Reverse engineering my #1 Hacker News article

stevage

I'm torn between "nice writeup" and "ugh, a guide to making viral content on HN?"

cafeinux

Being viral, for content, is not always bad: it can make an otherwise boring or tedious subject engaging and enjoyable (and on the other side, a fun subject might appear boring if badly written), which I think is what this article is about :-).

wirtzdan

Yes, fair point!

I tried to reflect on some lessons from this, because I learned from the experience that small things (e.g. the title) can make large differences.

Which means that often good ideas or nice articles might get unrecognized, because they lack a good "packaging".

Making sure those things are on point helps.

But that should be it.

rscho

One just needs to write "LLM" to get the same effect ;-)

fallinditch

Ooops you did it again! Good analysis.

It makes me think: we may be living in a golden age when human analysis and thought still produce the most interesting content. Soon AI-assisted content generation processes will take the next evolutionary step: doing proactive analysis and concept development with the human being more like the back seat driver and director.

AI powered writing assistants, music generators, life coaches, etc, will get so good that authentic solo human creation may become a rarity.

(Tangentially, if you ask Perplexity for tips on writing blog posts that are likely to go viral on HN you'll get the above post, only 6 hours old, as a reference)

SethMLarson

Love it, having an "aha-moment" is always a great indicator that it's something worth sharing! I encourage others to share their ahas so we can all learn together.

wirtzdan

100%!

block_dagger

The "try-it-yourself element" was what got me. Very close to the top of the article was a simple exercise that the reader could perform themselves, and when it "clicked," it was magical. I upvoted it for this reason.

EDIT: Typo

uhoh-itsmaciek

Nice analysis. The point about titles is interesting: given how content spreads on the Internet, it's really an invitation to potential readers. If you take that too far, it can devolve into tacky link-bait, but it's worth thinking about how to summarize your post into a handful of compelling words.

wirtzdan

Exactly!

As mentioned in another comment, I think it's sad if one writes an amazing article but it stays unrecognized or gets little traction simply because the title was a bad choice.

But at the same time, we have lived long enough with clickbait to know it works (unfortunately), and this shouldn't become a place where people are lured into low-quality posts.

Liquix

something not mentioned is the importance of timing. for example a link posted on saturday 11:00PM pacific will not receive nearly as much attention as the same link posted on a friday at 7:00AM pacific.

qianli_cs

I’ve seen several blog posts trying to analyze HN data on the best time to post. However, the results are all over the place. For example, the below ones have different recommendations (weekend vs weekday).

- https://blog.rmotr.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-hacker-news-...

- https://medium.com/@mi.schaefer/what-is-the-best-time-to-pos...

But the precondition is that you’re submitting high quality content.

wirtzdan

Yes, I think so too.

At least for this post, I made sure to post it in the afternoon. To have an overall between Eurpean and US time. (I'm based in near Amsterdam)

valtlfelipe

And you made it again! :D Nice writeup. Very interesting analysis.

wirtzdan

I thought it would be nice to immediatly do a write-up.

Otherwise I push it into the future and it never happens.

Happy that I found some time this week.