How We Got 31k Pageviews in a Day by Pretending to be Obama | Hacker News Reader

How We Got 31k Pageviews in a Day by Pretending to be Obama

blog.crowdtilt.com

73 pointsajaymehta30 comments

Only 24,853 UVs and 31,097 PVs for a fully designed and built out microsite (a clever one I might add)?

Just from my blog post (http://www.brokentone.com/blog/2566/) that made it to HN front page the other day (with really no other promotion) I got: 21,893 UVs, 23,094 PVs.

Not phallus measuring, just providing some reference and cost/benefit.

Yeah, it's amusing how the article focuses on the pageview numbers, which aren't that impressive. A catchy rant making it near the top of HN will easily give you similar numbers.

The number of social shares seems more interesting (3k Facebook likes isn't that bad, better than what I would have gotten), but if it didn't lead to more pageviews, I don't really see the point.

Thanks! I think you're right, the 3k Facebook likes were great to see.

Unfortunately the page was modded off of HN (like all the other April Fool's jokes) after rising to the top super fast... I think if that hadn't happened we would have ended up with quite a bit more traffic.

One nice thing is that you probably got a diverse group of PVs rather than a homogeneous one you would see from just linking to reddit or HN.

For a service like yours where you need random people finding out about it, I'd be really happy with your numbers and the fact that the traffic came from unique sources.

Thank you! Agreed. The page was on HN for like 18 minutes. The cool thing was to see traffic coming in from all over the place and getting tweets saying "Best April Fool's prank this year!" :)

It was a scrappy, last-minute fun project that managed to exceed expectations. The Crowdtilt founders thought it was sweet too!

For those who are phallus measuring, here's the biggest i've ever seen: http://bjk5.com/post/30813320623/what-traffic-from-60-minute.... Yep, that's per second.

I had the same take away; seems like a huge waste of effort for a very modest marketing return (and a not very funny joke).

Well that's awesome! Congrats on the success with your post.

I think most people that put lots of effort into websites (whether they be simple blog posts, splash pages like this, or a fully-built-out product) struggle to get notable traffic. This might not be an unprecedented traffic success, but it was fun and generated a pretty surprising amount of buzz on social media.

Except 30 of the largest corporations paid little to no taxes over the past few years. There would be little debt if you actually got them to pay and stop offshoring jobs and profits.

General Electric paid an effective tax of TWO PERCENT over the past decade!

We are being looted from the inside out and people still fall for this.

Amazingly, you're being down voted.

If using public services to make billions of private profit is not evil, I don't know what is.

Really? Rapes in India; North Korea generally; wars in the middle east; letting our own homeless and elderly starve or go cold; school massacres; Ponzi schemes destroying the retirement of countless people...

...all this, and making profit using public services is the epitome of evil to you?

Ahh, the old "let's compare ourselves to third world nations so we look good".

That's about as useful as comparing a sporting team to the one that always finishes bottom of the ladder... it just confirms you're doing fine, when in fact you are not.

What I was saying was, in the context of a developed nation like The United States, using public money for private profit is evil, and if it were not done, the average standard of living would increase and poverty (which is an enormous problem in the US) would decrease.

In the context of a first world country, doing that is very evil.

Most of the things I listed happen right here in good ol' America.

> What I was saying was

No, what you actually said was that if that wasn't evil, you don't know what is. Which is an incredulous thing to say.

> using public money for private profit is evil

I see, so no government contracts should exist, or they should only go to non-profits. They're using public money for private profit, after all.

> if it were not done, the average standard of living would increase and poverty would decrease.

Unprovable.

Last year's corporate tax incomes amounted to something like 200 billion. The last four years have seen deficit spending over 1 trillion per year.

Even if you managed to alter the tax code and bring in five times as much corporate taxes, you would only get us out of deficit spending, assuming no other drop in revenue or increase in spending. We would still have 15 trillion in federal debt.

It's important to distinguish between stimulus spending (which consists of typically one-off measures to fight recessions) and the regular payouts that the government makes every year.

All deficit spending last year consisted of the latter. In bad times, the these payouts naturally/automatically increase. For example, let's take the SNAP (food stamp program) - when the recession hit, more people lost their jobs and had to apply for food stamps. So even if the government didn't change the requirements for applying for SNAP, the SNAP program had to spend more. The narrative that Obama chose to spend more on food stamps because he has an affinity for spending is misleading. If anything, he (and Congress) chose not to cut the SNAP program.

Of course, SNAP is a bad example to begin with, because it doesn't make up that much of the federal budget. Medicare, on the other hand, does, and its costs are rising because health care costs in general are rising. Medicare's costs to the government are rising no faster than private health insurance companies' costs to individuals.

What conclusion do you draw from this?

I try not to draw conclusions about what would happen in D.C. given X, because Y is often something I never would have guessed, but here goes (all that follows is IMHO).

I think if you managed to increase corporate tax revenue five-fold, we would spend more, because political capital now via spent dollars is more effective (politically) than long-term doom and gloom over an increasing debt.

What's that old quote, $200 billion here, 200 billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money?

Facebook is not only not paying taxes, the government is giving them 500 million in "tax refund"

WTF

Here is the real form to help pay down the debt just in case anyone wants to -

https://www.pay.gov/paygov/forms/formInstance.html?agencyFor...

Maybe because 2013 it's not over yet. Check back on January 1, 2014.

EDIT: The original question asked why there was a drop of donations in 2013 as stated in this page: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm

In what cases would it ever make sense to "donate" to this? I ask this not to be silly, I really am genuinely curious if anyone actually does this, and for what reasons.

There was a Planet Money (I think) episode that mentioned this. Their number were about $7 million a year on average, but that this last year or two have seen record (i.e., maybe 2x) donations.

Is your question why do people care about the public debt? Or why they bother making a contribution that is small relative to the problem?

Slightly different - why do they think that there money is better distributed by faceless bureaucrats where they could themselves direct it to the causes they think need it the most.

> "We support this idea. would definitely be sweet to get paid back. -Chinese President Xi Jinping" "Man, this is a great idea. I bet this was Biden's thing, am I right? Joe, call me. -Bill Clinton"

Genius.

Thank you! :)

Because he linked to the site in his article: Why the 100% spike in donations to the public debt in 2012?

How much money did you make off of the traffic?

Pretty decent traffic... good idea though.

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