6 ms·

Article aside, EVERYONE with a marketing/technical blog should have an intro like fly.io does: a one paragraph explanation of what the service does. It gives c

Article aside, EVERYONE with a marketing/technical blog should have an intro like fly.io does: a one paragraph explanation of what the service does. It gives context for the article and immediately creates the possibility of converting people off nothing but the article, right off the gate. Blows my mind that it's one of the first times I see this done.

hans_castorp 6y ago
> EVERYONE with a marketing/technical blog should have an intro like fly.io does: a one paragraph explanation of what the service does. And do away with the stupid and annoying teaser pictures that force me to scroll down on a 27" monitor to even see some text.
- signal11 6y ago
  > the stupid and annoying teaser pictures that force me to scroll down on a 27" monitor to even see some text I think they're called hero images[1]. I think it's okay to have them, but scaling them up with monitor size is a web-design pattern that needs to die IMHO. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_image
kgraves 6y ago
Didn't appreciate the advertising, I found the article a bit hard to read, wanted to know who is using this in prod, but found nothing.
- cpach 6y ago
  Not all companies advertise who their customers are.
  - kgraves 6y ago
    Sounds like a huge red flag to me then, and loses my confidence that this service is reliable, plus it makes it a hard decision for most (even me) to go with them. It also signals to me it is not battle tested and results in lost sales. I'll find someone else.
    - atonse 6y ago
      I tend to invest in people and the people behind this seem really solid, and they’ve been remarkably open about their stack and how things are built. It all seems very well engineered. I worry more about them getting acquired quickly (which is deserved for them but not so much for their customers)
      - mrkurt 6y ago
        I'm one of those weird people who thinks the world would be better if acquisitions didn't happen. Some of my best work is gone from the internet because a large company acquired it and let it rot.
      - pdimitar 6y ago
        Could you clarify what you mean by "I invest in people"? I found it quite fascinating but I might be misinterpreting or projecting. Is it "I invest in people with sound business ideas", or "I invest in people whose approach has historically shown their company will do well", or is it something else?
        atonse 6y ago
        I just mean that rather than just seek out technologies for the sake of technologies, I seek out people that I respect and see what they're tinkering with, or what they've built, and how they arrived at solutions to many of the problems that most of us face. There are certain people whose skills and judgement I respect, that I feel I know well enough about how they reason about things (as well as you can know following them on the internet), that if they're saying this thing is good, I trust that. One example is Yehuda Katz, who was a ruby on rails and jQuery core dev team member, now spends most of his time on Ember.js. I may not always agree with him (although it's rare) but I have found that his approach to engineering is just really well-rounded and well-reasoned. So you can totally see how he arrived at his conclusions. Like why to even put time into working on something like Ember.js, rather than joining yet another core team. Another set of folks are the Hashicorp founders – over the years their approach to the industry and how they build out their solutions has really resonated with me. So I tend to trust just about anything they build. Similarly, I feel someone like tptacek isn't just a security nerd but is able to articulate where the importance of security fits in with an org, with users, with businesses, with tradeoffs, etc etc etc, and seems to have a clarity in communication that I admire. Similarly, the fact that they are able to so confidently explain every aspect of their stack shows that not only are they proud of what they've accomplished, that they don't feel this is going to hurt them competitively. And the more I read about the stack, the more I keep nodding my head and just smiling at the sheer elegance in how they built it out. And I am actually someone who never really got on the Heroku bandwagon. It just never felt right. So I'm looking forward to really trying it out.
tux1968 6y ago
And the other thing they do right is put a date prominently at the top of the page. So frustrating trying to figure out when the information on a page was actually relevant without knowing when it was published.
- SamBam 6y ago
  Articles without dates are one of my biggest pet peeves.
  - dmingod666 6y ago
    Problem is they specifically don't want you to know it's date. Technical marketing material without a date has not expiry date. Putting a date makes content old and you need to do additional work to keep the content updated. If it doesn't have a date it never expires... Not what you and I like and want but what we get a lot of times..
    - Noumenon72 6y ago
      I think the signalling equilibrium works. People with high-quality fresh articles put the date on to gain a temporary advantage, so now when I see an article that doesn't have a date, I become suspicious that means it is old. Like no GPA or graduation date on a resume, it isn't fooling anyone.
      - sbierwagen 6y ago
        Do people actually put their college GPA on a resume?
        tptacek 6y ago
        Not consistently (thankfully). Don't, if you're not asked.
        cutemonster 6y ago
Sinidir 6y ago
How many landing pages have i scrolled down 2 pages and still barely a clue what the service is supposed to do.
tptacek 6y ago
Just a note for people who might not be aware: whatever marketing savvy you pick up from this post, one person you should credit is HN's own Dan Gackle. Check this out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616857 We wrote this piece (well, "they" did; I hadn't joined up with Fly yet --- this piece is part of why I did) but Dan edited it. I got to read the back-and-forth and revisions when I got here and it was bananas how much effort he put in. In blog posts, I just keep doing what he suggested in that Launch piece. Seems to be working? Go look at all the "Launch HN" pieces. I think a lot of them are comparably informed by Dan. I'm commenting about this because I think it's super interesting that one of YC's secret weapons is the moderator for HN, who informally moonlights as the editor for YC launch posts, and is spooky good at it.
- cpach 6y ago
  Dan is simply awesome. He certainly has a way with words.
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  Completely off the track but from that Launch post: >>> Moving server apps close to users is a simple way to decrease latency, sometimes by 80% or more. I am willing to believe, but ... what about all the time I spend cacheing, optimising my SQL indexes, buying new RAM. Does sending a packet a few thousand extra miles.... oh never mind I think I am answering my own question. It would be interesting however to have a service that does latency testing for different sites from different locations. Now maybe I could use fly for that?

hans_castorp 6y ago

> EVERYONE with a marketing/technical blog should have an intro like fly.io does: a one paragraph explanation of what the service does. And do away with the stupid and annoying teaser pictures that force me to scroll down on a 27" monitor to even see some text.

signal11 6y ago
> the stupid and annoying teaser pictures that force me to scroll down on a 27" monitor to even see some text I think they're called hero images[1]. I think it's okay to have them, but scaling them up with monitor size is a web-design pattern that needs to die IMHO. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_image

kgraves 6y ago

Didn't appreciate the advertising, I found the article a bit hard to read, wanted to know who is using this in prod, but found nothing.

cpach 6y ago
Not all companies advertise who their customers are.
- kgraves 6y ago
  Sounds like a huge red flag to me then, and loses my confidence that this service is reliable, plus it makes it a hard decision for most (even me) to go with them. It also signals to me it is not battle tested and results in lost sales. I'll find someone else.
  - atonse 6y ago
    I tend to invest in people and the people behind this seem really solid, and they’ve been remarkably open about their stack and how things are built. It all seems very well engineered. I worry more about them getting acquired quickly (which is deserved for them but not so much for their customers)
    - mrkurt 6y ago
      I'm one of those weird people who thinks the world would be better if acquisitions didn't happen. Some of my best work is gone from the internet because a large company acquired it and let it rot.
    - pdimitar 6y ago
      Could you clarify what you mean by "I invest in people"? I found it quite fascinating but I might be misinterpreting or projecting. Is it "I invest in people with sound business ideas", or "I invest in people whose approach has historically shown their company will do well", or is it something else?
      - atonse 6y ago
        I just mean that rather than just seek out technologies for the sake of technologies, I seek out people that I respect and see what they're tinkering with, or what they've built, and how they arrived at solutions to many of the problems that most of us face. There are certain people whose skills and judgement I respect, that I feel I know well enough about how they reason about things (as well as you can know following them on the internet), that if they're saying this thing is good, I trust that. One example is Yehuda Katz, who was a ruby on rails and jQuery core dev team member, now spends most of his time on Ember.js. I may not always agree with him (although it's rare) but I have found that his approach to engineering is just really well-rounded and well-reasoned. So you can totally see how he arrived at his conclusions. Like why to even put time into working on something like Ember.js, rather than joining yet another core team. Another set of folks are the Hashicorp founders – over the years their approach to the industry and how they build out their solutions has really resonated with me. So I tend to trust just about anything they build. Similarly, I feel someone like tptacek isn't just a security nerd but is able to articulate where the importance of security fits in with an org, with users, with businesses, with tradeoffs, etc etc etc, and seems to have a clarity in communication that I admire. Similarly, the fact that they are able to so confidently explain every aspect of their stack shows that not only are they proud of what they've accomplished, that they don't feel this is going to hurt them competitively. And the more I read about the stack, the more I keep nodding my head and just smiling at the sheer elegance in how they built it out. And I am actually someone who never really got on the Heroku bandwagon. It just never felt right. So I'm looking forward to really trying it out.

tux1968 6y ago

And the other thing they do right is put a date prominently at the top of the page. So frustrating trying to figure out when the information on a page was actually relevant without knowing when it was published.

SamBam 6y ago
Articles without dates are one of my biggest pet peeves.
- dmingod666 6y ago
  Problem is they specifically don't want you to know it's date. Technical marketing material without a date has not expiry date. Putting a date makes content old and you need to do additional work to keep the content updated. If it doesn't have a date it never expires... Not what you and I like and want but what we get a lot of times..
  - Noumenon72 6y ago
    I think the signalling equilibrium works. People with high-quality fresh articles put the date on to gain a temporary advantage, so now when I see an article that doesn't have a date, I become suspicious that means it is old. Like no GPA or graduation date on a resume, it isn't fooling anyone.
    - sbierwagen 6y ago
      Do people actually put their college GPA on a resume?
      - tptacek 6y ago
        Not consistently (thankfully). Don't, if you're not asked.
        cutemonster 6y ago

Sinidir 6y ago

How many landing pages have i scrolled down 2 pages and still barely a clue what the service is supposed to do.

tptacek 6y ago

Just a note for people who might not be aware: whatever marketing savvy you pick up from this post, one person you should credit is HN's own Dan Gackle. Check this out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616857 We wrote this piece (well, "they" did; I hadn't joined up with Fly yet --- this piece is part of why I did) but Dan edited it. I got to read the back-and-forth and revisions when I got here and it was bananas how much effort he put in. In blog posts, I just keep doing what he suggested in that Launch piece. Seems to be working? Go look at all the "Launch HN" pieces. I think a lot of them are comparably informed by Dan. I'm commenting about this because I think it's super interesting that one of YC's secret weapons is the moderator for HN, who informally moonlights as the editor for YC launch posts, and is spooky good at it.

cpach 6y ago
Dan is simply awesome. He certainly has a way with words.
lifeisstillgood 6y ago
Completely off the track but from that Launch post: >>> Moving server apps close to users is a simple way to decrease latency, sometimes by 80% or more. I am willing to believe, but ... what about all the time I spend cacheing, optimising my SQL indexes, buying new RAM. Does sending a packet a few thousand extra miles.... oh never mind I think I am answering my own question. It would be interesting however to have a service that does latency testing for different sites from different locations. Now maybe I could use fly for that?