7 ms·

Techmeme vs Hacker News

125 points by guptaneil 16y ago

haecib 16y ago
Hmm, I dunno. Apples to oranges for me. I look at HN as a place where techies discuss topics that interest them, vs Techmeme which lists tech stories in the media, sans discussion.
- terryjsmith 16y ago
  This. HN often has discussions about an article here because of the community and the calibre (as opposed to HN members on the site itself), while Techmeme relies on the inherent "conversational" properties of blogs themselves.
- martinshen 16y ago
  Excellent comment: apples being techmeme right now and oranges being the natural hn color
  - taylorbuley 16y ago
    Speaking of pedantry, here's my obligatory response where I say Apples and Oranges can in fact be compared http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v1i3/air-1-3-apples.html http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v1i3/air-1-...
jdp23 16y ago
TechMeme's got huge gender biases, and this helps contribute to the echo chamber effect that Fred's talking about. In September 2010 I wrote about a case where even though 65% of the articles on a subject were written by women, TechMeme's version had on 16.5% by women. http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=1618#comment-88992 http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=1618#comment-88992
- albedoa 16y ago
  Argh, blocked at work. How was the 65% rate determined? And was TechMeme's 16.5% rate compared to any other sites? If that's all explained in your article, then I'll just read it later :)
  - jokermatt999 16y ago
    Copy pasted for convenience. Will delete later if it's distracting. _____ The coverage of the Arrington kerfuffle provides some great examples of a form of structural bias against women that most people overlook. At this point about 65% of the posts I’ve linked to above are by women (31/47, I think). Here’s TechMeme’s summary of the debate: five guys and Shira 16.6% women. In a comment on Gender, race, age and power in online discussions, chapter n back in 2008, I talked about representation issues on Techmeme: the majority of these blogs are generally what Susan C. Herring et. al. refer to in Women and children last: the discursive construction of Weblogs as “filter blogs”, commenting on external events, as opposed to “personal journals” or “knowledge blogs”; TechMeme’s technology is a natural for filter blogs, so it’s unsurprising that this leads to underrepresentation of women and youth. It’s nice to have such a clear example! At the risk of being pedantic,there are a couple of important lessons here: - The “neutral” algorithms of sites like Techmeme, memeorandum, and mediagazer are in practice heavily biased against women, and so present yet another challenge for women in general — and women in technology, politics, and media in particular - If you’re getting a large chunk of your news via Techmeme, you’re getting a very male view of reality
  - jdp23 16y ago
    Thanks to jokermatt999 for the cut-and-paste. Yes, later in that thread there's data from Google and Bing -- both in the 45-50% range. EDIT: Also, here's the link to the Susan Herring et. al. paper I mentioned "Women and Children Last: The Discursive Construction of Weblogs" http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html
    - shasta 16y ago
      Wait, 65% of the stories you linked to were written by women, while only 45%-50% of stories at large were written by women? Have you tried to examine the roots of your gender bias?
coderdude 16y ago
>And not one story about Apple or Facebook in the top 20 right now. It isn't always that way. Some days we have three stories on the front page about Facebook (the day before yesterday) and I don't think a single day goes by where some Apple story doesn't creep its way in. There's an Apple-related story on the front page right now and two on the second page. It's gotten better over the last year though. It used to be that 3-4 (or more) articles about Apple and Facebook were on the front page at any given time.
- guptaneil 16y ago
  Is that necessarily a bad thing though? To be fair, Apple, Facebook, and Google have had by far the largest impact on consumer technology in the last decade. Obviously, they're newsworthy and interesting. To me, a good measure for whether an article should be on HN or not is whether people can learn something useful from either the article or the discussion surrounding the article. I think we can all learn from their strategies and actions, and the conversations surrounding articles about Facebook or Google are usually filled with insightful comments (maybe not so much with Apple articles).
  - coderdude 16y ago
    Apple, Facebook, and Google are discussed everywhere, all the time, on all tech news venues ad nauseum. That is why I personally don't care for their appearances on HN. You are right though, often the commentary is outstanding compared to what you would find elsewhere.
  - Legion 16y ago
    Worthwhile and insightful stories are good. Stories that trigger worthwhile and insightful dialogue are good. What's not so good is yet another link of Gruber dutifully cheerleading whatever Apple does, followed by comments about how all Gruber does these days is dutifully cheerlead whatever Apple does.
- prawn 16y ago
  Which is why he said "right now" - I can't tell if your post is serious or a joke reference to HN pedantry! ;)
greyman 16y ago
I didn't notice a lack of diversity in Techmeme. I consider the site to be very useful, and while they push the big companies stories above the fold, there are still a lot of interesting links to other news or opinions.
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  Yes, but they often cover minutia to death. I unsubscribed when I got 4 stories about rumors of a white iPhone in my feed reader.
slowernet 16y ago
False dichotomy. They're both aggregators per se, but one top-down curates breaking news (and reactions to it, which is why a story may take up so much space), the other uses voting to optimize news of any age to the interest level of a community. I don't disagree with Fred's conclusion - that Techmeme is hard to take sometimes - but that seems more a reflection of the quasi-autistic and frequently hysterical focus of the tech media these days.
petervandijck 16y ago
Flagged linkbait.
tuhin 16y ago
Two very different entities. Techmeme is about the news and that's it. Hacker News is about the community and how we as developers and designers think about the news. Hacker News is more about the community. Like today a random post about Windows 1.0 to 7's journey led to donations for the guy behind Trumpet Winsock. Very few communities have such a strong positive energy in them like HN. I have learnt so many cool things here and I am just 20 days old on HN.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
edw519 16y ago
Like many HN posts, I found the comments even more insightful than the article: "TM: What has happened. HN: What will happen." - William Mougayar "Hacker news is great...Huge time-sink liability though." - Liad "I find the comments more interesting sometimes than the actual article that is being linked to" - Rick "Techmeme is a popularity contest, HackerNews is curation. Curation in my experience wins easily." - Larry M. "I have really fallen in love with HackerNews lately, finding its eclectic mix of articles fascinating. I have been participating a lot there because it doesn't just pull in the same old standard fair I find everywhere else. I also often find, multiple perspectives, whether in stories or in the comments." - Elia Freedman "...the commenters on HN leave a lot to be desired. With a room full of geeks, you pretty much get what you'd expect -- some insights, but a lot of pedantry." - davidu "Hacker News is so great I only let myself go there once a day. And I might have to cut back on that too..." - Nate Kidwell "Hacker News looks like a place where you can soak your brain for hours, if you have the time." - James Harradence
- jdp23 16y ago
  Adrienne Jeffries and Alexis Madrigal also have some really interesting things to say. Fred's blog often has excellent comment threads and this is a fine one.
- njohnw 16y ago
  From Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic: "All of our stories that do well on Hacker News share one thing: they are written. By written, I mean that someone took the time and effort to examine individual sentences, to think about word choices, to create transitions between grafs, to describe things precisely. You know, writing! But a lot of what gets posted in the tech blogosphere doesn't fit this definition of writing. It's more in the tradition of the wire services, where speed rules over creativity. That the Hacker News community both recognizes and rewards pieces that are written makes me love it."
- TheSOB88 16y ago
  Yeah, I'd like we could do something about that pedantry.
phatbyte 16y ago
I never heard of Techmeme to be honest, but I rely a lot HN for everything related to geek and technology. So I believe HN is doing a damn good job. Congrats to everyone of you.
stevefarnworth 16y ago
I don't visit TM, mainly because I follow a large swathe of tech publications on Twitter, and that's how I get my breaking tech stories - so have no real need for aggregation on stories I've already read. Whereas I've found HN to be much more useful for the smaller, less known publications, personal blogs and company articles which I wouldn't pick up on with my traditional web browsing method.
jdp23 16y ago
Has anybody looked at the correlations between the stories on TechMeme and HN? My guess is that because of HN's broader scope more of the TechMeme links wind up on HN than the other way around. But it would be interesting to see data related to that ... and also see whether one routinely proceeds the other.
- TomOfTTB 16y ago
  I don't know about that but Techmeme clearly takes HN into account. I've noticed many times where an article makes it to Techmeme without any other blogs linking to it. Every time that's happened I've found the article on the top of the HN page.
  - jdp23 16y ago
    interesting data point, thanks!
conversionrater 16y ago
I think both sites serve vastly different purposes for me. Techmeme = What's the whole blogosphere talking about, what's hot, and let me see some different takes on the same subject. Hacker News = What can I learn today, what blog post on some lesser known entrepreneur's blog is really insightful, what article can I read about someone's tech infrastructure setup, etc. At different times I'm interested in one or the other. If I had to be on a desert island with one though, it'd be HN.
michuk 16y ago
I'd sat Hacker News competes more with Quora than Techmene - especiually the ASK HN section.
- aik 16y ago
  That's interesting. I was thinking last night whether it would benefit HN to be structured more like Quora. Naturally in some discussions I would love to see it, however in others perhaps not. HN places focus on good comments more than anything, while Quora on good answers with a bit less emphasis on commenting. A blend somehow I believe to be the future.
bootload 16y ago
"... doesn't the fact that Techmeme drives traffic cause the echo chamber - and how do you change that? ..." Spin in any article is like spraying "Cheez Whiz®" on a plate load of "Water Crackers" then claiming the discovery of the "new" Brie. [0][1] To the cheese connoisseur, you know something is wrong straight away. Instead of the soft white gooey cheese melting out the sides of the light chewy rind, we get an orange blob expertly sprayed on a cracker. The echo chamber effect is dampened by the HN readers who are connoisseur's of hacker related information. [2] Spin is detected at both submission and reader level. A pre-spun article might escape submission, but the average HN taste is attuned to poor substitutes. [0] Cheez Whiz® ~ http://www.kraftbrands.com/CheezWhiz/ http://www.kraftbrands.com/CheezWhiz/ [1] Carr's Crackers ~ http://www.carrscrackers.com/history.shtml http://www.carrscrackers.com/history.shtml [2] Submarine ~ http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
PostOnce 16y ago
I've never actually been to techmeme, so I went there. That's one ugly website. This should be taken as constructive criticism: if the first thing that pops into a new user's head is "wow, that's ugly", it's probably time for a redesign.
jerryrreynolds 16y ago
Hacker News has a simple format and its not cluttered. What it lacks in creative design, it makes up for with an easy to use layout. I admit I've only used Techmeme once, the reason? When did companies lose focus on the "customer experience" in favor of the possibility to make a few pennies on ads that take up 1/4 of its visible space? Additionally, Techmeme services news from selected contributors as far as I can tell. Its not open or organic in the way Hacker News is. I have posted regularly on HN the last couple months, while very few people have commented on my stories on HN, Konaa Social Marketplace and my personal blog have racked up more than 85,000 views in two months. The only other outlet to have shown comparable results is Twitter. HN has really created an interesting platform with its suggestion based News feed. My only suggestion would be to add an additional 10 pixel buffer between stories and comments, to create a little more open space and reduce the already minimal congestion of the HN feed.
pramit 16y ago
The greatest difference b/w HN and Techmeme? It is the great quality of conversation between all you intelligent people out here. What does Techmeme have? Just some Tweets?

125 points by guptaneil 16y ago

Hmm, I dunno. Apples to oranges for me. I look at HN as a place where techies discuss topics that interest them, vs Techmeme which lists tech stories in the media, sans discussion.

terryjsmith 16y ago
This. HN often has discussions about an article here because of the community and the calibre (as opposed to HN members on the site itself), while Techmeme relies on the inherent "conversational" properties of blogs themselves.
martinshen 16y ago
Excellent comment: apples being techmeme right now and oranges being the natural hn color
- taylorbuley 16y ago
  Speaking of pedantry, here's my obligatory response where I say Apples and Oranges can in fact be compared http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v1i3/air-1-3-apples.html http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v1i3/air-1-...

jdp23 16y ago

TechMeme's got huge gender biases, and this helps contribute to the echo chamber effect that Fred's talking about. In September 2010 I wrote about a case where even though 65% of the articles on a subject were written by women, TechMeme's version had on 16.5% by women. http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=1618#comment-88992 http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=1618#comment-88992

albedoa 16y ago
Argh, blocked at work. How was the 65% rate determined? And was TechMeme's 16.5% rate compared to any other sites? If that's all explained in your article, then I'll just read it later :)
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  Copy pasted for convenience. Will delete later if it's distracting. _____ The coverage of the Arrington kerfuffle provides some great examples of a form of structural bias against women that most people overlook. At this point about 65% of the posts I’ve linked to above are by women (31/47, I think). Here’s TechMeme’s summary of the debate: five guys and Shira 16.6% women. In a comment on Gender, race, age and power in online discussions, chapter n back in 2008, I talked about representation issues on Techmeme: the majority of these blogs are generally what Susan C. Herring et. al. refer to in Women and children last: the discursive construction of Weblogs as “filter blogs”, commenting on external events, as opposed to “personal journals” or “knowledge blogs”; TechMeme’s technology is a natural for filter blogs, so it’s unsurprising that this leads to underrepresentation of women and youth. It’s nice to have such a clear example! At the risk of being pedantic,there are a couple of important lessons here: - The “neutral” algorithms of sites like Techmeme, memeorandum, and mediagazer are in practice heavily biased against women, and so present yet another challenge for women in general — and women in technology, politics, and media in particular - If you’re getting a large chunk of your news via Techmeme, you’re getting a very male view of reality
- jdp23 16y ago
  Thanks to jokermatt999 for the cut-and-paste. Yes, later in that thread there's data from Google and Bing -- both in the 45-50% range. EDIT: Also, here's the link to the Susan Herring et. al. paper I mentioned "Women and Children Last: The Discursive Construction of Weblogs" http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html
  - shasta 16y ago
    Wait, 65% of the stories you linked to were written by women, while only 45%-50% of stories at large were written by women? Have you tried to examine the roots of your gender bias?

coderdude 16y ago

>And not one story about Apple or Facebook in the top 20 right now. It isn't always that way. Some days we have three stories on the front page about Facebook (the day before yesterday) and I don't think a single day goes by where some Apple story doesn't creep its way in. There's an Apple-related story on the front page right now and two on the second page. It's gotten better over the last year though. It used to be that 3-4 (or more) articles about Apple and Facebook were on the front page at any given time.

guptaneil 16y ago
Is that necessarily a bad thing though? To be fair, Apple, Facebook, and Google have had by far the largest impact on consumer technology in the last decade. Obviously, they're newsworthy and interesting. To me, a good measure for whether an article should be on HN or not is whether people can learn something useful from either the article or the discussion surrounding the article. I think we can all learn from their strategies and actions, and the conversations surrounding articles about Facebook or Google are usually filled with insightful comments (maybe not so much with Apple articles).
- coderdude 16y ago
  Apple, Facebook, and Google are discussed everywhere, all the time, on all tech news venues ad nauseum. That is why I personally don't care for their appearances on HN. You are right though, often the commentary is outstanding compared to what you would find elsewhere.
- Legion 16y ago
  Worthwhile and insightful stories are good. Stories that trigger worthwhile and insightful dialogue are good. What's not so good is yet another link of Gruber dutifully cheerleading whatever Apple does, followed by comments about how all Gruber does these days is dutifully cheerlead whatever Apple does.
prawn 16y ago
Which is why he said "right now" - I can't tell if your post is serious or a joke reference to HN pedantry! ;)

greyman 16y ago

I didn't notice a lack of diversity in Techmeme. I consider the site to be very useful, and while they push the big companies stories above the fold, there are still a lot of interesting links to other news or opinions.

jokermatt999 16y ago
Yes, but they often cover minutia to death. I unsubscribed when I got 4 stories about rumors of a white iPhone in my feed reader.

slowernet 16y ago

False dichotomy. They're both aggregators per se, but one top-down curates breaking news (and reactions to it, which is why a story may take up so much space), the other uses voting to optimize news of any age to the interest level of a community. I don't disagree with Fred's conclusion - that Techmeme is hard to take sometimes - but that seems more a reflection of the quasi-autistic and frequently hysterical focus of the tech media these days.

petervandijck 16y ago

Flagged linkbait.

tuhin 16y ago

Two very different entities. Techmeme is about the news and that's it. Hacker News is about the community and how we as developers and designers think about the news. Hacker News is more about the community. Like today a random post about Windows 1.0 to 7's journey led to donations for the guy behind Trumpet Winsock. Very few communities have such a strong positive energy in them like HN. I have learnt so many cool things here and I am just 20 days old on HN.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

edw519 16y ago

Like many HN posts, I found the comments even more insightful than the article: "TM: What has happened. HN: What will happen." - William Mougayar "Hacker news is great...Huge time-sink liability though." - Liad "I find the comments more interesting sometimes than the actual article that is being linked to" - Rick "Techmeme is a popularity contest, HackerNews is curation. Curation in my experience wins easily." - Larry M. "I have really fallen in love with HackerNews lately, finding its eclectic mix of articles fascinating. I have been participating a lot there because it doesn't just pull in the same old standard fair I find everywhere else. I also often find, multiple perspectives, whether in stories or in the comments." - Elia Freedman "...the commenters on HN leave a lot to be desired. With a room full of geeks, you pretty much get what you'd expect -- some insights, but a lot of pedantry." - davidu "Hacker News is so great I only let myself go there once a day. And I might have to cut back on that too..." - Nate Kidwell "Hacker News looks like a place where you can soak your brain for hours, if you have the time." - James Harradence

jdp23 16y ago
Adrienne Jeffries and Alexis Madrigal also have some really interesting things to say. Fred's blog often has excellent comment threads and this is a fine one.
njohnw 16y ago
From Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic: "All of our stories that do well on Hacker News share one thing: they are written. By written, I mean that someone took the time and effort to examine individual sentences, to think about word choices, to create transitions between grafs, to describe things precisely. You know, writing! But a lot of what gets posted in the tech blogosphere doesn't fit this definition of writing. It's more in the tradition of the wire services, where speed rules over creativity. That the Hacker News community both recognizes and rewards pieces that are written makes me love it."
TheSOB88 16y ago
Yeah, I'd like we could do something about that pedantry.

phatbyte 16y ago

I never heard of Techmeme to be honest, but I rely a lot HN for everything related to geek and technology. So I believe HN is doing a damn good job. Congrats to everyone of you.

stevefarnworth 16y ago

I don't visit TM, mainly because I follow a large swathe of tech publications on Twitter, and that's how I get my breaking tech stories - so have no real need for aggregation on stories I've already read. Whereas I've found HN to be much more useful for the smaller, less known publications, personal blogs and company articles which I wouldn't pick up on with my traditional web browsing method.

jdp23 16y ago

Has anybody looked at the correlations between the stories on TechMeme and HN? My guess is that because of HN's broader scope more of the TechMeme links wind up on HN than the other way around. But it would be interesting to see data related to that ... and also see whether one routinely proceeds the other.

TomOfTTB 16y ago
I don't know about that but Techmeme clearly takes HN into account. I've noticed many times where an article makes it to Techmeme without any other blogs linking to it. Every time that's happened I've found the article on the top of the HN page.
- jdp23 16y ago
  interesting data point, thanks!

conversionrater 16y ago

I think both sites serve vastly different purposes for me. Techmeme = What's the whole blogosphere talking about, what's hot, and let me see some different takes on the same subject. Hacker News = What can I learn today, what blog post on some lesser known entrepreneur's blog is really insightful, what article can I read about someone's tech infrastructure setup, etc. At different times I'm interested in one or the other. If I had to be on a desert island with one though, it'd be HN.

michuk 16y ago

I'd sat Hacker News competes more with Quora than Techmene - especiually the ASK HN section.

aik 16y ago
That's interesting. I was thinking last night whether it would benefit HN to be structured more like Quora. Naturally in some discussions I would love to see it, however in others perhaps not. HN places focus on good comments more than anything, while Quora on good answers with a bit less emphasis on commenting. A blend somehow I believe to be the future.

bootload 16y ago

"... doesn't the fact that Techmeme drives traffic cause the echo chamber - and how do you change that? ..." Spin in any article is like spraying "Cheez Whiz®" on a plate load of "Water Crackers" then claiming the discovery of the "new" Brie. [0][1] To the cheese connoisseur, you know something is wrong straight away. Instead of the soft white gooey cheese melting out the sides of the light chewy rind, we get an orange blob expertly sprayed on a cracker. The echo chamber effect is dampened by the HN readers who are connoisseur's of hacker related information. [2] Spin is detected at both submission and reader level. A pre-spun article might escape submission, but the average HN taste is attuned to poor substitutes. [0] Cheez Whiz® ~ http://www.kraftbrands.com/CheezWhiz/ http://www.kraftbrands.com/CheezWhiz/ [1] Carr's Crackers ~ http://www.carrscrackers.com/history.shtml http://www.carrscrackers.com/history.shtml [2] Submarine ~ http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

PostOnce 16y ago

I've never actually been to techmeme, so I went there. That's one ugly website. This should be taken as constructive criticism: if the first thing that pops into a new user's head is "wow, that's ugly", it's probably time for a redesign.

jerryrreynolds 16y ago

Hacker News has a simple format and its not cluttered. What it lacks in creative design, it makes up for with an easy to use layout. I admit I've only used Techmeme once, the reason? When did companies lose focus on the "customer experience" in favor of the possibility to make a few pennies on ads that take up 1/4 of its visible space? Additionally, Techmeme services news from selected contributors as far as I can tell. Its not open or organic in the way Hacker News is. I have posted regularly on HN the last couple months, while very few people have commented on my stories on HN, Konaa Social Marketplace and my personal blog have racked up more than 85,000 views in two months. The only other outlet to have shown comparable results is Twitter. HN has really created an interesting platform with its suggestion based News feed. My only suggestion would be to add an additional 10 pixel buffer between stories and comments, to create a little more open space and reduce the already minimal congestion of the HN feed.

pramit 16y ago

The greatest difference b/w HN and Techmeme? It is the great quality of conversation between all you intelligent people out here. What does Techmeme have? Just some Tweets?