

Is Michael Arrington building a Digg killer? - fromedome
http://www.businessinsider.com/is-michael-arrington-building-a-digg-killer-2009-4

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byrneseyeview
Some day, I'm going to start a news aggregator that creates honest headlines.
Here's how it will work: for every degree of separation between the original
story and the submission, subtract about 80% of the hyperbole.

"I have a weird entry in my referrer logs" -> "Maybe Arrington is building an
aggregator, like last time" -> "Maybe Arrington is going to destroy Hacker
News! Like last time he made a tech news aggregator."

 _Edit: though this HN story appears to have been submitted by the story's
original author._

~~~
fromedome
No sarcasm at all, either. ;-)

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jonursenbach
I love how the original article is rhetorically asking if he's building a Digg
killer, but it's been changed to Hacker News for the purpose of posting it
here.

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icey
Yeah, and it's not even remotely the same sort of problem. A "Digg killer" or
"reddit killer" just needs traffic. A Hacker News killer needs to have a good
community.

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fiaz
"HN killer" begs the question:

Is PG moving over to TechCrunch?

I'm surprised at how many "experts" STILL equate technology with
community...just tells me how many still don't "get it".

~~~
tc
Please: it 'raises' the question.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=538942>

Maybe just in this one lonely forum we can recover and preserve the meaning of
the phrase. To beg the question is to make an argument that has a circular
dependency.

~~~
fiaz
Thanks, I didn't know that!

Back to the main point: any "killer" of a community has nothing to do with the
underlying technology, but the people behind the community. The only way HN
would be killed by TC is if PG were to be the motivating force behind whatever
it is that is going on at TC, and at the same time kill HN himself (unlikely).

I would sure as hell welcome whatever TC has to offer as a competitor to HN as
this fosters diversity in thinking...and at the same time offer a second place
to exercise the proper use of language.

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bingaman
No.

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RWilson
It would be nice if all the TechCrunch trolls could go back to TechCrunch.

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AndrewWarner
There's an update on the site: Astute commenter Daniel Pritchett might have
the answer: An app called "Spy" that tracks social media conversations.
TechCrunch would presumably use this to come up with story ideas or track
conversations about its stories on the Web.

~~~
ojbyrne
What I love is the "astute" part. It's completely random speculation. But then
so is the original article.

I'll give you my own astute guess - Arrington was enamored with digg spy - a
real time, ajaxy display of activity on digg (retired a few months back). And
today Friendfeed's new beta interface looks just like digg spy used to, but
obviously with activity over many sites. I betcha he's going to do something
like that.

But when I say it, by "astute" I mean totally random wild ass guess.

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dschobel
How do you compete with a site which doesn't aspire to be anything other than
what it already is... which is precisely why it's growing.

As soon as you try, you've already failed. :)

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barredo
A Valleywag killer, yes.

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Tichy
Step 1: clone pg?

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TweedHeads
PG is a well respected persona, MA is not.

The day I see PG mudslinging is the day I declare HN dead.

~~~
unalone
PG's all the more respected because he's very rarely active online. He only
says something when he's got something interesting to say. Arrington writes
24/7.

