Hacker News Reader

What was the network effect or community?

I thought it was just an RSS reader.

Were there forums or commenting on posts or something? I don't remember anything at all like that.

Yes you could follow friends who could republish from their feeds onto a feed you could subscribe to and eventually it supported comments on those items which would allow discussion within their community. Discoverability and community which hasn't been replicated with the scattered userbase after it was killed.

Wow that sounds awesome.

It was

Reply on news.ycombinator.com