What were the other sites HN users would hang out at back then? Slashdot? Google groups and listservs? Was HN really the first true "community" for this audience?
Slashdot, though the peak days were behind it
Digg, which would be fun for a while still
Blogs like the old new thing, and Joel Spolsky
Del.icio.us and Stumbleupon and (I’ll admit it) Fark
I still have a Slashdot account, but I can't remember the last time I logged in there. Peak Slashdot was really 1998 for me, when I was working in my first IT job and would check it as much as 5x a day. By 2011, it had declined greatly in readership because of the combined effects of Twitter, Reddit, and HN.