Re: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2872655
I paid for five women's first impressions about Hacker News from HelpaGuyOut.com and I thought I'd share. No affiliation with the site or anything.
#1: "Based on the URL, I went to the site with a preconceived notion of a new site. It seems to be a link sharing site, primary geared towards tech-oriented folks. It appears that every item is contributed by a user. There is some sort of voting/points system that probably helps determine which items the community deems important.
Upon further digging in, I discoverd that the 'new' section includes recently submitted links to various blogs and sites. Therefore, the main page (which had submissions with comparatively higher points), must list articles that have risen higer in ranking.
I was not able to relate to a lot of "Titles" of the submissions (for e.g. What is Django??).
Anyways, looks like a clean, neat, garbage-free site geared towards a particular niche. Easy to navigate, clutter free, and overall simplistically well designed."
#2: "First impression: It looks like a bare bones message board, or just a meta collection of hacker and/or programming message board threads and articles.
After clicking around: It's really just a blog filled with links to articles of relevance to those in the programming world (and slightly beyond), but allows the user to comment on the articles within the site, rather than on the external link sites. It's like facebook article commenting though it appears as though you can register and comment somewhat anonymously? It is somewhere in between a blog and a messageboard in that way."
#3: "I like it. Would be great if the search is in the main header"
#4: "It is way too wordy and overwhelming. I don't like reading emails that are so chock full of info that you feel you have to reserve another time to read it. There didn't seem to be many articles that I would be interested in reading either. It takes me a very long time to get through emails every day, so this is not something that I would consider checking out on a frequent basis."
#5: "I have spent some time on internet forums in my teenage years though most of them were not as niche as this one. The orange colour is a bit off putting. Based on the stories on the front page right now it seems the site is for programmers and people in the computer industry or in startups. Oh well.
However the page has a couple of interesting stories: one from slate about writing fast caught my eye. The interface seems a lot like reddit. Signing up is easy (thank god for no email verification or captcha).
Digging around a bit just confirms my initial hunch that the site is basically for programmers and startups. Not something I might spend a lot of time on. Maybe if there is a section specifically for general interest stories i would.
Overall the site looks simple and easy to use. But not my cup of tea.
On a side note, I had an ex boyfriend who spent a lot of time on the site.(He still does!!). First thing every morning, he would check out the site.That was a bummer."
Good call, ex boyfriend.