A jacquesm comment led me to build HN for the rest of the world. How it works.

First of all: thanks for writing the post. I was one of the people who asked you to, and I'm glad you took the request seriously. It's much easier to see now what you're up to.

Now: I think you are misunderstanding the nature of the problem. What makes HN HN is not, by and large, a function of the software, but rather, a function of the people who happen to hang out here-- who were attracted by something other than the software.

So, if you wanted to get an HN-like-community gathered around, say, knitting, you'd need some way to get a large enough community of knitters together together to get the ball rolling to create traction (i.e, the chicken-and-egg problem.) The easiest way to do this would be to have the active, committed involvement of the-Paul-Graham-of-Knitters, whoever that might be.

For an object lesson in how this works, take a look at StackOverflow. They were able to get immediate traction because the pump was primed by readers of Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky. Note that they have not yet been able to gain similar traction in any other vertical, and have a lot of VC money working on it.

That being said: what is the salient difference between "A Hacker News For The Rest Of The World" and "Reddit"? What can I do with your software that I can't with Reddit? Follow up question: is this advantage significant enough to make up for the enormous head start they have in terms of users?

EDIT (I clicked before I was really finished, oops):

Finally: "a hacker news of the rest of the world" is not, in my mind, a pretty solid elevator pitch. HN is not a business, and generates no revenue. And, the people who hang out here are not at all like "the rest of the world" in many ways-- in fact, some of us take pride in being outliers. So, I'm not really sure that the notion is solid. If you got traction, I can't begin to imagine how you'd keep the trolls out, or keep the conversation focused in each of the "interest networks".

Still, I wish you luck.

It seems like what you're doing is Reddit + some small changes. Wouldn't it be best to just fork Reddit's code base? (Unless you want to keep your code closed source, of course.)

Just tell me how this is different from http://www.reddit.com and please convince any of us here that this is better than reddit for the premise in your post.

[edit]

Sorry I found that my comment is very similar to michael's (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2343485) I guess the point is very clear, if it is not different from Reddit, (think how Facebook is different from myspace), then the only deterministic factor is the niche user-base which makes it viral.

So, a few things.

No Facebook login? I know you're probably still working on things, but that seems kind of big. I know there are pros and cons to using a universal login (specifically marrying yourself to FB), but because you've pitched this as "for the rest of the world," I don't see much sense in it not being an option.

24 hour time isn't necessarily confusing, but not UX friendly.

I tried to add an event and received Rails' "We're sorry..." just btw.

I really like the city-centric reddit idea. But that already kinda exists...on reddit.

I dunno—it's so much the people that make HN what it is...it's hard.

If "isn't married to any particular vertical", how is it any different from Reddit?

I mean why should I use it and not Reddit?

Nice endeavor! I especially appreciate the clean design.

You shouldn't really worry about the Reddit comparison, as there are many more potential users in the world than there are redditors. On top of that, you are free to pivot as you like, while Reddit's users won't let it change.

I've written my own HN copy for Hebrew-speaking Hackers (http://bitorama.com), and I'd be very interested to read how things go for you. Best of luck!

I like it, and just registered.

If you can avoid being another Quora (i.e. littered with social media experts seeking yet another channel) I'll like it even more.

Whatsupedia doesn't work properly even in full screen on my monitor (at 1366x768) - by which I mean the "use these to view a more specific community" image pointing to the sidebar never becomes fully visible. Minor design flaw, but irritates me. Pressing the "add to favorites" arrow (which doesn't exactly communicate what it is visually save through the tooltip) presents a message telling me to login; it should instead send me to a login/register page. The directory button uses the standard symbol for home, which is confusing. Under "recent posts," pressing the link for the second page reloads the entire page (requiring me to scroll back to the bottom); either reloading just the recent posts box or using an anchor to push my browser back to the bottom of the page after it finishes reloading would be better.

I like the design a lot (good job!), but I think you should work on the navigation.

It's needlessly confusing and doesn't feel right even after one understands how it works. I was about to suggest how to improve it technically (move everything into a sidebar-tree), but then realized that imho you should just scrap the hierarchical "community" concept altogether.

Why not adopt a tagging approach like Quora? That way stories can belong to multiple "communities" (tags) and users can filter according to their interests.

I think quora invented something very powerful here, a forum based on the same principle could very well become the next reddit.

Hmmm.... this seems more like a different reddit then a different HN.

Good looking site. Don't care for the domain name.

I like where your heart is, I fear it will be hard to build true community with a boil-the-ocean approach.

this is a weekend project (over x-mas actually) that has a similar motivation: Dynamically creating communities and discussion in a manner that treats topics as first class, as opposed to following people (reddit/HN vs twitter), with the hope that quality pervades http://hashpost.com

For now it's mostly cat gifs and youtube videos, but it's topic generation is dynamic by simply adding #tag to your posts.

> share with people exactly like you

No thanks.

Is the "to view a more specific community" your own writing or a font?! If it's a font, may I know which one it is? Thanks

Idea is neat but the post is a bit mr meta no?

If you're serious about wanting to build a community, I suggest you read Building an Online Community [1] by Matt Haughey, founder of Metafilter.

1: http://www.digital-web.com/articles/building_an_online_commu...