

A jacquesm comment led me to build HN for the rest of the world. How it works. - jsmoov
http://whatsupedia.posterous.com/

======
michael_dorfman
First of all: thanks for writing the post. I was one of the people who asked
you to, and I'm glad you took the request seriously. It's much easier to see
now what you're up to.

Now: I think you are misunderstanding the nature of the problem. What makes HN
_HN_ is not, by and large, a function of the software, but rather, a function
of the people who happen to hang out here-- who were attracted by something
other than the software.

So, if you wanted to get an HN-like-community gathered around, say, knitting,
you'd need some way to get a large enough community of knitters together
together to get the ball rolling to create traction (i.e, the chicken-and-egg
problem.) The easiest way to do this would be to have the active, committed
involvement of the-Paul-Graham-of-Knitters, whoever that might be.

For an object lesson in how this works, take a look at StackOverflow. They
were able to get immediate traction because the pump was primed by readers of
Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky. Note that they have not yet been able to gain
similar traction in any other vertical, and have a lot of VC money working on
it.

That being said: what is the salient difference between "A Hacker News For The
Rest Of The World" and "Reddit"? What can I do with your software that I can't
with Reddit? Follow up question: is this advantage significant enough to make
up for the enormous head start they have in terms of users?

EDIT (I clicked before I was really finished, oops):

Finally: _"a hacker news of the rest of the world_ " is not, in my mind, a
pretty solid elevator pitch. HN is not a business, and generates no revenue.
And, the people who hang out here are not at all like "the rest of the world"
in many ways-- in fact, some of us take pride in being outliers. So, I'm not
really sure that the notion is solid. If you got traction, I can't begin to
imagine how you'd keep the trolls out, or keep the conversation focused in
each of the "interest networks".

Still, I wish you luck.

~~~
jsmoov
No problem - I appreciate the good feedback!

Finding the 'Paul-Graham-of-Knitters' for each community is exactly how I was
thinking of approaching this. Getting those people to buy in to the concept
will be a challenge, indeed - but not impossible.

With Reddit, the difference is in how customizable it is. You can hit
"Politics" and get a list of posts loosely related to politics. But you can't
get a feed specifically for "New York Politics" or better, "New York
Republicans".

I may be wrong, but HN could be a business if PG wanted it to be.

We all take pride in being outliers, I agree. However would you agree that
even HN has it's share of trolls? How does HN keep them out?

I believe there are people out there who take topics (of the non-technical
variety) seriously enough to fight for the maintenance of their community.
Hopefully I'm right!

Thanks again for the feedback.

~~~
michael_dorfman
_Finding the 'Paul-Graham-of-Knitters' for each community is exactly how I was
thinking of approaching this. Getting those people to buy in to the concept
will be a challenge_

Indeed. And you are competing with the likes of StackOverflow and their
millions.

 _With Reddit, the difference is in how customizable it is. You can hit
"Politics" and get a list of posts loosely related to politics. But you can't
get a feed specifically for "New York Politics" or better, "New York
Republicans"._

Folks can create sub-reddits as detailed as they want. Some get enough
traction to survive, some don't. I still don't see how your site would be
different.

 _I may be wrong, but HN could be a business if PG wanted it to be._

And how would you monetize it? I don't see an obvious business model.

 _However would you agree that even HN has it's share of trolls? How does HN
keep them out?_

HN has trolls, despite the fact that and PG spends a lot of time trying to
cultivate the commnity. There are (all too often) posts complaining that "HN
is turning into Reddit"-- which ought give one pause.

 _I believe there are people out there who take topics (of the non-technical
variety) seriously enough to fight for the maintenance of their community._

I imagine there are. And I imagine that in a large number of cases, they've
already done so. I imagine there is at least one Knitter's forum successfully
meeting the needs of a large chunk of the Knitter's community. I'm not really
sure there is an untapped market out there.

I don't mean to sound so negative-- but there's a difference between an
application and a startup. You've written some software; I'm not sure there is
a viable business model behind it, especially in competition with Reddit.

~~~
jsmoov
Re: differences - I would say Reddit is 1) disorganized and 2) has its focus
primarily on front-page. I don't know many people who know how or have to time
to dig through all the sub-reddits offered to maybe find something they like.
This structure does work for many of us, and that's cool. I think it can be
improved upon, though.

Same with your argument about untapped markets. I'm sure Hackers had a
preferred method of communicating pre-HN (IRC?), but something better and more
structured came along and displaced it.

Re: HN business model - paid job board, paid newsletter, hacker conferences,
hacker news apparel, regular old google ads, etc. there would be many paths to
take if this was a for-profit endeavor.

~~~
shawndrost
The Reddit comparison is critical: I don't understand why I would want to go
to your empty site, when Reddit has a full one that is largely identical. So
far, the only concrete difference that I see is that you emphasize the list of
subreddits.

------
w1ntermute
It seems like what you're doing is Reddit + some small changes. Wouldn't it be
best to just fork Reddit's code base? (Unless you want to keep your code
closed source, of course.)

------
itsnotvalid
Just tell me how this is different from <http://www.reddit.com> and please
convince any of us here that this is better than reddit for the premise in
your post.

[edit]

Sorry I found that my comment is very similar to michael's
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2343485>) I guess the point is very
clear, if it is not different from Reddit, (think how Facebook is different
from myspace), then the only deterministic factor is the _niche_ user-base
which makes it viral.

------
Breefield
So, a few things.

No Facebook login? I know you're probably still working on things, but that
seems kind of big. I know there are pros and cons to using a universal login
(specifically marrying yourself to FB), but because you've pitched this as
"for the rest of the world," I don't see much sense in it not being an option.

24 hour time isn't necessarily confusing, but not UX friendly.

I tried to add an event and received Rails' "We're sorry..." just btw.

I really like the city-centric reddit idea. But that already kinda exists...on
reddit.

I dunno—it's so much the people that make HN what it is...it's hard.

~~~
jsmoov
Breefield, what was the event you were trying to add? Did you make sure to put
the correct start and end times?

Working on an error page now.

------
pathik
If "isn't married to any particular vertical", how is it any different from
Reddit?

I mean why should I use it and not Reddit?

------
sep
Nice endeavor! I especially appreciate the clean design.

You shouldn't really worry about the Reddit comparison, as there are many more
potential users in the world than there are redditors. On top of that, you are
free to pivot as you like, while Reddit's users won't let it change.

I've written my own HN copy for Hebrew-speaking Hackers
(<http://bitorama.com>), and I'd be very interested to read how things go for
you. Best of luck!

~~~
jsmoov
Awesome! Would love to keep in touch - my email is in my HN profile.

~~~
sep
your email address is only visible to HN admins. To make it visible to
everyone, put it also in your profile's 'about' section.

Anyway, you can email me via the address here:
[http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h...](http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fbitorama.com%2Fabout)

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mattdeboard
I like it, and just registered.

If you can avoid being another Quora (i.e. littered with social media experts
seeking yet another channel) I'll like it even more.

------
sorbus
Whatsupedia doesn't work properly even in full screen on my monitor (at
1366x768) - by which I mean the "use these to view a more specific community"
image pointing to the sidebar never becomes fully visible. Minor design flaw,
but irritates me. Pressing the "add to favorites" arrow (which doesn't exactly
communicate what it is visually save through the tooltip) presents a message
telling me to login; it should instead send me to a login/register page. The
directory button uses the standard symbol for home, which is confusing. Under
"recent posts," pressing the link for the second page reloads the entire page
(requiring me to scroll back to the bottom); either reloading just the recent
posts box or using an anchor to push my browser back to the bottom of the page
after it finishes reloading would be better.

------
moe
I like the design a lot (good job!), but I think you should work on the
navigation.

It's needlessly confusing and doesn't feel right even after one understands
how it works. I was about to suggest how to improve it technically (move
everything into a sidebar-tree), but then realized that imho you should just
scrap the hierarchical "community" concept altogether.

Why not adopt a tagging approach like Quora? That way stories can belong to
multiple "communities" (tags) and users can filter according to their
interests.

I think quora invented something very powerful here, a forum based on the same
principle could very well become the next reddit.

------
asdkl234890
Hmmm.... this seems more like a different reddit then a different HN.

------
Raphael
Good looking site. Don't care for the domain name.

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jv22222
I like where your heart is, I fear it will be hard to build true community
with a boil-the-ocean approach.

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snissn
this is a weekend project (over x-mas actually) that has a similar motivation:
Dynamically creating communities and discussion in a manner that treats topics
as first class, as opposed to following people (reddit/HN vs twitter), with
the hope that quality pervades <http://hashpost.com>

For now it's mostly cat gifs and youtube videos, but it's topic generation is
dynamic by simply adding #tag to your posts.

------
beefman
> share with people exactly like you

No thanks.

------
d0m
Is the "to view a more specific community" your own writing or a font?! If
it's a font, may I know which one it is? Thanks

~~~
jsmoov
Sure! <http://www.dafont.com/a-safe-place-to-fall.font>

~~~
d0m
Great!

Also, I was wondering if you made those little arrows by hand? If so, you've
got much more talent than me ;) By arrows are always pretty ugly.

~~~
jsmoov
I used the rounded triangle tool (you can find it under the Custom Shape Tool
selector in Photoshop) on a 10px by 10px canvas.

------
nhangen
Idea is neat but the post is a bit mr meta no?

~~~
nhangen
Stupid auto-correct. Should've said: "is a bit meta"

------
zyfo
If you're serious about wanting to build a community, I suggest you read
_Building an Online Community_ [1] by Matt Haughey, founder of Metafilter.

1: [http://www.digital-
web.com/articles/building_an_online_commu...](http://www.digital-
web.com/articles/building_an_online_community/)

