tl;dr How did so many people reach my page? One of my friends posted my article to hacker news where it then got picked up by digg and feedly. So why did that

tl;dr How did so many people reach my page? One of my friends posted my article to hacker news where it then got picked up by digg and feedly. So why did that blog post work? Given the data I’m looking at, the subject matter was controversial and timely, and it was posted to hacker news. Obviously this would not hold up in the court of law but hey it’s directional.