Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Usually they splinter off an existing online community or fanbase of a prominent writer/net-celebrity. Hacker News was initially populated by refugees from Reddit. Imgur also got started off Reddit. Reddit's initial userbase largely came from readers of comp.lang.lisp and Paul Graham's essays (PG funded it, and posted announcements there when it launched, 3 weeks after it started). StackOverflow largely came from the readers of the blogs of its two founders, Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood. Github's users were recruited from people the founders met at meetups.

(I was an initial user of both Hacker News and Reddit, checking both out the first day they opened. Also was an admin at FictionAlley.org, which grew from 1881 to 100,000+ users while I was there. That one was largely founded by refugees from Fanfiction.net, along with the readers of two mailing lists devoted to prominent HP fanfiction authors, Cassandra Claire and AngieJ. Same pattern: refugees from an existing community, + followers of a local Internet celebrity.)

If my memory is correct, I discovered PG's essays from Slashdot, and through them reddit, and through reddit hn.

And this reminds me of how some people theorize that life on Earth came from another planet.

In one way it answers the question, but also does not answer it at all.

My guess for origination online communities from scratch would be advertising and already having a small community. Well obviously content too. But I think the reddit founders early on pretended to be many more people on reddit, because no one wants to join an empty community.

The founders provided the startup community. PG's essay were the advertising. And both slashdot and the people who posted PG's essay there, where the advertising of PG's essays.

Where’s the mention of Digg? Thay was a large contribution to Reddit’s traffic after their... redesign

I thought I was here on the first day, but your HN join date is one day before mine. Time flies!

Sure does, I have the same day as you. But wasn’t it pg’s blog and not Reddit that sent the initial users? Starting to get hazy on the details.

I think it was both - not unusual to post an announcement for a new forum in multiple places, and PG's blog and Reddit very much had overlapping readerships (and authors) at the time. I found it through Reddit.

BTW, there are some YC founders that have join dates several months before us - HN was open to internal YC batches about a half-year before it went public.

This is true, but they can also splinter off or be online versions of of real world communities. For example Facebook started from collages.

Indeed, from collages of college students.

Sorry, but I had to make that joke.

Why did people leave Fanfiction.net? I spend quite some time there, but I never follow the meta discussions

The immediate reason was the whole "PLAGURISM!" kerfuffle - Cassandra Claire's work (which was immensely popular within the HP fandom) was booted off of it for having a few too many Buffy quotes. Discontent about FF.net had been growing for a while, though - since they let anyone upload with no moderation, many of the fics there were low quality or unfinished, many of the reviews were one-liners or abusive, etc.

Thank you for the answer. It seems that it dates back from before I started reading fanfiction, so I wasn't even there then.

It's true that sorting through the low quality fics on ff.net is complicated. Though I appreciate being able to leave a positive one-liner as a review (when it's negative, I usually try to elaborate a little more).

Has HN changed a lot since it inception? Or has it stayed mostly he same?

It goes in waves. The tech industry (and the world) has changed significantly in the last 13 years. I'd say at the core the culture has been largely the same, but it's a bit less tech-focused, less startup-focused, fewer people with personal experience in the topics being discussed, with more discussions on politics (despite the general ban on political discussions) and social phenomena.

Thank you for responding! The technical topics are the main draw for me. I hope the core of HN stays.

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