3 ms·

A person doing this seems impractical. The cost/benefit ratio for manually maintaining all that activity is too high. If the process were automated, maybe. But

A person doing this seems impractical. The cost/benefit ratio for manually maintaining all that activity is too high. If the process were automated, maybe. But there are probably latent factors that go into the page ranking that aren't exposed to users. Also, what's the real benefit to this scheme? You'd have to: 1. Consistently write/find articles to post 2. Consistently monitor the voting ring And your benefit is...?

IgorPartola 13y ago
The benefit is wide exposure to possibly your target audience. HN is often a great place to announce that you released an new SaaS offering. I really don't see it as much of an effort. Take the amount of time you currently spend on HN, divide it by 5 an do the exact same stuff that you currently do, but using one of the 5 accounts chosen randomly. All you really need to do is write some insightful comments to get your karma above some low thresholds and make sure that you upvote stories in a random enough pattern. Sure, eventually, this ring would be discovered, but then you just start a new one.
- rubinelli 13y ago
  Exposure doesn't necessarily mean conversion. If your product isn't good enough, getting it into the front page will only serve to get you panned faster.
  - IgorPartola 13y ago
    So much of whether you make it to the front page has to do with timing and luck. The overlap between "good product" and "makes it to the front page" is probably a sliver on the Venn diagram. Having more control over it is better. Also, launches are not the only thing that can benefit from exposure. Things like "We are hiring" (for non-YC companies), "please hire me", or just great blog posts that result in people visiting your blog repeatedly do convert. So do sites like TechCrunch which are geared towards having lots of views. FOSS projects benefit from exposure and potentially get charitable contributions. So do actual charities. The opposite is also true: flag a competitor's post into oblivion before it reaches the front page to avoid giving their possibly superior product an edge. There is lots to be gained here.

IgorPartola 13y ago

The benefit is wide exposure to possibly your target audience. HN is often a great place to announce that you released an new SaaS offering. I really don't see it as much of an effort. Take the amount of time you currently spend on HN, divide it by 5 an do the exact same stuff that you currently do, but using one of the 5 accounts chosen randomly. All you really need to do is write some insightful comments to get your karma above some low thresholds and make sure that you upvote stories in a random enough pattern. Sure, eventually, this ring would be discovered, but then you just start a new one.

rubinelli 13y ago
Exposure doesn't necessarily mean conversion. If your product isn't good enough, getting it into the front page will only serve to get you panned faster.
- IgorPartola 13y ago
  So much of whether you make it to the front page has to do with timing and luck. The overlap between "good product" and "makes it to the front page" is probably a sliver on the Venn diagram. Having more control over it is better. Also, launches are not the only thing that can benefit from exposure. Things like "We are hiring" (for non-YC companies), "please hire me", or just great blog posts that result in people visiting your blog repeatedly do convert. So do sites like TechCrunch which are geared towards having lots of views. FOSS projects benefit from exposure and potentially get charitable contributions. So do actual charities. The opposite is also true: flag a competitor's post into oblivion before it reaches the front page to avoid giving their possibly superior product an edge. There is lots to be gained here.