Why Y Combinator News is so popular? | Hacker News Reader

Why Y Combinator News is so popular?

7 pointsmartinbc9 comments

Sometimes newbie questions are the most interesting , it isn't this case, but let's see what happen.

The point is that I can't understand why Hacker News has so success.. Design is very poor and seems like 90's websites, the submit form is saddest of all the web. Social interaction is almost zero, is an involution of forums (which we know that they went out of fashion).

I know that I has some innovative business logic with its submissions, positive votes and karma. But I am sure that if anyone try to do something like this, (now or at 2007 when Hacker News was born), it would have less than ten visits per day.

I have to say that it generate me a great confusion, because as you know, all technologies and web sites move toward social media, innovated designs, javascript... We spend hours and hours trying to javascript works and making the best look & feel. And then you see how simple is Hacker News and I don't know if I have mistaken of profession and I had to be lawyer.

So, WHY we love it?

I hope you understand my humor, because my English is not the best.

Because HN actually has the best content, it doesn't have to do any of the other things you mention to get users. So it can focus on the thing that really matters, which is the value that users get from the site, which in the case of HN has nothing to do with graphic design or trend-following social features.

If something is low quality, but many people use it anyway, that means that there is a part of it that is truly world class.

When the evidence strongly contradicts your assumptions, you may want to revisit them.

I'n here because the featured articles and comments are well aligned with the interests of technology entrepreneurs like me. HN development effort is wisely directed towards improving voting and ranking.

Making the "innovations" you describe would be like using cake frosting to put a fancy design on a grilled salmon.

I love the existing low latency/low bandwidth design of HN. It works great on my iphone in limited connectivity conditions, much better than normal websites. It's a real plus, but minor compared to the quality of articles and comments.

I can't answer for others but here are my personal reasons (in no particular order):

1. The community. Its better than anything I can find elsewhere at the moment for its size and diversity.

2. The content. This, like the answer above, is the same.

3. Engagement levels are decent.

Please note that better does not mean best, it just means its better that anything else I can find.

For me: - Really good articles and content posted and upvoted.

- Good quality comments and lots of expertise from individuals from every sector of tech.

- No trolls / bs comments like most anonymous forums (ok, a few, but they get downvoted quickly).

Every other social news site tends to pull away from techish news. Hacker News does it too from time to time, but on the average, it does a good job at it. I also love people like Peter Norvig jumping in and talking about a subject or some random startup "Show HN"ing their new product.

1) The subject matter.

2) High-quality comments.

3) I actually like sites with a simple UI. I still haven't figured out the Reddit user interface. I gave up on Facebook years ago, after their third or fourth site redesign.

As with all things, community (i.e. network-effect) is what's most important.

e.g. craigslist

The slightly obnoxious answer would be volumes of people trying to suck up to the YCombinator decision makers. Despite this sucking up, the discussion, especially if you are good at scanning through comments, is still the best I have seen. So that is why I like it.

People using it.

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