a death spiral of lower frequency updates leading to less viewers leading to less updates. For a venture-backed site even hitting a 20% growth rate per month would be a warning that you're not growing fast enough to justify continued investment, as was the case for a recent postmortem on Gumroad [1]. Given that this post was from 10 years ago that's definitely not the case for Hacker News, but in this climate it's gotten even more extreme if you're relying on venture backing. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19105733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19105733
  - pvorb 8y ago
    But often useful products are shut down because they are not growing fast enough instead of simply letting it run without investing much into it.
  - pier25 8y ago
    I'm not much of a money guy to be honest but isn't profit what dictates how much you can invest on the product? If you have a constant user base that provides constant profit why is growth needed to sustain a business?
    - nf05papsjfVbc 8y ago
      It's not needed to sustain the business but it is needed for those who invested in it and would like to cash out on a higher valuation - which typically is achieved through growth.
  - fourthark 8y ago
    The key words here are "venture-backed".
- ndnxhs 8y ago
  To me a website that grows too much is dead. Reddit has reached that phase now. Started out great but has turned in to Facebook
  - potta_coffee 8y ago
    I agree, I check in there now and again but I find the quality of discussion to be very low.
    - jmoore53 8y ago
      From the article: > Technology can enhance discussion. Nested comments do, for example. But I'd rather use a site with primitive features and smart, nice users than more advanced one whose users were idiots or trolls. I'd agree and say I don't think reddit has the quality of discussion in posts or comments that it used to.
    - skunkworker 8y ago
      Really depends on the subreddit. On the front page ones, sure. But you get into the enthusiast and smaller ones you can still get a lot of high quality discussion.
      - rovyko 8y ago
        I find the best subs fit all or most of the following characteristics: 1. No politics 2. Nobody trying to sell you something or promote themselves 3. Based around a single, external topic, usually an established IP Examples: r/Factorio, r/asoif,
      - freedomben 8y ago
        Yep. The moderators also make or break it. When immature people (especially seems to be a lot of teenagers) get ahold of the mod powers and go on power trips (which happens surprisingly often), it's the end of that subreddit.
    - jplayer01 8y ago
      There are plenty of great subreddits though. Just because the big ones are crap doesn't mean they all are.
marai2 8y ago
Maybe the mods can add a new FAQ on what the uniques and traffic growth is like now. And maybe update it on even just a yearly basis?
- dang 8y ago
  Growth has been consistent for years, if you squint to smooth out big swings. It's linear, which is about how we like it. Uniques are up to 4.5M or so per month, depending on how you count. There's one intriguing exception to the linear growth: the number of submissions has been roughly flat since 2012. Comments, votes, accounts, page views, basically everything have all grown at about the same rate, but not submissions. I'm grateful for that, because we don't have any moderation capacity to spare. But it's interesting to speculate about why.
  - audiolion 8y ago
    Isn't there some internet effect where most of a large community lurks and only a small percent produce? [1] I find it low friction to comment. But as a reader I go here for my news, so there is no news for me to potentially share. Even if I do find something I am not in the habit of posting to HN. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)
  - wuschel 8y ago
    > But it's interesting to speculate about why. Indeed, this is quite interesting. What is your hypothesis? A plateau regarding new content on the internet that is of interest to the user base, perhaps? What is the percentage of duplicate posts, and what is the percentage of submissions that stay on the first page of HN for a sufficient amount of time to get traction? Is there any data on this?
    - dang 8y ago
      That's my hypothesis, yes. But I wonder how to test it. I'm afraid I don't have those numbers at hand; sorry.
waivek 8y ago
HN generates emotional friction[1], is filled with shallow but clever sounding dismissals[2] and is filled with low quality discussions on high quality articles[3]. [1]: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/787775131682758657 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/787775131682758657 [2]: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1068457691171958785 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1068457691171958785 [3]: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/731198734726356993 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/731198734726356993
- everdev 8y ago
  > low quality discussions I'd put your citations of tweets clearly expressing personal opinion as devaluing the conversation. I typically find highly rated comments on HN as useful in adding new information or perspective to an article or discussion.
  - gav 8y ago
    I agree. I would argue that I get a lot more value out of the comments than than the linked content. The only major issue I have with the comments on HN is that early ones get a lot more upvotes, causing later--but just as valid--points of view to be lost.
    - koolba 8y ago
      The early bird gets the worm and the early comment gets the karma. Maybe a dynamic system that randomly shows an order weighted on upvotes in the past X minutes. That’d give fresh comments a chance to compete.
      - Varcht 8y ago
        When a discussion is interesting enough for me to want to follow it, I will search the page for "minutes ago" to find the newest posts. It might be nice if new posts were highlighted for some amount of time.
        8y ago

101 points by vinnyglennon 8y ago

Original discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=495053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=495053 Another (short) discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19201999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19201999 Discussion about an update: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4285333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4285333 Other submissions without discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8466459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8466459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5730494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5730494

pvorb 8y ago

Why would a site that isn't growing be considered dead?

BenjiWiebe 8y ago
Not an answer, but a business that isn't growing is considered a failing/dieing business.
- retsibsi 8y ago
  Does this apply to businesses that aren't in serious debt, and don't have investors waiting for growth-dependent returns? I'd be surprised if my local baker considered stability to be failure, or a precursor to closing down.
boxy310 8y ago
Over time the attrition rate for attention increases. As a result it becomes harder to justify further investments in usability features or content quality because you can no longer leverage the increased attention of more users in the future. This can lead towards a death spiral of lower frequency updates leading to less viewers leading to less updates. For a venture-backed site even hitting a 20% growth rate per month would be a warning that you're not growing fast enough to justify continued investment, as was the case for a recent postmortem on Gumroad [1]. Given that this post was from 10 years ago that's definitely not the case for Hacker News, but in this climate it's gotten even more extreme if you're relying on venture backing. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19105733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19105733
- pvorb 8y ago
  But often useful products are shut down because they are not growing fast enough instead of simply letting it run without investing much into it.
- pier25 8y ago
  I'm not much of a money guy to be honest but isn't profit what dictates how much you can invest on the product? If you have a constant user base that provides constant profit why is growth needed to sustain a business?
  - nf05papsjfVbc 8y ago
    It's not needed to sustain the business but it is needed for those who invested in it and would like to cash out on a higher valuation - which typically is achieved through growth.
- fourthark 8y ago
  The key words here are "venture-backed".
ndnxhs 8y ago
To me a website that grows too much is dead. Reddit has reached that phase now. Started out great but has turned in to Facebook
- potta_coffee 8y ago
  I agree, I check in there now and again but I find the quality of discussion to be very low.
  - jmoore53 8y ago
    From the article: > Technology can enhance discussion. Nested comments do, for example. But I'd rather use a site with primitive features and smart, nice users than more advanced one whose users were idiots or trolls. I'd agree and say I don't think reddit has the quality of discussion in posts or comments that it used to.
  - skunkworker 8y ago
    Really depends on the subreddit. On the front page ones, sure. But you get into the enthusiast and smaller ones you can still get a lot of high quality discussion.
    - rovyko 8y ago
      I find the best subs fit all or most of the following characteristics: 1. No politics 2. Nobody trying to sell you something or promote themselves 3. Based around a single, external topic, usually an established IP Examples: r/Factorio, r/asoif,
    - freedomben 8y ago
      Yep. The moderators also make or break it. When immature people (especially seems to be a lot of teenagers) get ahold of the mod powers and go on power trips (which happens surprisingly often), it's the end of that subreddit.
  - jplayer01 8y ago
    There are plenty of great subreddits though. Just because the big ones are crap doesn't mean they all are.

marai2 8y ago

Maybe the mods can add a new FAQ on what the uniques and traffic growth is like now. And maybe update it on even just a yearly basis?

dang 8y ago
Growth has been consistent for years, if you squint to smooth out big swings. It's linear, which is about how we like it. Uniques are up to 4.5M or so per month, depending on how you count. There's one intriguing exception to the linear growth: the number of submissions has been roughly flat since 2012. Comments, votes, accounts, page views, basically everything have all grown at about the same rate, but not submissions. I'm grateful for that, because we don't have any moderation capacity to spare. But it's interesting to speculate about why.
- audiolion 8y ago
  Isn't there some internet effect where most of a large community lurks and only a small percent produce? [1] I find it low friction to comment. But as a reader I go here for my news, so there is no news for me to potentially share. Even if I do find something I am not in the habit of posting to HN. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)
- wuschel 8y ago
  > But it's interesting to speculate about why. Indeed, this is quite interesting. What is your hypothesis? A plateau regarding new content on the internet that is of interest to the user base, perhaps? What is the percentage of duplicate posts, and what is the percentage of submissions that stay on the first page of HN for a sufficient amount of time to get traction? Is there any data on this?
  - dang 8y ago
    That's my hypothesis, yes. But I wonder how to test it. I'm afraid I don't have those numbers at hand; sorry.

waivek 8y ago

HN generates emotional friction[1], is filled with shallow but clever sounding dismissals[2] and is filled with low quality discussions on high quality articles[3]. [1]: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/787775131682758657 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/787775131682758657 [2]: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1068457691171958785 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1068457691171958785 [3]: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/731198734726356993 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/731198734726356993

everdev 8y ago
> low quality discussions I'd put your citations of tweets clearly expressing personal opinion as devaluing the conversation. I typically find highly rated comments on HN as useful in adding new information or perspective to an article or discussion.
- gav 8y ago
  I agree. I would argue that I get a lot more value out of the comments than than the linked content. The only major issue I have with the comments on HN is that early ones get a lot more upvotes, causing later--but just as valid--points of view to be lost.
  - koolba 8y ago
    The early bird gets the worm and the early comment gets the karma. Maybe a dynamic system that randomly shows an order weighted on upvotes in the past X minutes. That’d give fresh comments a chance to compete.
    - Varcht 8y ago
      When a discussion is interesting enough for me to want to follow it, I will search the page for "minutes ago" to find the newest posts. It might be nice if new posts were highlighted for some amount of time.
      - 8y ago