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What happens when you're #1 on Hacker News for a day

322 points by pieterhg 13y ago

anuragramdasan 13y ago
I had my last post on the home page for almost a day. That spike in the viewers count and twitter feeds are probably the most notable effect out of it. If you need to spread any sort of awareness about any topic, HN seems to be a great way to do that, also the fact that so many other platforms pick up their news from HN only helps.
RyanZAG 13y ago
Really interesting read on how much interaction HN brings. There is a lot to be said for quality over quantity when it comes to page views. I believe you are wrong about dismissing that top comment in the other post as snarky, negative and useless. That comment has a lot of very useful information from someone who appears to have been doing the Thailand thing longer than you have. 1) Thai law was brought up a number of times and you do appear to be violating it. This is probably something that needs to be said. 2) You mention how cheap it is while he believes its more expensive, but you may have gotten a good deal or stayed in areas that others wouldn't want to. It's your experience vs his; I see no reason to dismiss him as 'snark'. 3) He shares a number of anecdotes (sex workers, etc) that differ from your anecdotes. Thailand is a big place, you can both be right, and the more information the better.
- mtdewcmu 13y ago
  Maybe some exuberant HN stories need a counterpoint and that's the purpose served by those negative #1 comments. The top comment probably isn't as important as it appears. When I read comments I usually read more than one.
  - jared314 13y ago
    The collapsing comments feature, of the chrome extension I use, has also helped me actually read through comments without getting side-tracked with endless pedantic debates. You can find a lot of good perspectives below the first thread.
    - graeme 13y ago
      Which extension is that? This sounds like a great feature. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether a lower comment is a new thread or part of the same one.
      - jared314 13y ago
        Right now I'm using HackerNew [1], made by tommoor. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlndihpmbbgmbpjohilcphbfhddd https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...
  - _delirium 13y ago
    I do think they could sometimes be more nicely phrased, taking into account that the author of the post being commented on will often read the critical comments, as opposed to only third party readers. But generally I agree, as a reader the critical comments are often the more useful ones. Shortcomings of a post, pointers to existing products that already do what a given product does better (or at least differently), etc. are all useful things to know, even if I don't always agree with them. Whereas congratulations and statements of agreement are rarely that informative, unless they come with additional information expanding on the original post. Part of the trickiness, imo, is that HN comments occupy an odd in-between space, between blog comments (which are clearly responding to the author on their own blog), and third-party mailing-list discussions about an article from outside the mailing list (which are typically not addressed to the author, and are for the benefit of the discussants).
- phaus 13y ago
  One of the annoying parts of this article was that the author dismissed the comment as "non-factual" without providing any evidence or explanation. Apparently whenever someone writes something that the author disagrees with, it is automatically categorized as snark.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - itafroma 13y ago
    It's somewhat apt that a snarky, non-factual comment attacking the author like this has risen to the top once again. > One of the annoying parts of this article was that the author dismissed the comment as "non-factual" without providing any evidence or explanation. He didn't dismiss the comment as non-factual without providing any evidence or explanation. If read carefully, he: * stated the other commenters called it out as non-factual (it appears at least one commenter did do that[1]) * claimed half of the dispute could be attributed to not reading the post carefully * provided an example of where the top comment was mistaken or misread (commenter focused on Bangkok when the original story explicitly stated Bangkok was a bad place to live) * offered up an example of a comment that he believed to be factual (the second-to-the-top one[1]) > Apparently whenever someone writes something that the author disagrees with, it is automatically categorized as snark. No, it isn't. But this sentence here—where an author's attentions are sarcastically and baselessly mischaracterized off of a misreading (or lack of reading?) of his or her post would definitely qualify as snark. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541956 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540371
    - phaus 13y ago
      The original comment wasn't attacking the author, it was simply stating that while many people seemed excited at the prospect of flying off to Thailand (one person even emailed the author after booking tickets) that they should slow down and consider the expenses and lifestyle changes involved. His response was clearly intended to be humorous, but that doesn't mean that it was intended to reflect negatively on the author. His experience was that Thailand was an expensive place to live, I don't understand how you interpret that as an attack against the author. Like other people have mentioned, Thailand is a rather large place. >He didn't merely dismiss the comment. In his article, he only mentioned that he and many others felt that the comment was inaccurate. That doesn't constitute evidence or explanation. If you are stating something as a position in an article, it makes sense to present at least a modicum of support for that position within the article itself. Sure, you can cite sources, but in this case, his citation amounts to "some other people said that the statement I'm about to make is correct."
- itafroma 13y ago
  > I believe you are wrong about dismissing that top comment in the other post as snarky, negative and useless. Point of order here: he never used the word "useless". He also didn't dismiss the post for being negative (he said "I’m not against negative top comments per se but they should at least be factual"). > 1) Thai law was brought up a number of times and you do appear to be violating it. This is probably something that needs to be said. You're definitely right at least in part: the law should be mentioned. People shouldn't be heading to Thailand without understanding the immigration laws beforehand. But I don't think accusations that the author is violating the law need to be said. Unless the commenter is a lawyer who specializes in Thai immigration, he or she is simply not qualified to make that assessment. For all we know as readers, he could've unintentionally omitted or oversimplified parts of his above-the-board visa process. > 2) You mention how cheap it is while he believes its more expensive, but you may have gotten a good deal or stayed in areas that others wouldn't want to. The author explicitly mentions avoiding Bangkok in his article. The comment in question focused primarily on his experiences in Bangkok. The top commenter was calling him out on something the author agrees with and could've been avoided had the commenter read a bit more carefully. > 3) He shares a number of anecdotes (sex workers, etc) that differ from your anecdotes. Thailand is a big place, you can both be right, and the more information the better. Mere disagreement while providing anecdotes is fine and should be expected in a discussion forum. But that's not all the top commenter did. He couched his differing anecdotal experiences with snarky one-liners that imply the author had no idea what he was talking about: > Before your pop your Macbook Air in a backpack, read my points. > Yes, you can live in a concrete block with plastic furniture and eat noodles on the street every day. > Once you're sick of your local noodle vendor you'll find food prices quite high as well. > If you can stomach the local swill (think Budweiser without the quality control) knock yourself out. > When you're sick of taking taxis and the BTS/MRT, have fun buying a car at 50% - 300% above US prices. > If you really want to fake it here it means constantly traveling in and out of the country. > To not do it properly means breaking the law in a country where you most likely don't speak the language. Have fun with that. > If it's not someone you've known for a decade then, well, good luck with that. Those sentences are snark: sarcastic and snide assertions that do little more than to point out how much the author doesn't know when compared to the commenter. They're not needed, or they could've been phrased much more neutrally, if the goal is merely to compare and contrast two expatriate experiences in Thailand. There were a number of commenters who did do that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6542114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6542114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540640 I agree with the author's sentiment that it's a shame none of them rose higher than the top comment.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- h4rrison 13y ago
  There is some irony in this now being the top comment...
geekuillaume 13y ago
I think this post will receive the same amount of viewers than the last one, prepare your servers ! :) Joke apart, your content is quite good, well redacted but you also have a nice and content-centered blog. It's far more readable than other blogs or academic papers and I think it's also thanks to this that you were featured. Keep posting your posts on HN ! Thanks
benologist 13y ago
These numbers tell me I’ll have to completely change the landing page as it’s not converting well. Don't optimize your site for HN unless you want to spend the next two years crawling towards your first thousand users - YouTube publishers in significant numbers just don't hang out here. Most startups should take heed of those numbers[1] too before they design a content strategy around HN hoping that will give them traction. [1] 15,000 uniques led to just 78 trials, 1 paid customer
- pieterhg 13y ago
  For sure, although my landing page is not really telling my product's story very well yet.
  - NicoJuicy 13y ago
    I also thought the same, if your core-audiences visited your site and they could need it, they are probably gonna enter their mail. But i don't think a lot of HN people have YouTube video's so important, they would pay for tracking it. I could be wrong though :)
- bdcravens 13y ago
  So much truth here. You may have a perfect landing page and still have less than 1/2% conversion. An HN traffic spike is a vanity metric unless you're selling to developers (with the very outside chance you'll impress upon a VC or someone else that provides value to your business)
- jdlshore 13y ago
  Yep. Conversion percentages for my site drop like a rock whenever I get significant HN traffic. And my site (http://letscodejavascript.com http://letscodejavascript.com, a programming screencast) is directly relevant to the HN audience. I'm not complaining—even if percentages go down, signups go up—but the lesson I've taken away is that, while HN traffic is nice, it's flash-in-the-pan stuff, and not something I should pursue as a primary strategy. I think I can get better bang-for-the-buck focusing on other things, and if my work occasionally catches HN's eye, all the better.
zinx 13y ago
OMG, those are great stats, I created a new account just after reading this article.
- atezaz 13y ago
  lol, me too
clamprecht 13y ago
Next week: What happens when your follow-up to being #1 on Hacker News ends up being #1 on Hacker News.
- Systemic33 13y ago
  Also featuring a snarky comment, but now about how the top comment isn't snarky. This is so meta.
  - GhotiFish 13y ago
    Well no one was gonna make the top comment snarky after he complained about how the top stories in Hacker News always have snarky comments. That's just letting him win.
- mtdewcmu 13y ago
  Two #1 HN posts confer rockstar status.
- xlance 13y ago
  Groundhack day.
brenfrow 13y ago
...Your website crashes and you discover what memcache is for.
- justinhj 13y ago
  Memcache is used for storing binary data usually from web queries. This site was all static content.
wamatt 13y ago
I enjoyed reading the report back. The author laid it out clearly and informatively. However the dismissal of the top HN comment, appears unfounded. [1] It reads like a case of minimizing dissonance. In other words, it seems the author is attempting to rationalize away another person's viewpoint, by simply characterizing it as snark. Some more probable explanations why the comment made it to #1, could have been: - It felt authentic. "I've lived and built two companies in Thailand over the last 14 years." - The answer expressed a contrary viewpoint, giving HN readers a more balanced view of the topic. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541441
- biot 13y ago
  Agreed. "I had a different experience" isn't snark, it's a counterpoint.
lelf 13y ago
You're again. Sorry for that
gmcgraffin 13y ago
Clever f*er! Looking forward to round two of the statistics and how they compare with the one in this article.
itry 13y ago
How do you measure the facebook shares?
Sam121 13y ago
You deserve it and your luck was with you. Finally will say Lucky(2%),Work(49%)and Content(49%)makes your post #1. But i can understand this awesome feeling when you receive traffic more than your month in a single day. Keep going
gtirloni 13y ago
HN people rediscovering the /. effect? Learnt nothing new at all.
AndrewKemendo 13y ago
Thus Narcissus fell into the lake
- GuerraEarth 13y ago
  This is all rippingly hilarious. Especially the last point about the mom. Then I read the Narcissus comment. And I lost it laughing. Yet the really funny part is that I don't think he sees himself as a Narcissus at all. He's pointing out some stats--out loud.
  - AndrewKemendo 13y ago
    Honestly, I would have done exactly the same thing as him if I were in the same position. I think however we as founders can easily get focused on tracking metrics that in the end amount to fairly trivial things. They help us make changes around the margins, which can payoff big or just be small gains. I think what he did was a good exercise, however the whole post, analyze, post thing though is a tad navel gazing for my tastes.
    - GuerraEarth 13y ago
      Hey. Then if you don't really thing he was Narcissus tumbling into the reflective pool, why did you make the remark? I thought you were criticizes him. He wrote the article as an innocent analysis, like your reply to me said. A lot of good people are so insulated that they have no idea how they are viewed by others. And, to be fully analytical, I got voted 0 for my comment. : ) Which honestly, I'd rather have than a 100. It gives me challenge fodder for improvement.
philangist 13y ago
1. Your mom's comment was hilarious. 2. I agree with your point about the standard top comment on most Hacker News posts being contrarian. It can be very annoying, but having a strong dissenting voice also helps keep BS posts in check. I have noticed a lot more jokes as the top comments within posts though. I'm not sure if that's good or BSD. The first example that comes mind is a post titled 'You have a 0.000007% chance of becoming a billionaire'. The top rated comment was the common Reddit joke 'So you're saying I have a chance'.
- marcamillion 13y ago
  +1 on the number 1. It's funny how all moms are the same. Hilarious!!!
pattle 13y ago
It's ironic how this post is also number 1
- interstitial 13y ago
  I wish it was ironic, but I find it typically narcissistic. HN can resist a good navel gaze with a side of a lint-picking.
- atezaz 13y ago
  not sure mate.
pothibo 13y ago
For those of you who think you need a "good server" to be on the front page of hacker news, you're wrong. My blog hit #2 on HN and landed on the front page a few times in the last six months. I have a Rackspace 256mb ram slice hosting Wordpress. No caching at all, none. I also run, on the same server, a teamspeak server for a friend that still plays games. I peaked at 290 simultaneous people reading my post. Teamspeak server was still working fine.
joeblau 13y ago
I wrote http://gitignore.io http://gitignore.io and I saw a lot more traffic and traction by posting a link to my website in Reddit's /r/git than I did on Hacker News. Have you tried posting on different mediums and comparing the results?
- pieterhg 13y ago
  Not yet, I'm finishing the launch version this week and will start posting it around then. Thanks for the tip :)
  - joeblau 13y ago
    Cool, can't wait to see the results.
Avalaxy 13y ago
Hacker News is strange... Post that describe a product that was built in a weekend manage to reach #1 all the time, but when I submit my project that I've been working on for more than a month, everyone collectively ignores is, and it receives 0 upvotes.
- pieterhg 13y ago
  You might be suffering from the fact that HN seems predominantly OSX-based and your app is for Windows 8. From my stats, only 1/5 of HN is on Windows.
  - lelandbatey 13y ago
    That's actually very interesting. Do your stats tell you what portion are on Linux?
    - pieterhg 13y ago
      Yes. This is from the last two posts: 31.64% Macintosh 24.01% iOS 22.29% Windows 13.93% Android 6.95% Linux That's ~55% on Apple browsers and at least 65% on Webkit (if you assume everyone on Mac, iOS and Android is on Chrome/Safari).
- aarondf 13y ago
  IMO, a weekend and a month are in the same "not-very-long" range to me. It can often times be a crapshoot what's gets picked up and what doesn't.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Join the party. Anyways, HN is probably not the best place to show off your project; these days its more about startup business, politics, and travel....a more refined reddit but not about hacking.
- larrys 13y ago
  In a "weekend" peaks people's interest just like a 12 year old that raises money does. My guess is that if you said "Look at what I built that took 15 years" that would peak people's interest. Along those lines many things that appear on HN are really of the same quality as HN comments (just an opinion nothing particularly special) but since they appear as a post people focus on them and a discussion ensues and they get voted up more than the same exact thing appearing in a thread.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
TallboyOne 13y ago
What you need to post now is... what happens when you're #1 on Hacker News for 2 times out of 2 days.
qwerta 13y ago
Front page for a day is not that hard, if you have something relevant and interesting. I think it is better to avoid direct description of your project, and choose unique scenario or good story. Also good idea is to run stress test on your site before. I made it last year. I needed some feedback and early adopters, it was great to kick start small community. Also my project changed name and that post made it #1 result on Google in 3 weeks. There was handful of serious job offers as direct result of that post, last one 3 months latter. It has been year since my last post on HN. My project is stable-enough, I have some pilot customers, and even made first profit this month. On other side I have only 50 twitter followers and no invitations to conferences. So I will probably hit HN again in a few weeks :-)
tmo9d 13y ago
OMG who cares. I'm sorry, but this is just technology startup navel gazing nonsense.
- nilliams 13y ago
  Y Combinator is an incubator for startups. Do you also get frustrated when you see pictures of cats on icanhascheezburger?
talles 13y ago
I love how you are #1 talking about what happen when you're are #1
balabaster 13y ago
Dear Pete's Mom, You really have no idea how much of a time sink HN really is. If I said it took a fair portion of my day, it would be the biggest understatement of the year. Love from everyone who reads Hacker News
- ajtaylor 13y ago
  I was going to post the same thing but since you've beaten me to it I'll simply say I couldn't agree more.
marincounty 13y ago
I wish people would stop using the word "snark". I want to believe B.F Skinner wasn't completely right.
cstrat 13y ago
Am I the only person who actually enjoys Thai beer?!
- jsmeaton 13y ago
  Nope, I quite like Singha!
- nilliams 13y ago
  I'm with you, most beers sold in Thailand are pretty good. Singha, Tsingtao, Tiger, Chang. The comparison to Budweiser is way off imo!
  - cstrat 13y ago
    Love them all!
lancewiggs 13y ago
Nobody has yet given feedback on your landing page for Tubelytics (1), where you said only one person signed up from the HN post. From my perspective there is simply nothing there(2), and 5 seconds looking at a static page is just not enough information for me to make a decision. That decision is not just to give you my email address, but to "sign-up", which is a huge step too far. At the very least I need a "find out more" option, and I'd need that without having to give you my email address or other details. You clearly write very well, so why not tell the Tubelytics story underneath the landing page. Let me scroll down and read the story, see the screenshots, hear about the use cases and experience the success stories. By the time people get to the end they should know what the product is, how awesome it will be for them to use it, how much it costs and whether or not they will buy. (Advanced) Ideally I could play with the product and even set it up with my youtube videos(3) without logging in, and once I experience the product then I can save the data by creating an account and, more likely, pay you. So rather than not getting an email, perhaps there is a better way to get a paid sign-up. (1) https://tubelytics.com https://tubelytics.com (2) I'm OSX Safari with flash block on (3) I'm not a target customer
- mkhalil 13y ago
  I agree with pretty much everything you said. Just revisited. Signing up for anything is a big commitment, especially when I don't even fully know what I'm signing up for.
- pieterhg 13y ago
  Thanks so much for the feedback and I agree completely. I need to tell about the product. I will relaunch it in the next 7 days.
  - NicoJuicy 13y ago
    Good luck getting on top of HN again :P
vladmk 13y ago
I imagine the next post is gonna be titled: "What happens when you're #2 on Hacker News for a day"
jlongster 13y ago
I know I'm not the only one to find it hilarious that for every single top-HN post you make, you can double the traffic by simply posting the status of each one. As much flak as HN gets, I have found that it's the best source of traffic. My post yesterday about building a desk stayed at #2 for half a day and I got about 20,000 views with an average time of 40 seconds. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6566643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6566643
mrpdaemon 13y ago
Nice metrics, I especially liked the device breakdown: 66% desktop 25% mobile and 9% tablet. Welcome to the post-PC era (!)
macarthy12 13y ago
Pieter, Would you be interested in doing a talk on all this at the next Beercamp at Punspace?
visakanv 13y ago
The quality > quantity of responses is something I experienced too. Being on the front page of HN gave me about 20,000 hits that day... which I've gotten before from writing about local politics. So I was comfortable with the hits and the comments. But what I wasn't prepared for were the emails- I got about 30 thoughtful, intelligent emails from people who had great input and perspective.
NicoJuicy 13y ago
As a user, i interacted a lot on you're blog (read many articles and etc). It's very well designed, has interesting content and it's easy to just read the next article. It's probably one of the best blogs i've ever met (excellent place for your links (at the end of your article for a follow-up story). And, you have converted me to the panda show. Great music! So congrats and nice job :) PS. You didn't convert a lot of your users, because it had nothing to do with Tubelytics. It was an awesome read, but probably missed your core audience attention :-) (personal opinion though).
001sky 13y ago
This is a meta test piece also on the power of sequels ! Once people are sold on a story, you can double-down quite readily by a small incremental expenditure of work on the n+1 piece of information that enlightens/informs the previous one that people have a previous investment in (learning the plot/characters/setting, etc). Good work ! _________ 150+ points on HN 170+ comments on HN 280+ points on HN 90+ comments on HN The sequel has ~2x upvotes, plus a better karma/comment ratio as well...
atezaz 13y ago
shh!
dutchbrit 13y ago
Result of one of my front page articles on HN: https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/415919_10152092562360434_1943483137_o.jpg https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/41591...

322 points by pieterhg 13y ago

I had my last post on the home page for almost a day. That spike in the viewers count and twitter feeds are probably the most notable effect out of it. If you need to spread any sort of awareness about any topic, HN seems to be a great way to do that, also the fact that so many other platforms pick up their news from HN only helps.

RyanZAG 13y ago

Really interesting read on how much interaction HN brings. There is a lot to be said for quality over quantity when it comes to page views. I believe you are wrong about dismissing that top comment in the other post as snarky, negative and useless. That comment has a lot of very useful information from someone who appears to have been doing the Thailand thing longer than you have. 1) Thai law was brought up a number of times and you do appear to be violating it. This is probably something that needs to be said. 2) You mention how cheap it is while he believes its more expensive, but you may have gotten a good deal or stayed in areas that others wouldn't want to. It's your experience vs his; I see no reason to dismiss him as 'snark'. 3) He shares a number of anecdotes (sex workers, etc) that differ from your anecdotes. Thailand is a big place, you can both be right, and the more information the better.

mtdewcmu 13y ago
Maybe some exuberant HN stories need a counterpoint and that's the purpose served by those negative #1 comments. The top comment probably isn't as important as it appears. When I read comments I usually read more than one.
- jared314 13y ago
  The collapsing comments feature, of the chrome extension I use, has also helped me actually read through comments without getting side-tracked with endless pedantic debates. You can find a lot of good perspectives below the first thread.
  - graeme 13y ago
    Which extension is that? This sounds like a great feature. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether a lower comment is a new thread or part of the same one.
    - jared314 13y ago
      Right now I'm using HackerNew [1], made by tommoor. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlndihpmbbgmbpjohilcphbfhddd https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...
- _delirium 13y ago
  I do think they could sometimes be more nicely phrased, taking into account that the author of the post being commented on will often read the critical comments, as opposed to only third party readers. But generally I agree, as a reader the critical comments are often the more useful ones. Shortcomings of a post, pointers to existing products that already do what a given product does better (or at least differently), etc. are all useful things to know, even if I don't always agree with them. Whereas congratulations and statements of agreement are rarely that informative, unless they come with additional information expanding on the original post. Part of the trickiness, imo, is that HN comments occupy an odd in-between space, between blog comments (which are clearly responding to the author on their own blog), and third-party mailing-list discussions about an article from outside the mailing list (which are typically not addressed to the author, and are for the benefit of the discussants).
phaus 13y ago
One of the annoying parts of this article was that the author dismissed the comment as "non-factual" without providing any evidence or explanation. Apparently whenever someone writes something that the author disagrees with, it is automatically categorized as snark.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- itafroma 13y ago
  It's somewhat apt that a snarky, non-factual comment attacking the author like this has risen to the top once again. > One of the annoying parts of this article was that the author dismissed the comment as "non-factual" without providing any evidence or explanation. He didn't dismiss the comment as non-factual without providing any evidence or explanation. If read carefully, he: * stated the other commenters called it out as non-factual (it appears at least one commenter did do that[1]) * claimed half of the dispute could be attributed to not reading the post carefully * provided an example of where the top comment was mistaken or misread (commenter focused on Bangkok when the original story explicitly stated Bangkok was a bad place to live) * offered up an example of a comment that he believed to be factual (the second-to-the-top one[1]) > Apparently whenever someone writes something that the author disagrees with, it is automatically categorized as snark. No, it isn't. But this sentence here—where an author's attentions are sarcastically and baselessly mischaracterized off of a misreading (or lack of reading?) of his or her post would definitely qualify as snark. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541956 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540371
  - phaus 13y ago
    The original comment wasn't attacking the author, it was simply stating that while many people seemed excited at the prospect of flying off to Thailand (one person even emailed the author after booking tickets) that they should slow down and consider the expenses and lifestyle changes involved. His response was clearly intended to be humorous, but that doesn't mean that it was intended to reflect negatively on the author. His experience was that Thailand was an expensive place to live, I don't understand how you interpret that as an attack against the author. Like other people have mentioned, Thailand is a rather large place. >He didn't merely dismiss the comment. In his article, he only mentioned that he and many others felt that the comment was inaccurate. That doesn't constitute evidence or explanation. If you are stating something as a position in an article, it makes sense to present at least a modicum of support for that position within the article itself. Sure, you can cite sources, but in this case, his citation amounts to "some other people said that the statement I'm about to make is correct."
itafroma 13y ago
> I believe you are wrong about dismissing that top comment in the other post as snarky, negative and useless. Point of order here: he never used the word "useless". He also didn't dismiss the post for being negative (he said "I’m not against negative top comments per se but they should at least be factual"). > 1) Thai law was brought up a number of times and you do appear to be violating it. This is probably something that needs to be said. You're definitely right at least in part: the law should be mentioned. People shouldn't be heading to Thailand without understanding the immigration laws beforehand. But I don't think accusations that the author is violating the law need to be said. Unless the commenter is a lawyer who specializes in Thai immigration, he or she is simply not qualified to make that assessment. For all we know as readers, he could've unintentionally omitted or oversimplified parts of his above-the-board visa process. > 2) You mention how cheap it is while he believes its more expensive, but you may have gotten a good deal or stayed in areas that others wouldn't want to. The author explicitly mentions avoiding Bangkok in his article. The comment in question focused primarily on his experiences in Bangkok. The top commenter was calling him out on something the author agrees with and could've been avoided had the commenter read a bit more carefully. > 3) He shares a number of anecdotes (sex workers, etc) that differ from your anecdotes. Thailand is a big place, you can both be right, and the more information the better. Mere disagreement while providing anecdotes is fine and should be expected in a discussion forum. But that's not all the top commenter did. He couched his differing anecdotal experiences with snarky one-liners that imply the author had no idea what he was talking about: > Before your pop your Macbook Air in a backpack, read my points. > Yes, you can live in a concrete block with plastic furniture and eat noodles on the street every day. > Once you're sick of your local noodle vendor you'll find food prices quite high as well. > If you can stomach the local swill (think Budweiser without the quality control) knock yourself out. > When you're sick of taking taxis and the BTS/MRT, have fun buying a car at 50% - 300% above US prices. > If you really want to fake it here it means constantly traveling in and out of the country. > To not do it properly means breaking the law in a country where you most likely don't speak the language. Have fun with that. > If it's not someone you've known for a decade then, well, good luck with that. Those sentences are snark: sarcastic and snide assertions that do little more than to point out how much the author doesn't know when compared to the commenter. They're not needed, or they could've been phrased much more neutrally, if the goal is merely to compare and contrast two expatriate experiences in Thailand. There were a number of commenters who did do that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6542114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6542114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540640 I agree with the author's sentiment that it's a shame none of them rose higher than the top comment.
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h4rrison 13y ago
There is some irony in this now being the top comment...

geekuillaume 13y ago

I think this post will receive the same amount of viewers than the last one, prepare your servers ! :) Joke apart, your content is quite good, well redacted but you also have a nice and content-centered blog. It's far more readable than other blogs or academic papers and I think it's also thanks to this that you were featured. Keep posting your posts on HN ! Thanks

benologist 13y ago

These numbers tell me I’ll have to completely change the landing page as it’s not converting well. Don't optimize your site for HN unless you want to spend the next two years crawling towards your first thousand users - YouTube publishers in significant numbers just don't hang out here. Most startups should take heed of those numbers[1] too before they design a content strategy around HN hoping that will give them traction. [1] 15,000 uniques led to just 78 trials, 1 paid customer

pieterhg 13y ago
For sure, although my landing page is not really telling my product's story very well yet.
- NicoJuicy 13y ago
  I also thought the same, if your core-audiences visited your site and they could need it, they are probably gonna enter their mail. But i don't think a lot of HN people have YouTube video's so important, they would pay for tracking it. I could be wrong though :)
bdcravens 13y ago
So much truth here. You may have a perfect landing page and still have less than 1/2% conversion. An HN traffic spike is a vanity metric unless you're selling to developers (with the very outside chance you'll impress upon a VC or someone else that provides value to your business)
jdlshore 13y ago
Yep. Conversion percentages for my site drop like a rock whenever I get significant HN traffic. And my site (http://letscodejavascript.com http://letscodejavascript.com, a programming screencast) is directly relevant to the HN audience. I'm not complaining—even if percentages go down, signups go up—but the lesson I've taken away is that, while HN traffic is nice, it's flash-in-the-pan stuff, and not something I should pursue as a primary strategy. I think I can get better bang-for-the-buck focusing on other things, and if my work occasionally catches HN's eye, all the better.

zinx 13y ago

OMG, those are great stats, I created a new account just after reading this article.

atezaz 13y ago
lol, me too

clamprecht 13y ago

Next week: What happens when your follow-up to being #1 on Hacker News ends up being #1 on Hacker News.

Systemic33 13y ago
Also featuring a snarky comment, but now about how the top comment isn't snarky. This is so meta.
- GhotiFish 13y ago
  Well no one was gonna make the top comment snarky after he complained about how the top stories in Hacker News always have snarky comments. That's just letting him win.
mtdewcmu 13y ago
Two #1 HN posts confer rockstar status.
xlance 13y ago
Groundhack day.

brenfrow 13y ago

...Your website crashes and you discover what memcache is for.

justinhj 13y ago
Memcache is used for storing binary data usually from web queries. This site was all static content.

wamatt 13y ago

I enjoyed reading the report back. The author laid it out clearly and informatively. However the dismissal of the top HN comment, appears unfounded. [1] It reads like a case of minimizing dissonance. In other words, it seems the author is attempting to rationalize away another person's viewpoint, by simply characterizing it as snark. Some more probable explanations why the comment made it to #1, could have been: - It felt authentic. "I've lived and built two companies in Thailand over the last 14 years." - The answer expressed a contrary viewpoint, giving HN readers a more balanced view of the topic. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541441

biot 13y ago
Agreed. "I had a different experience" isn't snark, it's a counterpoint.

lelf 13y ago

You're again. Sorry for that

gmcgraffin 13y ago

Clever f*er! Looking forward to round two of the statistics and how they compare with the one in this article.

itry 13y ago

How do you measure the facebook shares?

Sam121 13y ago

You deserve it and your luck was with you. Finally will say Lucky(2%),Work(49%)and Content(49%)makes your post #1. But i can understand this awesome feeling when you receive traffic more than your month in a single day. Keep going

gtirloni 13y ago

HN people rediscovering the /. effect? Learnt nothing new at all.

AndrewKemendo 13y ago

Thus Narcissus fell into the lake

GuerraEarth 13y ago
This is all rippingly hilarious. Especially the last point about the mom. Then I read the Narcissus comment. And I lost it laughing. Yet the really funny part is that I don't think he sees himself as a Narcissus at all. He's pointing out some stats--out loud.
- AndrewKemendo 13y ago
  Honestly, I would have done exactly the same thing as him if I were in the same position. I think however we as founders can easily get focused on tracking metrics that in the end amount to fairly trivial things. They help us make changes around the margins, which can payoff big or just be small gains. I think what he did was a good exercise, however the whole post, analyze, post thing though is a tad navel gazing for my tastes.
  - GuerraEarth 13y ago
    Hey. Then if you don't really thing he was Narcissus tumbling into the reflective pool, why did you make the remark? I thought you were criticizes him. He wrote the article as an innocent analysis, like your reply to me said. A lot of good people are so insulated that they have no idea how they are viewed by others. And, to be fully analytical, I got voted 0 for my comment. : ) Which honestly, I'd rather have than a 100. It gives me challenge fodder for improvement.

philangist 13y ago

1. Your mom's comment was hilarious. 2. I agree with your point about the standard top comment on most Hacker News posts being contrarian. It can be very annoying, but having a strong dissenting voice also helps keep BS posts in check. I have noticed a lot more jokes as the top comments within posts though. I'm not sure if that's good or BSD. The first example that comes mind is a post titled 'You have a 0.000007% chance of becoming a billionaire'. The top rated comment was the common Reddit joke 'So you're saying I have a chance'.

marcamillion 13y ago
+1 on the number 1. It's funny how all moms are the same. Hilarious!!!

pattle 13y ago

It's ironic how this post is also number 1

interstitial 13y ago
I wish it was ironic, but I find it typically narcissistic. HN can resist a good navel gaze with a side of a lint-picking.
atezaz 13y ago
not sure mate.

pothibo 13y ago

For those of you who think you need a "good server" to be on the front page of hacker news, you're wrong. My blog hit #2 on HN and landed on the front page a few times in the last six months. I have a Rackspace 256mb ram slice hosting Wordpress. No caching at all, none. I also run, on the same server, a teamspeak server for a friend that still plays games. I peaked at 290 simultaneous people reading my post. Teamspeak server was still working fine.

joeblau 13y ago

I wrote http://gitignore.io http://gitignore.io and I saw a lot more traffic and traction by posting a link to my website in Reddit's /r/git than I did on Hacker News. Have you tried posting on different mediums and comparing the results?

pieterhg 13y ago
Not yet, I'm finishing the launch version this week and will start posting it around then. Thanks for the tip :)
- joeblau 13y ago
  Cool, can't wait to see the results.

Avalaxy 13y ago

Hacker News is strange... Post that describe a product that was built in a weekend manage to reach #1 all the time, but when I submit my project that I've been working on for more than a month, everyone collectively ignores is, and it receives 0 upvotes.

pieterhg 13y ago
You might be suffering from the fact that HN seems predominantly OSX-based and your app is for Windows 8. From my stats, only 1/5 of HN is on Windows.
- lelandbatey 13y ago
  That's actually very interesting. Do your stats tell you what portion are on Linux?
  - pieterhg 13y ago
    Yes. This is from the last two posts: 31.64% Macintosh 24.01% iOS 22.29% Windows 13.93% Android 6.95% Linux That's ~55% on Apple browsers and at least 65% on Webkit (if you assume everyone on Mac, iOS and Android is on Chrome/Safari).
aarondf 13y ago
IMO, a weekend and a month are in the same "not-very-long" range to me. It can often times be a crapshoot what's gets picked up and what doesn't.
seanmcdirmid 13y ago
Join the party. Anyways, HN is probably not the best place to show off your project; these days its more about startup business, politics, and travel....a more refined reddit but not about hacking.
larrys 13y ago
In a "weekend" peaks people's interest just like a 12 year old that raises money does. My guess is that if you said "Look at what I built that took 15 years" that would peak people's interest. Along those lines many things that appear on HN are really of the same quality as HN comments (just an opinion nothing particularly special) but since they appear as a post people focus on them and a discussion ensues and they get voted up more than the same exact thing appearing in a thread.

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TallboyOne 13y ago

What you need to post now is... what happens when you're #1 on Hacker News for 2 times out of 2 days.

qwerta 13y ago

Front page for a day is not that hard, if you have something relevant and interesting. I think it is better to avoid direct description of your project, and choose unique scenario or good story. Also good idea is to run stress test on your site before. I made it last year. I needed some feedback and early adopters, it was great to kick start small community. Also my project changed name and that post made it #1 result on Google in 3 weeks. There was handful of serious job offers as direct result of that post, last one 3 months latter. It has been year since my last post on HN. My project is stable-enough, I have some pilot customers, and even made first profit this month. On other side I have only 50 twitter followers and no invitations to conferences. So I will probably hit HN again in a few weeks :-)

tmo9d 13y ago

OMG who cares. I'm sorry, but this is just technology startup navel gazing nonsense.

nilliams 13y ago
Y Combinator is an incubator for startups. Do you also get frustrated when you see pictures of cats on icanhascheezburger?

talles 13y ago

I love how you are #1 talking about what happen when you're are #1

balabaster 13y ago

Dear Pete's Mom, You really have no idea how much of a time sink HN really is. If I said it took a fair portion of my day, it would be the biggest understatement of the year. Love from everyone who reads Hacker News

ajtaylor 13y ago
I was going to post the same thing but since you've beaten me to it I'll simply say I couldn't agree more.

marincounty 13y ago

I wish people would stop using the word "snark". I want to believe B.F Skinner wasn't completely right.

cstrat 13y ago

Am I the only person who actually enjoys Thai beer?!

jsmeaton 13y ago
Nope, I quite like Singha!
nilliams 13y ago
I'm with you, most beers sold in Thailand are pretty good. Singha, Tsingtao, Tiger, Chang. The comparison to Budweiser is way off imo!
- cstrat 13y ago
  Love them all!

lancewiggs 13y ago

Nobody has yet given feedback on your landing page for Tubelytics (1), where you said only one person signed up from the HN post. From my perspective there is simply nothing there(2), and 5 seconds looking at a static page is just not enough information for me to make a decision. That decision is not just to give you my email address, but to "sign-up", which is a huge step too far. At the very least I need a "find out more" option, and I'd need that without having to give you my email address or other details. You clearly write very well, so why not tell the Tubelytics story underneath the landing page. Let me scroll down and read the story, see the screenshots, hear about the use cases and experience the success stories. By the time people get to the end they should know what the product is, how awesome it will be for them to use it, how much it costs and whether or not they will buy. (Advanced) Ideally I could play with the product and even set it up with my youtube videos(3) without logging in, and once I experience the product then I can save the data by creating an account and, more likely, pay you. So rather than not getting an email, perhaps there is a better way to get a paid sign-up. (1) https://tubelytics.com https://tubelytics.com (2) I'm OSX Safari with flash block on (3) I'm not a target customer

mkhalil 13y ago
I agree with pretty much everything you said. Just revisited. Signing up for anything is a big commitment, especially when I don't even fully know what I'm signing up for.
pieterhg 13y ago
Thanks so much for the feedback and I agree completely. I need to tell about the product. I will relaunch it in the next 7 days.
- NicoJuicy 13y ago
  Good luck getting on top of HN again :P

vladmk 13y ago

I imagine the next post is gonna be titled: "What happens when you're #2 on Hacker News for a day"

jlongster 13y ago

I know I'm not the only one to find it hilarious that for every single top-HN post you make, you can double the traffic by simply posting the status of each one. As much flak as HN gets, I have found that it's the best source of traffic. My post yesterday about building a desk stayed at #2 for half a day and I got about 20,000 views with an average time of 40 seconds. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6566643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6566643

mrpdaemon 13y ago

Nice metrics, I especially liked the device breakdown: 66% desktop 25% mobile and 9% tablet. Welcome to the post-PC era (!)

macarthy12 13y ago

Pieter, Would you be interested in doing a talk on all this at the next Beercamp at Punspace?

visakanv 13y ago

The quality > quantity of responses is something I experienced too. Being on the front page of HN gave me about 20,000 hits that day... which I've gotten before from writing about local politics. So I was comfortable with the hits and the comments. But what I wasn't prepared for were the emails- I got about 30 thoughtful, intelligent emails from people who had great input and perspective.

NicoJuicy 13y ago

As a user, i interacted a lot on you're blog (read many articles and etc). It's very well designed, has interesting content and it's easy to just read the next article. It's probably one of the best blogs i've ever met (excellent place for your links (at the end of your article for a follow-up story). And, you have converted me to the panda show. Great music! So congrats and nice job :) PS. You didn't convert a lot of your users, because it had nothing to do with Tubelytics. It was an awesome read, but probably missed your core audience attention :-) (personal opinion though).

001sky 13y ago

This is a meta test piece also on the power of sequels ! Once people are sold on a story, you can double-down quite readily by a small incremental expenditure of work on the n+1 piece of information that enlightens/informs the previous one that people have a previous investment in (learning the plot/characters/setting, etc). Good work ! _________ 150+ points on HN 170+ comments on HN 280+ points on HN 90+ comments on HN The sequel has ~2x upvotes, plus a better karma/comment ratio as well...

atezaz 13y ago

shh!

dutchbrit 13y ago

Result of one of my front page articles on HN: https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/415919_10152092562360434_1943483137_o.jpg https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/41591...