

Fun with analytics: pitting Hacker News and /r/programming against each other - untog
http://blog.untogether.co.uk/post/17661390124/fun-with-analytics-pitting-hacker-news-and

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joshklein
I know this is just a fun article, but to get more serious for a minute; the
missing thing here (what most people seem to forget when they're attracting
traffic) is that neither of these audiences are part of his target market. He
mentions his call to action is attracting votes, and maybe that's all he
really cares about, but it's worth remembering that the target customer of
this app is neither reading HN nor r/programming.

I don't have a good alternative for how to reach "iPhone-owning NYC cab riders
who care enough to review drivers"; I'm just trying to make a general
observation about these kinds of traffic-from-A-vs-B tests. Of course, I've
assumed his objective is app sales, not attracting hacker/VC attention.
Nothing wrong with the latter!

~~~
untog
They _sort of_ are my target market, given that my current objective is
getting votes. If there were taxi discussion boards out there I'd give them a
try, but it's not the kind of thing that communities form around. I figured
other programmers/hackers would be more likely to help a fellow programmer out
than the average person.

My long-term goal is, of course, to attract taxi riders. But right now the app
is only just functional (and is a spare time side-project), so I'm not looking
to get thousands of users just yet. Hacker/VC opinions on the app and/or
concept are of course welcome, though :)

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ballstothewalls
I frequent Reddit and HN. Although I dont read /r/programming, I do subscribe
to /r/economics, /r/business, /r/entrepreneurship and I can say that I am much
more likely to read a full article on HN than anything I find on Reddit. It
might have something to do with the fact that I give the HN community more
credit for having legitimate conversations about topics that arent purely
sensationalist. Or that I go to Reddit looking for funny crap and only
occasionally come across something good. On the other hand, I go to HN looking
for good stuff.

~~~
Yhippa
Somehow this site has replaced Slashdot for me. The conversations are just as
good if not a bit more neutral in tone. Also the articles are much fresher
over here.

~~~
bh42222
The original reddit, the one where pg article still made it on the top of the
one and only front page, replaced Slashdot for me.

Once reddit was taken over by trolls, HN replaced reddit.

And now, it's HN with a small selection of sub-reddits with tiny and/or
strictly moderated communities.

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user24
> If anyone did go to the voting page them subsequently not vote, I’d be very
> interested to know the reasons why- let me know

This is why I didn't click: <http://imgur.com/6ktsH>

~~~
untog
I figured as much. The drawback of appealing to a tech-minded audience :)

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ImprovedSilence
I don't know if it's tech minded, so much as just plain laziness. Clicking a
button to say "hey, cool" is a lot easier than filling out another damn form
with info you don't need.

~~~
untog
Ah, but the lazy option is the "Login with Facebook" button- I'd say the tech
crowd are much less likely to click that, for privacy reasons.

~~~
danso
I don't typically do login thru FB, but your app was so impressive that I
figured, what-the-hell. It's a travesty that it's not higher up in the voting
but perhaps the winning entries are more likely to draw the crowd that's more
OK with logging in through FB.

~~~
untog
Thanks! I've accepted that I'm not going to win the popular vote (evidently
don't have the social media chops!) but still hope to place somewhere
respectable.

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icebraining
_(If anyone did go to the voting page them subsequently not vote, I’d be very
interested to know the reasons why- let me know.)_

Well, I didn't vote because I don't have an iPhone, so I can't test your app.

You said, "which of you are nice and voted for my app." But would I really be
nice? In a competition like this, each vote counts in detriment of all the
other apps/developers; voting you up can be essentially seen as voting
everyone else down. And when my only criteria is that you happened to post on
HN and they didn't, I don't think it's fair to vote your app up.

~~~
untog
I wasn't being entirely serious about people being "nice" (vs. nasty, I
suppose) but you still have a fair point.

I would definitely encourage you to go to the main submissions page
(<http://2011.nycbigapps.com/submissions/>), look through and dispense votes
as you desire.

The competition right now is dominated by who gets the most retweets- I
thought blogging was a slightly more constructive solution, but if independent
voters are looking and voting based on independent merit, then that's music to
my ears.

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untog
You may remember my post from a few days ago about making custom maps using
TileMill. Purely for entertainment value, I took a look at my analytics logs
from the day the post was a hit on both Hacker News and Reddit, to see how
they and their users differ.

~~~
dave1010uk
Can you provide any details of browser usage between the 2 sites? My guess is
HN has more Firefox (as it's open source and hacker-friendly) and proggit has
more mobile.

~~~
untog
Sure. Ugly Google Spreadsheet:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AvcaBxBg441ZdFp...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AvcaBxBg441ZdFpoN09XYmx2TGx5T2FyWVJxNDJtblE&single=true&gid=0&output=html)

Reddit actually has more Firefox. And HN has more IE. I guess more people are
living in corporate hell than we like to think.

~~~
dave1010uk
Thanks. As a web developer working on sites that see IE usage averaging around
60%, I can't imagine how much more rewarding it is seeing IE at just 2%.

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taylorfausak
The analytics for my blog look very similar to this. A 24-hour period of
intense activity followed by basically nothing. I had a post reach the front
page of Hacker News [1] and /r/programming [2]; it got around 10,000 hits. I
reached the same conclusion about HNers vs. redditors: HN stays longer and
interacts more, but sends fewer hits.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3252582> [2]:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/mh5p2/i_acciden...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/mh5p2/i_accidentally_deleted_all_our_data/)

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likarish
A couple of comments.

One side effect of your post (for me) is now I am following your RSS feed. So
there might also be a long term effect of having more people follow your blog.

The cross section of Proggit and Hackernews has overlap. If more people are
reading Proggit first, then Hnews then they probably won't click through
again. So maybe more people read Proggit before Hnews?

Also, what happens when you normalize the traffic by the size of the Hnews and
Proggit "populations"?

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peteretep
I've had a couple of articles hit both. r/programming is a traffic machine
because it has a huge readership, not many articles, so stuff sticks around
for ages.

I think www.writemoretests.com is blacklisted at r/programming though, which
is a shame. Either I asked coworkers to upvote my stories too frequently, or
someone took offense to my articles. Meh.

~~~
bad_user
You can message the moderators and ask them why is your domain banned.

I did for my own blog and the response was that I got automatically flagged
because lately I was only submitting links from a single source. One moderator
then un-flagged my domain, but this means that if I don't submit links from
other sources as well, I'll get banned again.

Also ... never ask people to upvote you.

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danso
off-topic, but pertaining to the OP's project at hand: the taxono.my project
is a jaw-dropping effort...when I saw the custom-map blog post I assumed it
was for a big startup, not for an entrant in the NYC.gov data contest.

I immediately submitted it to reddit/nyc and even logged into the NYC.gov site
with my FB account to upvote it. From a quick glance at all the other top
entrants, this not only seems to have the highest technical merit, but one
that seems to have the highest utility and feasibility as well.

<http://2011.nycbigapps.com/submissions/5832-taxonomy>

Bravo.

