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A comment on Ask HN: How do sites like Reddit, HackerNews, etc get initial user content?.

Re:Ask HN: How do sites like Reddit, HackerNews, etc get ini... by jedberg on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @12:27PM (#15654569)
For reddit, all the content was submitted by Steve and Alexis at first, then they got a couple of friends to start submitting.

To make submitting for themselves easier, Steve made a special submit page that would also create an account at the same time, and then make the submission from that account.

After a while they noticed people they didn't know were submitting, and then PG mentioned them in an essay and things started taking off.

They knew they had something the first day they didn't have to submit anything.

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Re:Ask HN: How do sites like Reddit, HackerNews, etc get ini... by heinrichf on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @12:35PM (#15654681)
About Reddit, they tell the story in this live episode of NPR's How I Built This: http://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=545635014:555389162
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Re:Ask HN: How do sites like Reddit, HackerNews, etc get ini... by moretai on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @01:37PM (#15655475)
Why does NPR have so much good content on stuff that I am looking for?

Just the other day on HN on an article about Netflix, someone posted a conversation with someone who works at Netflix from planetmoney. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/13/550793717/epis...

I need to delve into npr.

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Re:Ask HN: How do sites like Reddit, HackerNews, etc get ini... by craftyguy on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @02:56PM (#15656343)
NPR seems to prioritize quality over quantity and clickbaiting.
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Re:Ask HN: How do sites like Reddit, HackerNews, etc get ini... by dsr_ on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @02:57PM (#15656351)
Because that's their business model.
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Re:Ask HN: How do sites like Reddit, HackerNews, etc get ini... by daram on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @05:14PM (#15657641)
Wow, every news outlet should become a "publicly funded non-profit membership media organization."
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Re:Ask HN: How do sites like Reddit, HackerNews, etc get ini... by ninjapigeon on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @12:52PM (#15654877)
I enjoy hearing Reddit's story from time to time. It's a nice reminder on the hustle it takes when starting a company.
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Re:Ask HN: How do sites like Reddit, HackerNews, etc get ini... by propter_hoc on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @01:37PM (#15655472)
PG rolled up his sleeves personally as well, if you look at his account [0] you will see him contributing very actively in those early days.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/u/Bugbear

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Re:Ask HN: How do sites like Reddit, HackerNews, etc get ini... by andrewljohnson on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @12:54PM (#15654908)
Did the founders create sock puppet accounts early on, so new users would get more comments and votes, and feel like the community was bigger and more active?
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Re:Ask HN: How do sites like Reddit, HackerNews, etc get ini... by legohead on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @12:56PM (#15654937)
Yes, they've admitted as much. [1]

[1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/z4444w/how-reddit...

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Re:Ask HN: How do sites like Reddit, HackerNews, etc get ini... by jedberg on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @01:21PM (#15655257)
There was no commenting at the time, but yes, there were sock puppets for voting and submitting links.
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