ASK HE: Why is HE dying?
HE started slowly, but for some time it had a fair level of activity. Lately, the number of submissions, votes and comments has really plummeted.
I have some ideas about the possible reasons, but if among the 1442 registered users there are still some who will read this and would care to give their reasons for not participating actively, I would be curious to know them!
For me, it's partially because the design is harder to read than HN and because HE is just trying to be another HN. Which, as others have said, makes no sense.
I wished that HE would be a place where European entrepreneurs help other entrepreneurs better understand the different European markets. More blogs about Europe, more questions and less news. The traffic is lower so I won't come for the same news that I already saw in HN, but I will come for great discussions about marketing, strategies and ideas to help us succeed in Europe.
I think the moderators should be more strict about what can be on HE and what cannot. HN differs from Reddit because the content is more heavily moderated. And I think that HE should do the same : make clear guidelines about what type of content is ok and what is not. Enforce those rules.
So, more community and less "news". That would make sense to me too.
Yeah, I think I agree with this as well. Maybe something like a more documentary format - almost a Wiki or (as you mention above) Stackexchange sort of thing.
Is it dying? It's ticking along at a Europe-specific post every day or two, and I check it for that reason alone. I'm going to be in Budapest for a year or two and I'm trying to get a sense of the greater European startup community, and I think it's meeting that need, for me.
I will say, though, that the lack of some of HN's functionality is a pain here. It's difficult to participate in a real discussion if you have to remember where the heck it was, so I'm eagerly awaiting a list of my comments that also includes a link back to the discussion.
If it isn't dying, for sure there has been a marked slowdown in the last month... take a look at the average age of discussions in the home page.
OK, granted, there was an initial surge of interest, and now it's in the slough of despair. But that doesn't necessarily means it's dying - it may just be finding its natural niche, and that niche may be stable but at a low level, or even growing, maybe a year from now.
Hackful started as an experiment and set out to build a Europe-centric platform for Startups and Entrepreneurs. Among the founding team we had different visions and ideas about where Hackful should go.
The reason why I co-started Hackful is the fragmentation of the different European startup and entrepreneurial ecosystems.
The Hacker News model is a good way to aggregate news and information but it is not a very engaging model and in my opinion is insufficient to do justice to the complexity of the different European ecosystems.
How can we best connect the different startups, groups, events, blogs and associations and enable all of us to share, discuss and collaborate?
My big dream is to develop hackful into a neutral tech startup industry association for Europe.
It is very difficult to bootstrap a project without a clear and shared vision...
Personally I'm not so sure about an industry association (can "startups" be an industry?), but for sure I'd like to participate in a collaborative tech startup online community for Europe. I think that, beyond the differences, there are enough common problems that it would be very helpful to find common solutions.
I'm just brainstorming now; to create such a community we would need one killer application, something that gave enough value back to participants that they would really want to participate even at the start, when there aren't so many people yet. An HN-like formula isn't probably that application. Maybe a Questions and Answers (Quora or stackexchange-lie) website about starting up in Europe could be the right start? Together with some kind of discussion forum for simple general discussions, to know each other etc. - you know, the social thing?
HN is especially good at filtering the most interesting content among thousands of uninteresting submissions. We probably don't need that, at least not yet, so we should focus elsewhere :)
I can definitely say that I've only posted on HE in the past few weeks as a means to distribute my blog articles - and I've recently felt like it is unfair for me to do so (I think I've got about 7 articles on the landing page). I think that HE needs to be treated more like a startup - do One thing great (for Europe) and then do another. You can't expect Network effect to kick in immediately just because you imitate HN. Europe needs a community center for startups - It probably won't be a HN look-a-like
You are maybe a little too prolific as a blogger :P but it's not your fault if there aren't other interesting posts here. Please don't stop!
Talking about a community center, what do you think about a G+ or FB group, to start with?
A group will disappear in the morass of other groups. I'd rather see something integrated here. Personally.
I'd like that too, personally. I'm just worried about the work that would require from the creators of this website... and the time it would take (admitting that they were interested in doing it).
The site doesn't keep me logged in, so I can't be bothered commenting.
Had to login again to type this.
HN hasn't prompted me for my login for months.
Dave
Because it feels like whatever you want to submit here is duplicate content from HN or suits there also - only there is wider audience.
If you look majority of posts in HN they are not U.S or Silicon Valley specific. So why not just post there.
And startups are either world wide or specific to one country. So HE users don't have much more to tell (or give help) about launching a startup in Slovenia than HN users would IMHO.
So you don't think that there are some problems (and solutions) that would be common between EU startups in different countries? Maybe there isn't enough integration yet, but there is already some and maybe if we start reasoning (and discussing) in an integrated way we could help that...
Maybe because it just cannot compete in current form against Hacker News?
The European niche may not be enough to draw people away from HN. Currently it feels like duplication of effort - I might as well just post of HN to access a wider audience and more traffic....
Competing with HN would be foolish... it should be something different from HN, in a very clear way, yet compelling.
I think we all appreciate the merits of a European centric site. So does HE need to boost traffic and valued contributions; or pivot the platform?
With more committed and regular European centered discussions it may move away from the HN crowd and attract more interest.
Otherwise maybe some small suggestions may help:
1) Create a Quora type Q&A site for European Startups.
2) Give 'Ask HE' type threads higher points value to encourage open discussion rather than link submissions.
3) Penalise non-European entries.
4) Add key categories (like Stack Exchange) to filter on submissions (idea evaluation, product design, funding).
5) Rank freshness of post higher than older higher points posts.
HE never came to life like HN did because it made the 2nd step before the 1st one. It was never started as a network of alumni who wanted to help others with their knowledge, it was a rip-off of a news network while the network never existed and therefor fails. Period.
I remember that the founders said that actually there was a network of London based startuppers behind the project. But maybe the network isn't able/willing to manifest itself here...
also
https://github.com/8bitpal/hackful/issues?labels=Feature+Requests&state=open
https://github.com/8bitpal/hackful/issues/43
Blogospam/news links are not interesting (HN is sufficient to get up to date), you should focus more on discussions.
Also, bugs ( http://imgur.com/GRWdI )
Don't you read your server logs / had automated bugs reporting ?
yeah, that as been like that for a couple of days, now. I submitted some bug reports through twitter, but no answer.
Actually I would like to hear some thoughts on this discussion from the team behind HE.
It gives me the impression that the admins are not really serious about Hackful. Or maybe they're just Ror juniors and can't fix the issues ?
Aaand, now it's killed the "New" page. That doesn't bode well.
Agreed, i'd really read interesting discussions rather than just news
Excuse me if this is incoherent. First day back after one of those lovely post-conference bugs.
Still give a quick look at the headlines each day. My problem is that the intersection between: a) stuff I find interesting; b) stuff I haven't already come across somewhere else
seems to be quite small on HE.
Hmmm.... I think my expectations of the site (which may well be different from everybody elses :-) were that I hoped it would become the "not silicon-valley" community, rather than the "Europe" community. In outlook, approach, etc. - not just in location.
From these first answers, I would say that the lack of a very clear focus and differentiation from HN is the main problem. It is to be seen if such a focus can be found...
I tried to participate as much as possible in the beginnings (about 4 months ago), but i figured out that people were using HE mainly for advertising purposes.
Maybe people here don't know how to use HE the right way (as if there is a right way), maybe the european reticence or courtesy is hindering a flourishing of HE, maybe there isn't happening that much in EU to report about (that's definitely not the case), i dunno ...
or let's say: 99% unenthusiastic
Maybe it's just the HN formula that isn't the right fit for the European startup scene, or at least not yet. For a low-volume website, probably a website that allowed an easier way to create a community would work better.
HE, In my opinion is not dying as long as people who are participating here get what they want, For instance I am Editor at a social media blog, if i will get readers from here for my blog, i will tell my friends about this cool website and hence it will pass on and traffic to this site will be boosted.
Also, the Founders of this website should be visible, This site should also have social media presence that is on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
Creating a facebook or g+ "group" to get more social could be the easiest (even if probably not best) way to creating a community that grows with the project. Alternatively, it could be possible to set something up with Community Engine or something similar. Anybody interested?