
Show HN: Find an Expert on Hacker News - lettergram
https://hnprofile.com/
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cphoover
I like this idea as a startup. It could use multiple data sources, link
identities across websites (medium, reddit, hn, quora, irc, github). And be
used as a new product for finding potential hires. I really like that product
idea.

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lettergram
Also why I applied to YC :)

Although different idea slightly..

Theres also our website:
[https://projectpiglet.com](https://projectpiglet.com)

Which uses this data to find insiders in companies and suggests short term
trades on that info (we also have a long term algorithm I use, up 100% yoy).

There's actually a ton of applications, our focus is Enterprise search at the
moment.

However, it's setup so what ever you send to the ingestion end point is
captured (so you could send all customer engagements, or Reddit, or medium).
Basically, using the system how you want.

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marketgod
Does this really work? Do you have a backtests? I trade primarily options and
I came across another service that tracks google trends compared to the stock
price as well. There was an employee of TSLA who tweeted they hit the numbers
goal before, and if you had gotten in on short term optionos, you would have
gotten destroyed, even though he was correct. A lot of the times, the news is
FUD when it comes to the markets.

I've seen many people post they scrape employee lists from LinkedIn, then
follow them on social networks and compile a list of posts based on companies
and then bet on that. I haven't seen trade results though.

Edit: Just went through a video and you mentioned prediction of earnings at
80%. Will have to investigate this.

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lettergram
I've personally used it as a tool, and the automated algorithms do very well.
With the addition of my insights I've been doing 100%+ yoy. Something like
300%+ 2017 and 250%+ so far 2018. The website itself doesn't publish the
algorithm I'm using as testing it requires years.

Yes everything is back tested from 2008 forward, unfortunately although the
earnings appear high - it's still not fool proof. If something changed in 2018
that broke my method.. then it doesn't matter how much back testing was done.

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marketgod
Was this with Crypto or stocks?

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lettergram
Combination, I typically hold 5 assets at once for my long term investments.
Rebalancing every 12 months. Last year I was holding Litecoin, Ethereum,
Amazon, AMD (been holding that for 3 years now..), and TMobile.

This year it is Amazon, AMD, Discover Financial, PayPal, and Heritage-Crystal
Clean (just because it trends oil, but also has assets, algorithm wasn't
specific).

I've successful made over 100% yoy, since 2013 though. Again, take that with a
grain of salt. Who the knows if it'll work next year.

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LinuxBender
I do not find people I would expect for some topics and the same people come
up for several topics. Is this also factoring in karma? If so, results will be
skewed.

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lettergram
It does not use karma at all, only comments and the context of said comments.
Basically, it ingests comments and from that identifies experts, creates a
search graph, etc.

The accuracy would be higher, but there are limited number of comments on HN.

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darth_mastah
> The accuracy would be higher, but there are limited number of comments on
> HN.

Could you elaborate on that?

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lettergram
The more comments from a user, the more accurate the system. In the case of
HN, many people make less than 10 comments and the majority are shirt
responses (i.e. contains minimal data).

If you try "postgresql" or something, there are enough people who have
discussed it to provide good results. If you type "hnprofile", likely only
these comments will show up.

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citilife
I guess, generally I'm pretty positive on Hacker News :)

Wish I could see the which comments caused the mood change(s).

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DoreenMichele
_This topic hasn 't been discussed on Hacker news, we missed it, or you found
a bug!_

So, I'm wondering how you are determining what gets discussed here.

Also, although you say you don't use karma at all, I am guessing you use
something else that closely approximates karma, like frequency or number of
comments including the term because my old handle, which has 25k karma, comes
up in the #2 position for the term "health" though I haven't posted under it
in 9 months and, so far, I haven't seen my current handle.

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lettergram
You can check out: [https://hnprofile.com/learn-
more](https://hnprofile.com/learn-more)

What it does is compare your "expertise" (loosely defined as how often you
discuss a topic with technical aptitude), against other users "expertise".

It doesn't matter at all how much or often you discuss a topic only whether or
not your aptitude in discussing it is high; when discussing it.

There is a limiting factor, however, if you discuss various topics too often;
it'll drop your lower scoring topics you have "expertise" in. This is a
storage saving mechanism.

Regarding the handles, I just have the criteria it has to have posted within
the last 1 year. Time does not degrade the expertise, only discussing other
topics does (I believe there are 25 top topics the system tracks per user).

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fardin1368
Interesting. When i searched for docker i ended in Solomon Hykes‘s profile.
Dude created docker!!

