
Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News - sant0sk1
http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/
======
matt1
Hey Jerod. I own the domain HNTrends.com, which I used for a similar project
about two years back [1][2]. If you plan on keeping this project up, I'd be
happy to transfer the domain name over to you. Shoot me an email:
matt@leandesigns.com.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=810112>

[2] <http://www.mattmazur.com/category/hntrends/>

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solipsist
These trends are fairly interesting...

<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=pg>

<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=y+combinator>

[http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=pg%2C+tptacek%2C+patio11%2...](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=pg%2C+tptacek%2C+patio11%2C+edw519%2C+jacquesm)

[http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=2007%2C+2008%2C+2009%2C+20...](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=2007%2C+2008%2C+2009%2C+2010%2C+2011)

<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=android%2C+iphone> vs.
[http://www.google.com/trends?q=android%2C+iphone&ctab=0&...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=android%2C+iphone&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

[http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=show+hn%2C+ask+hn%2C+tell+...](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=show+hn%2C+ask+hn%2C+tell+hn)

[http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=mac%2C+gruber%2C+steve+job...](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=mac%2C+gruber%2C+steve+jobs)

Don't forget thought that these trends include the user's own comments and
submissions in addition to mentions of them in other users' comments.

 _suking_ , this is truly awesome. It immediately joined my bookmark folder of
favorite HN tools. I'd be curious, though, if whether or not it would be
possible to filter out user names when counting how many times a word has
appeared on the site. Or would that be too much of a challenge?

~~~
sant0sk1
I was surprised to learn that the search API returns hits on usernames when
they appear outside of the post/comment content.

I'm looking now to see if there's an easy way to filter around it. I've also
been emailing with one of the ThriftDB guys and I'll ask him as well.

If not, it'd be very difficult to filter those out because I'm not currently
(nor would I want to) retrieving all the matching items, just the number of
hits.

~~~
solipsist
Oh yes, I forgot you were using the HNSearch API. By the way, I hope you win
the API Contest (don't they decide tomorrow?). You for sure get my vote!

~~~
sant0sk1
Awesome, thanks! The voting starts tomorrow. Do come back and participate ;)

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edge17
first of all, very cool.

how is it normalized? every single thing I type in has an upward trend, which
to me just suggests that interest in Hacker News has increased over the last
few years... and I don't really need a chart to tell me that since I live in
silicon valley :)

~~~
sant0sk1
Good point. I wasn't really thinking about normalization as I was more
interested in comparing trends on multiple terms, but I don't think it'd be
too much work to change the algorithm to account for HN's growth.

~~~
hammock
The trends on multiple terms are actually easier to read after normalization
anyway. Right now the power-law curve growth of HN in total is making it hard
to read the difference in growth between, say, FB and twitter. Easier for our
brains to process if you took the ln() of them - which is definitely the
fastest way to fix the charts - or normalized in some other way.

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iamwil
[http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=fuck%2C+shit%2C+cunt%2C+co...](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=fuck%2C+shit%2C+cunt%2C+cocksucker%2C+motherfucker)

I put in 5 of the 7 George Carlin dirty words. Looks like 'motherfucker' has a
recent surge.

[http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=piss%2C+tits%2C+cunt%2C+co...](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=piss%2C+tits%2C+cunt%2C+cocksucker%2C+motherfucker)

If you want to see it without the top two words dwarfing the other five.

~~~
corin_
Possibly from "The Motherfucking Manifesto For Programming, Motherfuckers"?

------
vijaydev
<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=ruby%2Cpython>

<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=rails%2Cdjango>

Interesting that Ruby stays below Python but Rails stays well above Django.

~~~
grok1fy
There are similar metrics for job openings. It seems plausible that Python is
becoming an all-purpose language while the focus for Rails / Ruby is on web
apps. If true, this would be reminiscent of Perl v. PHP.

------
elsewhen
we may be in a bubble about talking about a bubble:
<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=bubble>

~~~
yawniek
<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=bubble%2C+fuck> interesting...

a very nice tool!

~~~
nxn
Hah, I think that's a neat way to visually normalize against the traffic
increase trend.

------
patrickaljord
<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=android%2C+iphone>

~~~
tintin
<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=android%2C+iOS>

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Jarred
These trends don't account for traffic increasing to the site (and therefore
posts/comments) as time progresses. That makes this less useful.

~~~
Steko
Agreed would love to see a normalization option that transforms it into a % of
submissions in each period.

------
digitalnalogika
Nice work! I had the same exact idea for the contest and bought the
hntrend.com domain 2 weeks ago, too bad I was too lazy to finish it :)

~~~
franze
well, looks like there is a service which would deserver that domain...

~~~
digitalnalogika
<http://twitter.com/#!/sant0sk1/status/82564569708503040>

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staunch
On an IPad1 the charts render so slowly it's watching a race between brightly
colored snakes. Very suspenseful.

Please do normalize the results.

~~~
driverdan
The charts are SVG and iOS's implementation of SVG is stupid slow.

~~~
kristofferR
It works great on the iPad 2' with animations and everything

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pvilchez
I searched for my own username expecting a flatline, but there were a few hits
in the last few years. Flattering, but I'm fairly certain that hackers have
not been talking about me. ;)

Perhaps you should only query titles and text, not usernames?

edit: for example, searching for pg would include his own submissions as well
as mentions and Ask PG subs.

~~~
sant0sk1
Strange, I didn't expect the search API to return results for a name that's in
the by-line of a comment, but it sure does:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=pvilch...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=pvilchez&start=0)

This is something I should definitely work around in the future. Thanks for
bring it to my attention!

~~~
andres
You can exclude authors by setting the weight to 0 in your API call:

&weights[username]=0.0

~~~
sant0sk1
Perfect, will do. Thanks!

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kristopher
I found this interesting: "Hacker News" vs. "HN"[1]

As the site gains reputation/users you can see that many switch to the
abbreviated version.

[1] <http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=hacker+news%2C+HN>

------
sek
[http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=scala%2C+erlang%2C+clojure...](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=scala%2C+erlang%2C+clojure%2C+node.js)

interesting indeed

~~~
jhuni
It would seem that NodeJS is taking away some of the share of functional
programming languages.

------
dhbanes
Let us never forget the first great hacker news bubble.

<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=nickb>

------
robinwarren
Hi, I created a similar tool using the search API, but with lniks to the top
stories (by points) over time

<http://touchwoodsoftware.com/yctrends.html>

Feel free to take that idea if you like, I think it's interesting not just to
see the shape of the trend but also the stories which created the peaks.

------
yuvadam
inb4 <http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=bitcoin>

~~~
bobbles
similar results.. <http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=airbnb>

------
Concours
Technews trends, what are we reading and sharing here: Techcrunch vs Mashable
vs Readwriteweb vs CNN vs Techmeme

[http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=techcrunch%2C+mashable%2C+...](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=techcrunch%2C+mashable%2C+readwriteweb%2Ccnn%2Ctechmeme)

------
foenix
An observation about geographies: <http://goo.gl/4BUFL>

------
cheez
It's cool but doesn't always seem to chart the trend. I have to force a
refresh. Using Chrome stable.

------
kuahyeow
I like the animation, but it will be an improvement if the chart max stays and
not jump up and down

~~~
sant0sk1
The problem with that is that I have no idea what range the terms queried will
be in beforehand. Any ideas how to accomplish this?

~~~
rsoto
You could animate after you've received all the data, then set the Y axis into
the max of the values. Anyway, good job! Thanks for sharing.

------
rmk
Pretty cool visualisations. Just out of curiosity, why did you choose
HighCharts? Did you look at jquery FLOT and choose HighCharts _over_ FLOT? Or
were you unaware of FLOT altogether?

<http://code.google.com/p/flot>

~~~
sant0sk1
I chose HighCharts because I have experience with it and knew right away that
it'd get me where I wanted to go.

I had never heard of FLOT. Thanks for introducing me to it, it looks cool and
I'll check it out for future projects!

------
csomar
For the people who says that HN discuss less about startups, the trends
actually shows something else: <http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=startups>

------
tilt
(Cross-post) There could be a spike in HN Trend's traffic
<http://twitter.com/#!/timoreilly/status/82824209721597952>

------
dclowd9901
What the hell happened with Javascript in mid 2009?

[http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=coffeescript%2C+jquery%2C+...](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=coffeescript%2C+jquery%2C+node.js)

~~~
cpeterso
Node.js was released in mid-2009. Did it launch a surge in JavaScript
popularity or just ride it?

------
arturadib
Is it possible to somehow normalize the numbers by the total number of
posts/comments, so that trends across the years do not mostly reflect the user
base/activity growth at HN?

Awesome work thus far though.

~~~
sant0sk1
Yup, this seems like an obvious improvement as I believe you're the 3rd to
mention it already :)

I'll definitely do that next, since it's not too hard to implement and seems
like a big win when you are just trending a single term.

------
jamesbritt
Very, very slick. And now I can can graph my increasing time spent on HN :)

<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=jamesbritt>

------
false
I asked it about ios and android and it broke :(
<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=ios%2C+android>

~~~
sant0sk1
Should be back now. I had to restart the heroku process. Sadly, no indication
why it crashed :/

~~~
foenix
You may find this to be a more useful comparison:
<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=iphone%2C+android>

------
aymeric
Out of curiosity: <http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=ycombinator%2C+techstars>

------
OwlHuntr
Obvious causation: <http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=dolphins%2C+PROTECT+IP>

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ntoshev
Awesome work!

Can you normalize it against total text volume? Number of mentions always goes
up with time as HN grows, % of posts mentioning will be a better measure of
mindshare.

~~~
sant0sk1
Thanks so much! Hmm, good idea on % of posts, though most of the value I
believe is in comparing multiple terms, in which case the raw number of
mentions isn't as important as the relation of the trend lines.

~~~
akavi
That's not entirely true.

For example, the first thing I searched for was "Haskell", curious to see if
it had gained or lost popularity in the past couple of years. The graph has an
upward trend, but without knowing what the trend for total volume on HN is,
that information is useless.

------
hmart
[http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=bitcoin%2C+groupon%2C+bubb...](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=bitcoin%2C+groupon%2C+bubble)

------
franze
XML vs Json <http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=xml%2C+json> that's close

------
swah
Is it normalized against the growth of the website?

------
sdfjkl
Excellent work! <http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=excellent>

------
nagnatron
vim/emacs <http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=vim%2C+emacs>

------
wvanwazer
Awesome tool, but just a heads up: I tried searching for "C" and "C++", and it
gave me the exact same line each time.

------
pavpanchekha
Is there any way to normalize by number of users? (Or am I missing something?)

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ysh4u
This is really great!

------
tomp
<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=bitcoin>

Looks like a bubble...

------
mikemoka
this is awesome, it would be a dream if advanced queries could be comparable
though

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teddytruong7
this is great, awesome how its so fast.

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rwebb
slick!

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georgieporgie
Very cool.

Amazingly, C# is talked about precisely as often as C++!

<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=c%2B%2B%2C+c%23>

;-)

~~~
solipsist
I think it may ignore the _#_ , _++_ , along with various other symbols. See
this link (you may have to refresh once or twice if it doesn't work the first
time):
[http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=c%2B%2B%2C+c%23%2C+c-%2C+c...](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=c%2B%2B%2C+c%23%2C+c-%2C+c*%2C+c)

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noduerme
Lol. According to HN, Chrome should be the world's top browser.
[http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=safari%2C+firefox%2C+inter...](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=safari%2C+firefox%2C+internet+explorer%2C+chrome)
-or-
[http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=safari%2C+firefox%2C+IE%2C...](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=safari%2C+firefox%2C+IE%2C+chrome)
(with "IE")

Great site by the way. Nice job.

------
johnx123
From where HNSearch is pulling data? Do we have any dump for HN?

