Hacker News Reader

Comment by ajscherer | Hacker News Reader

You're using a site right now that wasn't established early in the web, doesn't have great aesthetics or marketing, and seems to be doing okay.

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HN isn't wildly successfull. More importantly, it doesn't try to be, which is one reason it keeps its relatively "ugly" design.

What's ugly about it? There are some warts but overall I find it refreshingly clean (compared to e.g. Reddit).

Reddit is also pretty "ugly". I put the word in quotes on purpose, since both are very functional and clean. On the other hand, they definitely don't have a particularly beautiful design, as most designers would tell you. They're enough for what they do, but they don't make you say "wow, what a beautifully designed site". That's my opinion, plus (I think) a common consensus among HN users.

ugliness is also about functionality and not only style, and IMHO there are a couple of usability aspects in HN which which can be considered as problematic, just from the top of my head:

1. lack of search 2. "expired links" when clicking on "more", without any description of what is going on 3. "expired links" when you are commenting and take much time to submit your comment 4. no hints during comment reply saying whether there are any formatting rules/conventions which can be used (like quoting, lists etc) 5. no possibility to do comment preview

I agree that at least for some of these there is some rationale behind, but still it's far from being "simple because perfect".

Hacker News doesn't exactly make millions (at least not directly, and not in the short term).

There is a difference between 'clean' and simple, like hacker news (which is good) and ugly / cluttered like many of the sites shown as examples in the post.

But it isn't making millions.

You got me there, but I am not sure it matters. Like hacker news, Google and craigslist (and to some extent the other two) make their money from having a large number of users who don't directly pay anything for the service. Are you arguing that if hacker news were somehow monetizing it's traffic people would no longer be willing to tolerate the design?

In other words, do you think a free service that was created recently and isn't especially pretty can be successful, but if the site is generating revenue from those users the design becomes problematic?

(btw I think ebay is the only truly ugly site in that article, and I think hn looks just fine).

YC puts effort into Hacker News to find new prospects for investing and, secondarily, to have a solid place to read interesting stories and try out language-creation.

How are you able to assess the ROI, when even YC takes a 5-10-year look at their portfolio, and a 100-year look at language design?

It had marketing. I'm sure you've heard of Paul Graham. His (well known in certain circles) name carries with it some marketing. I found this site during one of my visits to his essays site.

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