Ask HN: How are online communities established?

Re:Ask HN: How are online communities established? by jaredwiener on Friday September 11, 2020 @12:09PM (#24444270)

I think there's also a very important step which is that often these successful communities have value even if others don't join -- what I've heard previously described as "Single Player Mode".

Instagram had filters and photo editing -- and could then also post to Facebook. Even if you knew no one else on Instagram, there was a reason to use it.

Github is still a great UX for Git. You can host your own repos and work with your own team, even if you never look at others.

Why do people want to join first?

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Re:Ask HN: How are online communities established? by nthacker on Friday September 11, 2020 @12:54PM (#24444698)

"Come for the tool, Stay for the network"

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Re:Ask HN: How are online communities established? by newbie578 on Friday September 11, 2020 @12:16PM (#24444338)

I had no idea about "Single Player Mode". This is very interesting and makes sense. Knowledge like this is game-changing. Thanks!

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Re:Ask HN: How are online communities established? by jbob2000 on Friday September 11, 2020 @12:25PM (#24444413)

This isn't helpful in the context of an app where its purpose is the community, so you haven't really answered OP's question. I can't play reddit on single player mode.

Communities start around passionate, interesting individuals. Reddit initially got popular because it was chuffed full of technologists who were openly sharing juicy details about their work. There were hundreds of other websites at the time that allowed you to curate bookmarks and such, but reddit had the people who made interesting comments on those bookmarks.

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Re:Ask HN: How are online communities established? by lxe on Friday September 11, 2020 @12:35PM (#24444513)

Reddit's single player mode is "news reader." Doesn't matter if it's aggregated by the community or curated. The reason why it blew up was because people migrated from another news aggregator, Digg, in 2010.

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Re:Ask HN: How are online communities established? by jbob2000 on Friday September 11, 2020 @01:02PM (#24444789)

Why did everyone leave digg? It wasn’t because they fucked up the news aggregation, it’s because they fucked up the community - the ambitious and passionate users couldn’t get their posts to the front page any more, it was reserved for people who were paying digg.

Reddit is awful at news aggregation, the front page is a hot mess of memes and clickbait. You have to weed all that crap out to find the people you actually want to listen to.

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