

How to hit the Hacker News front page (and what it’s worth) - ryanwaggoner
http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/09/the-secret-to-hitting-the-hacker-news-front-page-and-what-its-worth/

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pg
Hmm, I should add protections against this phenomenon. Should be
straightforward.

~~~
perokreco
Why protection, isn't the fact that people are submitting the story actually a
powerful indicator it is a good one?

~~~
hotmind
But if you form a cabal to make front page of HN - whether your clique be
Twitter followers or a "group of friends" on this site - it's gaming the
system.

Essentially, that is what the article advocated (oh, and write interesting
content - duh).

~~~
ryanwaggoner
A "cabal" typically refers to a group secretly united to promote their own
interests. I'm not sure that tweeting a link to a blog post meets that
criteria.

~~~
lhnz
A cabal of voters could easily be setup on HN. That is problematic.

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atomical
"Several job offers with companies I respect"

This is a powerful outcome of writing frequently on the web. Have any other
bloggers experienced this?

~~~
luu
Yes, even though my blog is incredibly lame by HN standards (or any standards,
really). I imagine that people who post actual content must have to beat off
recruiters with a stick.

~~~
patio11
Not meaning to toot my own horn, but just to give a testimonial for blogging:
At the client I'm working for right now initial contact was at C-level. (At a
software company which you've heard of.) That isn't the first time that
happened, either -- if people are really interested in what you have to say,
recruiters, resumes, and the HR department are not merely bypassed, they're
never even thought of.

~~~
eitally
True story!

This is obvious and old hat for the more experienced corporate drones here,
but it's important for all the newbies to understand that [all, but especially
HR] processes and policies are made to be broken, and they are often so
dysfunctional in large corporations that if someone at an appropriate level
wants something done, it will be done.

(My personal experience suggests that managers and below have 0 power, and
only directors+ start being able to work the informal network.)

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grovulent
I think people need to be rewarded somehow for reading and voting on stories
on the new page.

If everyone has to develop a cabal to get to the front page, then over time
the size of the cabals will have to grow because of the increased competition
- eventually squeezing out the little guy, no matter how good his content is.

With an active userbase on the new page cabals would be less likely to form.

------
jacobolus
My take on this “secret”, in fewer words: claim personal expertise and
experience and make some emphatic claim (esp. w/ an emphatic title) about a
topic where people will either agree with your point from their own
experience, or have some existing opinion (who doesn't have an opinion about
facebook?), then make sure you get it in front of a bunch of Hacker News
readers (perhaps via some other mechanism, like twitter).

The facebook gripe post wasn’t completely linkbait-y, since it provided a nice
basis for a solid discussion, but by itself it was pretty light on substance.
I’d personally much prefer to see gripes with more meat on them; “show, don’t
tell”.

~~~
blasdel
Max Klein applies your take as religion, trolling HN with emphatic claims of
personal experience.

And he doesn't even exist: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1353050>

~~~
rms
Dude totally exists, he sent me a free Xbox.

(shocking news alert -- rms is an alias I use on the internet sometimes.
Nevertheless, I also exist.)

~~~
blasdel
I know you exist, I've met you :)

He exists too, but his name isn't Max Klein, and 'parable' is the most
charitable reading of most of what he posts under that persona.

------
grandalf
This blog post is like an infomercial selling a book on how to make your own
infomercial. Flag!

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Ouch. I'm not really selling anything, just thought people who write for this
audience might be interested in what I had found out through the process. Why
does the HN crowd have such an issue with people promoting themselves even
slightly? If the content is good and people like it, they'll vote it up...I
don't see the problem with trying to fit your product to the HN market.

Edit: in fairness, this blog post title was too sensational, so I've changed
the HN post to be less so. Unintentional, but still, my apologies.

~~~
grandalf
Sorry about the negativity. I actually didn't read your post that made it to
the same page for the same reason (overly sensational title).

If you look at Digg or Reddit they are essentially just bit lists of overly
sensational titles.

One thing I like about HN is that we manage to mostly avoid that... and titles
are generally fairly informative.

I typically only downvote/flag stories that have overly sensational titles,
b/c I view them as bait for the more cursory of readers, who don't generally
make thoughtful comments b/c their attention span is calibrated toward
sensational, dopamine trigger words.

I've found that if a post makes it to the HN front page it's generally quality
reading, so a sensational title actually provides a signal not to read it.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
You found "Why I stopped building Facebook apps for clients" to be an overly
sensational title? What would you have called it?

~~~
grandalf
I'm not saying sensational titles aren't great for marketing.

I think something like "My Thoughts on Facebook's Apps platform API"

------
jasonkester
I'm curious why you didn't include this tactic in your "BAD" list. There's
really no difference between creating a bunch of accounts on your own to
upvote a story and getting a bunch of other people to do it for you. You're
still artificially generating a bunch of votes for a story right at the moment
of submission, therefore gaming the system.

~~~
gjm11
Sure there's a difference. If you create a bunch of your own accounts to
upvote a story, then all those upvotes collectively convey the following
information: "One person liked this". (Worse still, that one person is the
person who wrote it; so, near enough zero information.)

If you instead write something that lots of people upvote, then all those
upvotes convey the following information: "Lots of people liked this."

Now, it's still bad that they "liked" it only because they know who wrote it
and think he's generally interesting. The outcome for HN is probably still
that what's on the front page doesn't match what's most interesting as well as
everyone would like. But the problem is low-quality real information, not fake
information. It's not bad _in the same way_ at all.

------
steveklabnik
I occasionally add HN links to something that I submit on Twitter, especially
when I think it's something people would really like to see. I have to do this
because of this exact effect, if it doesn't hit the front page, then it never
takes off.

For example, yesterday, I tweeted this:

<http://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/25811540605>

Which resulted in this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1736805>

Which is cool, but it was on the home page for about 5 minutes total, because
those votes came too slowly for it to hit the front page. That's all good and
fine, but then today, I wake up and see this:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1738560>

Which is just blogspam, but shows that this story is important, because it
ended up getting lots of comments.

I'm not sure how to make this better, just providing a recent example.

~~~
hugh3
I think two things need to be done:

1\. Encourage more people to monitor the "new" page, and

2\. Slow down the submission of crap to the "new" page.

For instance, why is there no karma threshold for submitting new links? I just
had a quick look, and there's several new links from someone trying to sell
holidays to Vietnam with an account that was created eighteen minutes ago.

~~~
detst
> 1\. Encourage more people to monitor the "new" page, and

Even though I know what "new" does, I seem to interpret it as "create
something new" instead of "view new submissions". Maybe I'm just an odd person
but I think changing that to "newest" could make a difference if there are
more people like me, especially for new users.

~~~
hugh3
Good point. Really, looking at the list of the newest submissions _should_ be
exciting, but most people seem to see it as a chore.

I'd do A/B testing by changing it to "Hot Fresh Exciting New Links!" and see
how many people now click on it.

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ck2
The most surprising part of that was the ad revenue.

I wouldn't think the HN crowd are big ad clickers (if they see the ads in the
first place).

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Well, the CPM was pretty abysmal: about $.40.

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ramanujan
pg: what about allowing people to spend down their own karma to get an
important post onto the front page? Sort of like Stackoverflow's bounty
system. You could start with a 1:1 exchange rate and tweak it over time.

~~~
jballanc
Ouch...points with no value already entice people to attempt to hoard and game
the system to gain more. I don't want to think of what would happen if these
points were suddenly given a tangible value.

