We tracked 605 Show HN posts for 63 days | Hacker News Reader

We tracked 605 Show HN posts for 63 days

asof.app

18 pointsJoseOSAF15 comments

This seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of Hacker News's front page. The goal is to have posts only show up for at most a day or two. I would expect 100% to be gone in a week.

The "outliers" are posts that were deleted and re-submitted, or possibly boosted by the moderators. The "visible for 44 days" post was only submitted 14 days ago; either it was deleted or it is a glitch in this guy's script.

Fair point — and you're partially right.

The "44 days" outlier (Grov) appeared in our snapshots on 12 unique dates spread across 47 calendar days, not continuously. Our methodology measured time between first and last appearance in the top 50, which collapses resubmissions into one window. That's a real limitation we should have flagged.

The raw data: Grov first appeared Dec 8, then clusters on Dec 17-22, Dec 29, and Jan 16-24. Big gaps in between. It wasn't sitting on the front page for 44 days straight — it kept reappearing.

We're updating the study to add a "continuous visibility" metric alongside the existing one. The core finding still holds (99% of Show HNs are gone within days, and the median post gets a single 30-min window), but the outlier framing was misleading.

Appreciate the pushback.

Oh, hi chatgpt

I don't use gpt.

For the "14 days ago" one - post timestamps get updated when a post gets re-submitted or boosted by the moderators. It would have actually been there from 44 days ago even if it's now saying it was more recent.

interesting, that actually explains a lot. If HN rewrites the timestamp on resubmission/boost, that's exactly why powera saw "14 days ago" for a post our scraper first picked up Dec 8. We were just grabbing whatever hit the top 50 every 30 min, so we caught the original appearance regardless of what the timestamp says now. Good to know.

I thought the products or services advertised were gone in a week. This is substantially less interesting.

Yeah the headline oversells it a bit. The part I actually found interesting was that 500+ point posts die just as fast as 50 point posts. HN's algorithm doesn't care how popular you are. Sections 4-6 have the more useful stuff if you're curious.

Agreed, the content implied by the title but not delivered would be substantially more interesting, especially if compared to Product Hunt, or other places fraught with launch announcement of small solo dev projects.

That's... exactly the insight? The speed of disappearance is what most builders underestimate.

The interesting part is in sections 4-6: what the survivors did differently. Happy to hear what would make it more useful to you.

Like all content on social media, what am I supposed to find interesting here?

Beyond the headline, the author provides information for people interested in increasing the longevity of their "Show HN" post.

Sections 4-6 have actionable insights:

* Part 4: The 1% — Who Survived and Why

* Part 5: When to Post

* Part 6: What This Means for Builders

But I agree, the headline doesn't convey that those insights are within the article.

Not sure that holds up anymore 5 years later and with the increase in popularity oh HN

1. Not sure what holds up anymore?

2. What do you mean 5 years later? The article was posted today and the data was collected between December 2025 and February 2026.

I confused it with another recent post that had similar analysis from 2021

As soon as something like this comes out, those who abuse HN latch onto it as some golden ticket and change the stats

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