Tell HN: Starting afresh | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Starting afresh

37 pointszeedotme21 comments

Hi there Hacker News,

There's no telling whether this post will get read...but on the off chance that it does...

My name's Zee, I'm an avid HN reader and the newly appointed Editor (in Chief) at TheNextWeb.com.

I did some research on HN when I started writing for the site and, amongst some other sites, I discovered we weren't being held in high regard by some of you guys. In some cases, I can understand why.

Without dragging this message on though, I'd like to let you know that we've made some changes over the last couple of months and want to start afresh with you guys.

Along with my appointment, we've brought some cracking (means 'great' in the UK :]) writers on board and I genuinely believe our content is better than ever. We try to break stories when we can but when we don't, we attempt to make up for it with interesting angles and in depth thoughts. At the same time, we still pride ourselves on incorporating a bit of fun into the site, so when possible, you can leave our site with a smile.

So why am I doing this? Well, because I genuinely love this community and would love for you to enjoy ours.

We're completely open to criticism of our content when its not up to scratch and would appreciate support when it is.

So why "starting afresh"? Because if possible, I'd like for you to consider us as though we were a brand spanking new site and visit our site every now & again for a couple of weeks to see how you find us. With any luck, you might just find some genuinely interesting stuff.

Thanks for reading.

Zee.

PS. We've also got a big design revamp coming which should hopefully brighten up the place

I must be missing something. This sounds like a press release, plus an apology for unspecified problems HN has had, with a site none of the commenters have heard of.

It's certainly great to hear about a site having higher quality posts. But I'd rather hear about that when someone says "Hey! Check out this high-quality post!" rather than hearing someone announce that in the future, there will be good posts. Show, don't tell.

It doesn't sound like a press release really. The site has been banned, so it's not like he has any other way to make a post.

I respect what he's trying to do, as most other sites would not come and try to apologize for any past wrong doings. They probably wouldn't give a shit.

Maybe this message should have been personally addressed to PG as he decides the ban list, but I don't know PG's preferences.

Hey there Jason, i don't think we were banned - unless i'm wrong? Is there a list somewhere?

There's an out-of-date list here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044

And you're on it. I'd email PG.

All sorted now! :)

cheers, emailing now

wow, really - a press release? I've been thinking about writing it for a while but have never planned or prepared anything for it. I wrote this in about 10 minutes without any pre-written notes.

About why some of the commenters haven't heard of us, I can't really speak for them - but we're the biggest tech blog in Europe now (based on number of visitors) and growing fast

Regarding the "hey check out this quality post", that thought crossed my mind but frankly I thought it might appear spam like so decided not to.

ps.Did you know we follow each other on Twitter (http://twitter.com/zee)? I'm pretty sure you've heard of us because about 50% of my shares are from TheNextWeb

The problem isn't that your post is too glib. The problem is that:

1. Most of us have never heard of you before.

2. Nevertheless, you have somehow managed to appear at the top of the front page,

3. ...apologizing for a conflict that none of us can remember and that I can't find with Google.

4. Taking 1+2+3 together, you look (at best) like you're taking yourself too seriously, and at worst like a manipulative spammer.

Please don't take this as an indication of hostility. If your intentions were legitimate, I wish you the best of luck in raising the quality of your site.

I'm not sure how to react to that to be frank...

I'll try though.

1. I introduced myself, and have been active for a while but an (RSS)subscrber for a long while.

2. I wasn't expecting the post to get to the front page. At best, I thought it might receive a few points and a few people might comment and appreciate the effort I'd made.

3. I didn't really apologise. I just wanted to start afresh, and hope that you guys would consider reviewing our content to potentially share on HN in the future.

Also, there wasn't a conflict, but there have been comments that have said stuff along the lines of "I've never enjoyed TheNextWeb" and some other slightly harsher stuff.

4. Maybe I am taking myself or ourselves too seriously, I don't really know. I do know I'm not a spammer though and genuinely just wanted to do something which I'd been thinking about for a while...I also figured it was rather personal & bold, in the sense that very few other tech sites/bloggers would consider doing it.

And hey, I admit it did feel a little hostile at first, but thanks for updating your comment with that last line.

A press release would be a good way to get this across to a different audience -- advertisers and competitors, mostly. (Actually, the company I'm with does some PR work; email address is in the profile).

Just imagine reading a post like this from, say, the reddit guys. They might say "In the coming days, you'll see fewer Lolcats and conspiracy theories, and more thoughtful essays and insightful humor." But there isn't a clear path from here to there, and once we're there, we'll know about it -- so you're announcing something that either a) will happen, and won't need to be announced, or b) won't happen, making the announcement dishonest.

It didn't read at all like a press release, by the way.

i have made no previous judgment on thenextweb, having never really read it before, but here are my immediate thoughts:

just looking at the first page, this is a segment of the headlines i see:

"All the 3rd Generation iPhone rumours in one handy image" "Is Microsoft forcing Bing on IE6 users?" "Microsoft brings Twitter and Facebook to XBox Live" "Exceptionally refurbished Mac mini"

and all the rest are similar. these aren't the types of articles people here are interested in. they're tech fluff, things that will maybe bring in eyeballs from a digg or something.

start writing articles i'm interested in and i might start reading. and odds are, HN readers are on the same boat. if you want to know what types of articles the community likes, look at whats at the top of the front page.

I hear ya but to be fair, you missed a number of the homepage post titles there.

I realise HN is very entrepreneur/developer orientated but I've seen plenty of stuff from other tech orientated sites that are discussed heavily on here.

Some examples of our content which I think you would be interested in:

1) "News site sued for the way Google summarised one of its pages : http://thenextweb.com/2009/06/02/firstdutch-news-site-sued-g...

2) "Who watches the watchers? The BBC gives it a go" http://thenextweb.com/2009/06/01/watches-watchers-bbc/

3) "Jeffrey Veen brings us typekit, a store for embedded web fonts" http://thenextweb.com/2009/06/01/jeffrey-veen-brings-typekit...

4) "Help build a global ‘Sound Map’ with this Google Maps/mobile mashup" http://thenextweb.com/2009/05/30/build-global-sound-map-goog...

5) "Connecting to the Internet with a 1964 Modem" http://thenextweb.com/2009/05/29/connecting-internet-1964-mo...

fair, but i didn't pick those out because i'm neutral on them. not particularly driven to read them, or have read them elsewhere.

edit: i'm kind of interested in #4 and #5, but those are not on the front page. like i said -- i only looked at the articles on the front page.

I semi-agree with the comment about this sounding like a press-release - re-read it and you'll see that this reads like advertising copy.

However, I'm perfectly willing to believe that you wrote it specifically for the purpose of "advertising" your site here. To that end I think it's fine.

However, I observe that even though you say you're an avid HN reader, you haven't posted a "reply" with the URL to ensure that you get a direct link. You've left it to individuals to copy-n-paste the plain text from your submission.

I find that interesting. Perhaps you're not such an avid reader and didn't realise it would be useful, perhaps you're not technical, and didn't know it was necessary, or perhaps there's another reason.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts/comments.

For reference, here's a direct link: http://www.TheNextWeb.com

Cheers for the honesty...about the URL...

The only reason I didn't post the link was because i didn't want it to appear like I was spamming...that is honestly it.

In regard to this being an advertisement, I can honestly say it was just meant to be a note to you guys in the hope that I guess yeah, we'd see more of our stuff shared on here. Nothing more, nothing less.

As I say, I'm content to believe that. I'm sure if you re-read with these comments in your thoughts you'll see what people mean. You would probably have been better, in hindsight (wonderful thing!), to simply say - "URL is under new management, and I hope it's now more relevant to HN."

Sometimes less is more, a lesson I need to remember.

Feedback about the site content. I'm confronted by a long page with articles that are more than a screen long. If I don't like an article I'm forced to scroll down in the hope that the next one will be interesting.

I won't do that more than once. And I didn't.

Respect for reaching out to the HN community the way you did. Will take a look over.

Well, best of luck to you. I've never heard of your site before (that I can recall), so it will be starting "fresh" in my case.

Produce interesting content for us to consume, and we'll be more than happy to have you in our community!

I think this was the previous HN account of his site. http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thenextweb

Best of Luck man, I hope you come out with good content.

cheers mate, much appreciated

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