Hacker News rips off Reddit or so Mashable claims... | Hacker News Reader

Hacker News rips off Reddit or so Mashable claims...

mashable.com

15 pointsf4stjack15 comments

Don't know whether this is a repost or not but... What do you say people? Far as I can see, HN looks different, simpler and conceptually it doesn't try to include everything on this earth...

Open articleView on HN

Well... it does, doesn't it?

But reddit obviously aren't bothered (and give you all the tools to build your own reddit), so why should anyone else be?

https://github.com/reddit/

Maybe someone should tell mashable about slashdot?

This 'rip off' was much more evident before Reddit got big (the first time) and redesigned the voting buttons. Before that the designs were almost identical.

Reddit is open source and was a Y combinator startup.I don't see the problem here.

The News (Social bookmarking) pages on our web site are pretty similar as well. Clean minimalist layouts with similar functionality are going to look similar whatever the style influences - well apart from the CSS.

a certain nerdy demographic

Use of the word 'nerd' from a tech blog?

Why not? They use it at the congress...

Feels insulting every time, but it seems to be common practice.

I like both, it doesn't give a sh* about social networking, doesn't emphasize users over content, which is good.

Peter Pachel probably stopped by recently and noticed how much the comments are becoming like Reddit, and felt compelled to make the connection and post it on Mashable.

Quite funny seeing as Reddit was YC-incubated and was clearly inspired by HN

Wikipedia says HN was created in 2007 and Reddit in 2005.

While Reddit was part of YC, it launched in 2005. HN didn't launch till 2007.

And Reddit was created in 2005.

And Digg was created in 2004.

And Slashdot was created in 1997.

And Usenet was created in 1980.

And BBS was created in ... I don't quite know. Some time in the 70s?

Establishing who came first is kind of missing the point. Mashable makes the mistake of assuming that because something looks similar, it is a "rip-off".

The content is what makes a discussion site, not the layout or the software. HN can't be a "rip-off" of Reddit, because they were established for completely separate reasons.

I hope you're not trying to imply that I was saying that. I was merely directly responding to the poster above

I just checked the wayback machine and Reddit appears first in mid 2005, HN in Feb 2007 (though the article with id 1 here seems to have been posted in October 2006). It's fair to say that Reddit wasn't inspired by HN.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com