Show HN: Wayback Letter - Looking back at 5+ years of Hacker News

Posted by duck on Friday June 08, 2012 @10:32AM
from the show-hn dept.

I just sent out my 100th issue of Hacker Newsletter and announced my newest newsletter: Wayback Letter - http://www.waybackletter.com/

In either a daily or weekly version, you'll get links to great HN articles from the past five years. A great way to see how HN has grown and changed, plus see what was going on at different times. Lastly, there are a ton of great reads to learn from that I never saw the first go around. Would love to get feedback and my goal is to expand this past HN in the future.

( 10 comments | 59 points | on HN )

Re:Show HN: Wayback Letter - Looking back at 5+ years of Hac... by pasbesoin on Friday June 08, 2012 @01:58PM (#4085405)

I had an archive of some of these older posts, that I lost (I know...). So, I'm glad to encounter something that is resurfacing them.

While change may be inevitable and something to be embraced, it was a different place back then.

P.S. I dislike the animated favicon, though. I don't like things moving in my peripheral vision.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Wayback Letter - Looking back at 5+ years of Hac... by Ygor on Friday June 08, 2012 @11:10AM (#4084549)

This is great.

I was just searching old HN stories trying to find the very first story on node.js. I thought it would be fun to read all the comments again and see the reactions. Still haven't found the story on node.js, but this is in the same spirit.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Wayback Letter - Looking back at 5+ years of Hac... by solipsist on Friday June 08, 2012 @12:55PM (#4085072)

Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but here are two links I found:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1884724/what-is-node-js

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=954682

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Wayback Letter - Looking back at 5+ years of Hac... by duck on Friday June 08, 2012 @10:33AM (#4084344)

Link: http://waybackletter.com

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Re:Show HN: Wayback Letter - Looking back at 5+ years of Hac... by duck on Friday June 08, 2012 @01:15PM (#4085191)

I should of included this earlier, but here is a sample issue you can check-out: http://www.waybackletter.com/issue/2012-06-06.html

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Wayback Letter - Looking back at 5+ years of Hac... by KateKendall on Friday June 08, 2012 @10:40AM (#4084379)

Congrats Kale. I've been loving TimeHop lately and think it'll equally apply to non-social content. Is there a way you can scale 'curation'? This is something I'm currently researching for The Fetch...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Wayback Letter - Looking back at 5+ years of Hac... by duck on Friday June 08, 2012 @10:47AM (#4084403)

Thanks Kate! Scaling is tough, but I think you have to use every type of feedback you can get, so for me I look at what is being read in each issue and finding patterns. Curation is all about the audience, which is why the newsletter approach works so well.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Wayback Letter - Looking back at 5+ years of Hac... by KateKendall on Friday June 08, 2012 @11:09AM (#4084543)

Have you thought of making the WayBackLetter a section of the HNL? Seems like you already have a great audience that wouldn't mind receiving a few links of all-time HN goodness in it. You could then save the neat WBL domain for multi-purpose cool reads from across the web!

Congrats again on the 100th issue!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Wayback Letter - Looking back at 5+ years of Hac... by duck on Friday June 08, 2012 @11:16AM (#4084584)

I actually have a "Classics" section in HNL already. This is why I started exploring this idea since that section always has a high CTR. Actually, in some issues one of the classics will have the highest CTR of any link!

Edited to add: And I mentioned it above, but my hope is to expand this beyond just HN in the future. :)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Wayback Letter - Looking back at 5+ years of Hac... by kew on Friday June 08, 2012 @11:30AM (#4084632)

I like the 'classics' section in the Hacker Newsletter especially when I'm working on new projects that are related.

[ Parent | on HN ]