

Hacking Hacker News - gregmuender
http://recode.net/2014/12/30/hacking-hacker-news/

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minimaxir
There's a difference between Hacking Hacker News and _spamming Hacker News
with low-quality posts_ , which the OP had done but conveniently failed to
mention in the post. (the "Uber vs. Lyft" is the _only_ post that is not
disguised content promotion for his startup:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=gregmuender](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=gregmuender))

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towelguy
> Last month, I posted two links a day apart. The content of the articles was
> exactly the same. Granted, the titles and links were a bit different, but
> it’s nonetheless fascinating to see the 8X difference between the two.

People don't like to read the same news twice?

~~~
gregmuender
The point here was that all else being (nearly) equal, sometimes posts take
off, while others don't. Although you can optimize, at the end of the day, it
can be often be a game of chance!

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j_k_s
And now we wait to see if _this_ post makes it to the front page and top
spot...

~~~
gregmuender
Yes, of course! Looks like we got 13 upvotes today, which is, generally
speaking, pretty high.

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Mz
This is incredibly hand-wavy. For one thing, speculation about which days of
the week are "better": Every single day, seven days a week, for any given
moment in time, there are the same number of items on the front page. Does
anyone have data on (for example) average numbers of upvotes varying in a
statistically significant manner by days of the week?

For another, data about how many characters in HIS titles correlated to x
number of upvotes: Maybe that says something about how he writes. But, again,
is there any data about average title length for all articles that hit the
front page? That would be more meaningful.

Not that I haven't done similar pieces on my own blog, but the point of one of
my write-ups was: Gee, this completely shocked me and looks a lot like random
chance to me.

I submit articles regularly. Some hit the front page. Some are ignored. Most
are not my own articles. HN is a very large forum. The most consistent thing
seems to be that certain authors (like Paul Graham) get their work submitted
by people other than themselves and then get wildly upvoted and intensely
discussed.

That isn't to say that analysis is meaningless, but I personally didn't get
anything useful out of this article and another it linked to other than the
fact that he now gets traffic from HN and from blogging at a level that, for a
previous project, he spent up to $15K/month to get. But I have no idea what
kind of money that is making him or how. Just that he now generates traffic
without spending scads of money on it.

That's nice information. I am still trying to figure out how to get that piece
working better for various projects of my own. But, for me, the single biggest
thing is that I have other stuff to work out so content is updated very
regularly and is good quality. Until I have that worked out, traffic will
continue to be anemic -- which is fine. Working that out is a complex process
and I am okay with the progress I am making.

~~~
minimaxir
Re: data about title length:

Since I have a database of all HN submissions, I spent a few minutes to check.
Turns out that title length (for non-1-word submissions) has no significant
effect on submission score at all:
[http://i.imgur.com/1zthOwS.png](http://i.imgur.com/1zthOwS.png)

~~~
gregmuender
Nice chart! Yes, my sample size was rather small, so it's difficult to make
absolute conclusions, but it was interesting to see a definitive correlation
between post length and upvotes!

