4 ms·

Point 4: 'Hacker News' Get to #1 spot on HN & you'll get tons of page views. Reminiscent of 'How to draw an Owl' - http://i.imgur.com/Z1oTC.jpg http://i.i

by Peroni 14y ago

Point 4: 'Hacker News' Get to #1 spot on HN & you'll get tons of page views. Reminiscent of 'How to draw an Owl' - http://i.imgur.com/Z1oTC.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Z1oTC.jpg In all seriousness, Point 7: Share Buttons - are these actually effective? It's a genuine question as I've seen such a mixed response to them. We've chosen not to include any obvious share buttons on hackerjobs.co.uk as I figured no-one would want to share a job on their facebook account so lets not ruin the minimalism of the page. Thoughts?

JonLim 14y ago
Might be a personal bias here, but I would never use those buttons to share your website/product/blog with my friends. I'd just copy and paste the URL into Facebook/Twitter/whatever and go from there. Judging by its usage rate in previous projects I've been a part of, many other people operate the same way or simply ignore any sort of sharing aspect.
- pestaa 14y ago
  I'm glad to hear that I'm not alone. Can you reveal more about the usage rates you've seen?
  - JonLim 14y ago
    I can't give you solid numbers (as it's almost been a year since I touched those projects) but they were far below 5%, typically bordering 1-2%. That's off the top of my head, so take it with a grain of salt. :)
benjlang 14y ago
Point 4 - well in person I went over how Hacker News works etc (these are people that have never heard of Hacker News) Share buttons - yes they're effective, I've measured the conversion rate on different sites and it's proved worthy to have them. Here's a good article about share buttons - http://socialmouths.com/blog/2012/05/08/social-media-buttons/ http://socialmouths.com/blog/2012/05/08/social-media-buttons...
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  > these are people that have never heard of Hacker News Then I feel that you are contributing to the dilution of the value of the site.
  - adambenayoun 14y ago
    You could argue that if that said presentation was clearly stating to use hacker news as a marketing tool. (Which would attract the wrong people from the get go anyway). On the flip side, bringing hacker news to the attention of the mass could have also a positive effect especially if these people can contribute relevant and good content. Additionally I feel that HN has a good algorithm to stop most of the people who wouldn't be a good fit anyway. Posting a post on HN and then getting people to vote won't get you to the front page (and if it does, getting dropped off it is pretty easy if the content you posted is not relevant).
    - jacques_chester 14y ago
      > Additionally I feel that HN has a good algorithm to stop most of the people who wouldn't be a good fit anyway. > Posting a post on HN and then getting people to vote won't get you to the front page (and if it does, getting dropped off it is pretty easy if the content you posted is not relevant). If there's too much spam, those brave netizens who patrol the windswept frontier of /newest don't get time to look at what is actually good. They start upvoting on headlines.
      - TeMPOraL 14y ago
        > those brave netizens who patrol the windswept frontier of /newest I don't know how they feel about it, but I sometimes feel that visiting /newest to vote / flag stuff is a kind of civic duty. For the good of all of us (except the ones who are dead).
  - benjlang 14y ago
    Most of them will simply use Hacker News to find interesting content, not sure how that's diluting the site.
greendestiny 14y ago
My experience is that share buttons are pretty useless. I included share buttons in a free app I released about 6 months ago: http://scottvallanceapps.com/app/what-animal-are-you/ http://scottvallanceapps.com/app/what-animal-are-you/ I've had about 30 clicks on the links included in the twitter posts, from about 2 or 3 twitter posts. Not a bad number of clicks per posting, but the app itself still gets over a hundred downloads a week from App Store searches.
paraschopra 14y ago
We actually have an article on our blog 'Debunking the social proof myth' that presents a case study about these sharing buttons: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/social-proof-decreases-conversions/ http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/social-...
- benjlang 14y ago
  Very interesting, definitely going to do more research about these buttons.

by Peroni 14y ago

JonLim 14y ago

Might be a personal bias here, but I would never use those buttons to share your website/product/blog with my friends. I'd just copy and paste the URL into Facebook/Twitter/whatever and go from there. Judging by its usage rate in previous projects I've been a part of, many other people operate the same way or simply ignore any sort of sharing aspect.

pestaa 14y ago
I'm glad to hear that I'm not alone. Can you reveal more about the usage rates you've seen?
- JonLim 14y ago
  I can't give you solid numbers (as it's almost been a year since I touched those projects) but they were far below 5%, typically bordering 1-2%. That's off the top of my head, so take it with a grain of salt. :)

benjlang 14y ago

Point 4 - well in person I went over how Hacker News works etc (these are people that have never heard of Hacker News) Share buttons - yes they're effective, I've measured the conversion rate on different sites and it's proved worthy to have them. Here's a good article about share buttons - http://socialmouths.com/blog/2012/05/08/social-media-buttons/ http://socialmouths.com/blog/2012/05/08/social-media-buttons...

jacques_chester 14y ago
> these are people that have never heard of Hacker News Then I feel that you are contributing to the dilution of the value of the site.
- adambenayoun 14y ago
  You could argue that if that said presentation was clearly stating to use hacker news as a marketing tool. (Which would attract the wrong people from the get go anyway). On the flip side, bringing hacker news to the attention of the mass could have also a positive effect especially if these people can contribute relevant and good content. Additionally I feel that HN has a good algorithm to stop most of the people who wouldn't be a good fit anyway. Posting a post on HN and then getting people to vote won't get you to the front page (and if it does, getting dropped off it is pretty easy if the content you posted is not relevant).
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    > Additionally I feel that HN has a good algorithm to stop most of the people who wouldn't be a good fit anyway. > Posting a post on HN and then getting people to vote won't get you to the front page (and if it does, getting dropped off it is pretty easy if the content you posted is not relevant). If there's too much spam, those brave netizens who patrol the windswept frontier of /newest don't get time to look at what is actually good. They start upvoting on headlines.
    - TeMPOraL 14y ago
      > those brave netizens who patrol the windswept frontier of /newest I don't know how they feel about it, but I sometimes feel that visiting /newest to vote / flag stuff is a kind of civic duty. For the good of all of us (except the ones who are dead).
- benjlang 14y ago
  Most of them will simply use Hacker News to find interesting content, not sure how that's diluting the site.

greendestiny 14y ago

My experience is that share buttons are pretty useless. I included share buttons in a free app I released about 6 months ago: http://scottvallanceapps.com/app/what-animal-are-you/ http://scottvallanceapps.com/app/what-animal-are-you/ I've had about 30 clicks on the links included in the twitter posts, from about 2 or 3 twitter posts. Not a bad number of clicks per posting, but the app itself still gets over a hundred downloads a week from App Store searches.

paraschopra 14y ago

We actually have an article on our blog 'Debunking the social proof myth' that presents a case study about these sharing buttons: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/social-proof-decreases-conversions/ http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/social-...

benjlang 14y ago
Very interesting, definitely going to do more research about these buttons.