Hacker News Reader

Comment by xojoc | Hacker News Reader

It's a site I'm building to search for discussions online. I thought it would be interesting to people to read some previous discussions on this topic. I got downvoted so it doesn't seem to be so useful to people as I thought it would...

View on HN

Usually the "previous discussions" comment is posted with links directly to the previous thread(s). It would probably be received better if you mentioned that this is your site in the original comment.

Whether or not the site is useful, the comment feels misleading in this context.

IMO it looks a bit like a spam link, the domain kind of looks like a random string. The *.pw also raised my eyebrows because I rarely see that TLD (I realize you may be from that country but that doesn't change my first impression). Can't say I know for sure why you were downvoted but I was a little hesitant to click on that link.

People do, usually with direct links to the HN pages or to a search on hn.algolia.com - most likely it's suspicion about this new domain that's obviously linked to the account that posted it.

Interesting strategy. Submit a popular article and use it to advertise your “previous discussion” tool by using the usual HN convention but with your link instead.

Very growth hacky. I quite enjoy the trick, including generating the controversy with this seemingly naive response.

I love it, actually. Definitely a good marketing hack.

What one considers a growth hack, another considers never-going-to-visit-that-domain.

Oh, I’m not so silly as to say it’s a good idea. I just find it entertaining.

I think I would have posted the usual “previous discussions” and then also posted “By the way, I’m building this discussion aggregator blah blah” and linked.

Submitting a popular post to introduce the need for the discussion aggregator will work. His execution was just a bit ham fisted.

Thank you all for the honest feedback. Yes, the idea was to show the usefulness of the tool "by example" using it for popular stories. I should have put more effort into it (and I'll write to dang to ask for permission).

I'll also buy a custom, less spammy looking, domain. The .pw extension is what I use for my main website which I have chosen at the time because it was cheap.

I think they're just trying to be helpful.

Might have been better if you said that upfront.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com