Show HN: I open-sourced my HN comment/reply alerts service

[mmarian]

https://github.com/mihailthebuilder/hackernewsalerts-backend

2 months ago I launched a service that sends email alerts when you get a new comment/reply on Hacker News.

I've only been able to acquire 6 users since releasing it (°ー°〃) I tried promoting it here (duuh), Reddit, and LinkedIn. Optimized it for SEO (ranking 3rd on my target keywords). All with limited success.

So I've decided to open-source it! Links to... - frontend: https://github.com/mihailthebuilder/hackernewsalerts-fronten... - backend: https://github.com/mihailthebuilder/hackernewsalerts-backend

I'm still using it for myself, since there's no service that sends alerts when you get a new comment in one of your posts. But I won't invest any more time in it.

Welcome any questions/comments!

[RadiozRadioz]

Nice, I've wanted exactly this service.

Though I do question if it's good that I want this service. Part of the draw that HN has for me is that it's very much not a social media website in the modern sense. It's a service I come to, it doesn't come to me; I have control over the relationship and dictate when interactions start and end. It lacks the addictive qualities in other sites and has no way to pull you back in after the fact.

This tool lets HN reach out to me, like I as a monkey have come to expect and want from the social media platforms that keep me entertained for as long as possible. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

[mmarian → RadiozRadioz]

I see your point. For me, the addiction is in the content, rather than the delivery mechanism. So I end up checking the site too often for what I want, which in this case was replies to my posts. Other sites like Twitter or LinkedIn tried to tempt me with their notifications and I never fell for it.

[replwoacause]

So this is different than http://www.hnreplies.com ?

[mmarian → replwoacause]

It is, in that it's got the added feature of monitoring comments on your posts. You can see from this code that it's a bit trickier to do that (and harder to scale): https://github.com/mihailthebuilder/hackernewsalerts-backend...

[replwoacause → mmarian]

Oh cool!

[theviolacode]

7 users! I guess the pain is not as felt

[mmarian → theviolacode]

Yep, quite a surprise. I saw hnreplies had about 3k users so I thought I could get at least a few hundred.

Ah well, the silver lining is that I learned about HN RSS feeds, Django Ninja, and Q2 async workers. It's the best backend stack I've used so far.