Re:Why Paul? Why Did You Change It? (About Hacker News)
by simen on Wednesday August 15, 2007 @02:55PM
(#42761)
I guess the existing user mass is a big reason why changing focus instead of starting again is preferrable.
Personally, I don't care about startup news, so I didn't bother to register until now; obviously I think it's a good idea. Perhaps my opinion doesn't count?
Re:Why Paul? Why Did You Change It? (About Hacker News)
by davidw on Wednesday August 15, 2007 @04:07PM
(#42785)
Presumably existing users are smart enough to track another site.
It has some downsides too, such as overlapping content, but it might not have been a bad idea.
Re:Why Paul? Why Did You Change It? (About Hacker News)
by simen on Wednesday August 15, 2007 @04:19PM
(#42790)
It doesn't take much intelligence to follow two websites, but it does take some more effort.
Also, it's perhaps that the site now caters more to the target audience than to the thing that unites them (Y combinator/startups).
This site is, after all, a subdomain of the YC site which is an early stage investment firm. n.yc.com made sense since it dealt with YC company news stories, VC investment, angel investment etc. stories. If you wanted to get funding from YC or wanted to learn how VC investment procedure works, this was a perfect complement to the main YC site. Now n.yc will become another reddit and will get flooded with all kinds of nonsense and will get a lot of "how do I haxor my ex's myspace account" since "hacker" really means cracker to like 99% of the internet population. Instead of spending 10 min to get an idea what the latest trends in investment community are, you'll have to spend 20+ minutes while. As for being bored and you're a startup founder, you're in trouble! And if you're really bored and need to read something, there's plenty of reddit & digg subdomains that are interesting.
This new site will lose focus and will degrade into another digg or reddit. Second law of (thermodynamics) Internet almost guarantees it. Paul, if you want this site to become bigger and grow and become a better reddit and all that, why not get a new domain and start it there? Why destroy what works?