

HN accounts for 12% of Social Bookmark referral traffic - calaniz
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/analysis_what_are_the_webs_top_sources_of_referral_traffic.php
Note: I work on Woopra projects :-)
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joshu
This data is sounds biased.

Delicious did in the BILLIONS of monthly PVs when I left - I really doubt HN
throws more traffic in aggregate.

~~~
jey
Yeah, this just shows that they have an install base hugely skewed towards
sites that techies read.

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z92
That doesn't explain why slashdot is 0% though.

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ohashi
I don't read slashdot anymore. Do you?

~~~
m4wk3r
phrack4lyfe greetz2hnn

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dotcoma
Anybody else thinking we should be alarmed at this kind of data - because of
the spammers and self-promoters who will flock to HN, I mean...

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ecaradec
That was my first thought, keep a low profile !

~~~
cakeface
Maybe we should go back to pushing Erlang submissions to the top of the first
page again?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145>

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JacobAldridge
I had a phone call this morning with our national GM, where I had to explain
why HN is noted as consistently in our top 5 referring sites (which is to say
I had to explain what HN actually is).

That's attributable to the fact that I'm active in this community, so I was
surprised to see it accounting for so much traffic on a larger sample, but
there's certainly evidence that even links that get no votes and no comments
still drive traffic (though not as much as links that add value and create
discussion).

~~~
statictype
I suspect that getting a lot of visits from 'Hacker News' doesn't sound very
comfortable to many people.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Yes, I note the OP refers to YCombinator rather than Hacker News, but as the
profile of both grow outside of the tech community not making the distinction
will become more and more inaccurate.

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vaksel
the fact that they have HN as having 2.4 times more referrer traffic than
reddit makes me question this.

Look at the numbers, HN is a top 3,000 site, reddit is a top 300 site.

~~~
pvg
<http://www.raterush.com/pages/digg-reddit> might explain this somewhat.

A huge chunk of reddit links are back to reddit, to imgur and to things like
major newspapers and youtube. If only a few of these are not actually tracked
by Woopra, the results would get skewed significantly.

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ArcticCelt
Then for the few legitimate remaining articles, I'll postulate that reddit
users go to comment after only reading the headline and never follow the link
of the article. Maybe HN readers are more diligent and do read/visit the
articles more often.

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joshu
Hn is not a social bookmarking website.

~~~
jacquesm
HN is many things to many people, and to some it is definitely a social
bookmarking site. It even has something called a 'bookmarklet', if you have a
description of HN that does not include the social bookmarking aspect (posting
links and discussing them) then I'm very interested in to what you think HN
is.

~~~
joshu
It's a forum. Most of the threads are started with a link to discuss but not
all.

I mean, how is it useful as bookmarks, social or otherwise? Are you able to
save something so you can return to it later?

There are lots of bookmark lets that have nothing to do with bookmarking. It's
just a way to execute some JavaScript in the context of a page.

Most of the sites there aren't social bookmarking, either. SU has the
functionality, though.

For what it's worth, I'm the one who coined the term.

~~~
jacquesm
Check the 'saved' link on your profile page.

So, yes, you can return to those pages at a later point in time.

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joshu
I'm not even sure how to get stuff on or off that list.

Again, in what way can you use this site as your bookmarks? You save an
obscure documentation page and a mod deletes it, and then what?

HN (like digg, reddit, etc) is social news, or something. People who confuse
the two think so because the delicious front page and digg looked similar, or
whatever.

~~~
jacquesm
Obscure documentation pages are most likely not going to survive, I agree with
you there. But I definitely do use it to 'bookmark' technology news and it is
very rare that a link gets deleted.

The bigger risk for deletions seems to be not tech related stuff but rather
non-tech related stuff that manages to get a couple of upvotes.

HN is social news simply because the audience can define it as such.

The main ingredients, the ability to post links and to discuss them and to
revisit them at a later stage makes it such that some users will come by and
use it in that way.

All the stuff you submit and upvote goes on that list, you can't remove stuff
from the list if you've upvoted it, you can't remove stuff from the list after
a certain time has passed.

~~~
joshu
Since when are discussions necessary for social bookmarking? Delicious doesn't
have this.

Like I said, it's a forum.

~~~
jacquesm
They're not necessary but they don't hurt either.

As the coiner of the term, you may want to update the wikipedia article which,
after listing the basic requirements says: "As these services have matured and
grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and
comments on bookmarks".

So there seems to be a convergence of terms and services here.

I think the major difference between social bookmarking sites (of which I see
HN as one, and you obviously don't) versus a forum is that on a forum the vast
majority of the topics is not started with a link.

On HN the vast majority of the topics _is_ started with a link.

~~~
joshu
Can you please provide a definition for social bookmarking that includes the
uses you are but is also not overlapping with other things? (Otherwise, you
wouldn't need the term as distinct from other definitions, obviously.)

The confusion stems from when Kevin Rose started calling Digg social
bookmarking to help raise VC, and was adopted by people who are only
understanding superficially (the front pages look kinda similar, so clearly
they're the same thing!) Kevin then stopped using the term.

I think you either understand this superficially as well. There are many
things that I could use to serve some obscure purpose without that being the
primary purpose.

Or perhaps you are just trolling.

~~~
jacquesm
I think the term 'social bookmarking' has expanded from its initial, narrow
definition of 'a service where you can bookmark stuff and share those
bookmarks with others and potentially tag them' to the point where the general
public will interpret it as to be wide enough to include sites like /., digg,
reddit and HN, whereas before that time it was limited to sites like furl,
diigoo and deliciou.us. Witness the title of this article. For me the key
element is that the majority of the discussions use a link as the topic
starter.

I understand that initially the definition was a more narrow one, but since
this seems to be the way people use it nowadays I'll just go with the flow, I
have no vested interest in seeing the definition being used in one way or
another.

To me a 'forum' is a site where people will come to discuss a subject,
occasionally using links to illustrate the point.

I think that it is not very friendly to try to label someone that is having a
fairly long conversation with you a troll just because you apparently disagree
with them.

~~~
joshu
It's more your weak use of logic and lack of supporting points makes me think
you are trying to make me annoyed rather than prove your point.

I do not think that "it has links to start discussions" make it a social
bookmarking site. I think it is bookmarking + public that make it a social
bookmarking site.

HN is a forum and a social news site. Delicious is social bookmarking and
maybe a weak social news site, but not a forum.

Slashdot, also mentioned in the article, is DEFINITELY not a social
bookmarking site. Surely you agree with this?

Incidentally, I picked a random forum, and looked at a few items. They all
seemed to be started around links:
[http://www.r8talk.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=fa7531fdc42e...](http://www.r8talk.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=fa7531fdc42e4354fb3ffd3e38de92a5&f=2)

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ars
Wow, slashdot has really fallen far.

I know that I personally hardly read it anymore, but I used to read it many
times per day.

~~~
jacquesm
Slashdot always had a tendency to discuss stuff without reading the article
first, or at all.

So it doesn't drive as much traffic as you might expect, but when your site
does get mentioned on /. it gets much more traffic than a HN posting.

Also, there probably is very little overlap between the typical /. covered
site and the sites that woopra covers, /. is not really a start-up related
site.

If you were to re-run the numbers with all of google analytics covered sites
(impossible to get the data, unfortunately) you'd likely get a different
picture.

The barrier to entry for a successful HN posting is much lower than it is on
/., the volume of 'posted' stories on /. is much lower too.

All in all less surprising than you'd think at first sight.

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calaniz
This wasn't at all surprising to me. HN has a great community of tech
enthusiasts who have a insatiable appetite for tech content. I'm sure the
people who ask for critiques on their web apps get a nice traffic boost.

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zhyder
Useful data, thanks! I'm a little disappointed the pie charts don't include
'Other', which would have given a sense of how long the tail is.

Regarding the seeming discrepancy in data for Google's share, the reasons are
probably: (i) more of Bing/Yahoo's traffic stays within their portals than
Google's does, and (ii) Google is especially dominant among tech-savvy users,
and the websites that were analyzed have proportionally more of such users
(which would also explain why HN shows up).

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apu
Argh misleading stupid 3d graphs!

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BrandonM
Considering that Social Networking site data is skewed due to not accounting
for apps, could it be possible that is happening in the Social Bookmark space
as well? Do Reddit and Slashdot have iPhone/Android apps?

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ck2
The reason why slashdot.org shows no traffic driven is because most visitors
there know to block their referer.

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username3
People still use StumbleUpon?

