I'm not going to optimize content for SEO - been on the other side of that, and I think it creates content that's bland and ineffective. Humans gonna human, machines gonna machine, and I'm not paying for ads. If humans want the site to succeed, it'll succeed. Otherwise, it won't. Such is life.
I kind of see what you are saying, but it reminds me of “if you build it, they will come.”
They won’t come, because they won’t even know about it. A more accurate aphorism would have been “if you build it and tell everyone about it, some of them might come.”
Humans probably don’t want the site to succeed, because they mostly don’t know it exists.
It is different. If you SEO, you are actively changing content toward worst and less interesting. That is not the same as making the decision between market and not-market.
If you build it, and it's genuinely, uniquely useful, you won't be able to stop people from coming and inviting others to join.
Telling everyone about it is only necessary if you're indistinguishable from 100 different takes on the same thing, and trying to win a shouting match (this includes hurrying to shout the world down before competitors get a chance).
But as the saying goes, you are not in traffic - you are the traffic. The reason you need to shout is because of people like you shouting.
This man will build a product no one uses and then complain about the world not being ready for his genius instead of using the tools that everyone else uses to give himself a chance at success.
In all honesty and writing it straight: this kind of success you're writing of would best be not achieved at all, as it's poisoning society and civilization.
I'm not talking the success of a Facebook or an Amazon. I think to successfully make an impact in terms of helping fellow humans, reach is a multiplier just as important as the quality of the product.
Hrm. If you're talking about me: I doubt it. I've been a programmer for 30+ years: I've built a LOT of products, some of which got used, some of which ... didn't. If I was going to complain, that'd be new.
And I know how to do SEO and why. And I'm just not interested. "Success" for me... well, I mean, I'd love to retire today based on the brazilians of dollars some mogul hands me for the IP behind the site, but, uh, that's not what it's for. SEO at the service layer? Sure, it has a mode for the bots, it tries to make scanning easy for the machines. But at the content level... nah, I have been watching the world tune information - one aspect of the psyop the OP talked about - for decades, and I can't bring myself to do it.
> I think most users of websites like reddit, x, and yes even HN don't realize how much traffic is inorganic.
Came here to say this - I have always been extremely cautious and assumed most things online were just marketing tactics. But I never realize how far and how strategic some of these campaigns are.
I’ve recently started really getting my hands dirty with marketing for an app I’m building and the things I’ve learned in the past year have made me questions many of my views on things. At some point you realize that it’s all marketing or some form of effort to exert influence.
A good book somewhat related to this is Attention Merchants
Great but I wish after I typed a page or paragraph, it tells me what is the main issues in my typing and give me recommendation/practice to type those problematic characters I'm not good at. You may call it typing doctor feature or something like that.
As someone who maybe fired about Roblox once like three years ago, what does Roblox do that is way more addicting than YouTube and Instagram, and also I guess they're ignoring reports showing the harm even more than YouTube and Instagram, if I understand you correctly?
It's an interactive world - where games can be built by anyone (I personally know/met some of the devs) and all the games have some randomization/gambling mechanics involved. Lootboxes is just one tiny example. Infinite novely - there's literally infinite number of games one can play.
I don't have time right now to provide a full/quality answer with more examples - you can do a bit of seraching online to learn more.
Also from personal expeirence as well (from family and friends). When their kids comeover they have tiktok on their phone and roblox on their laptop
Right, but that sounds like a bunch of video games. Question is, is Roblox specifically designed to be addictive, like Facebook/Instagram/TikTok? And if they are, did the companies willfully ignore reports about how dangerous it was?
If the answer is just "No" to both of those questions, then it sounds like a regular video game that can be addictive (like everything else), but it wasn't specifically designed to be addictive, like some social networks are designed.
Aside from daily login rewards, loot boxes, gamifying gambling behaviors and FOMO designed micro purchases? Roblox is bad and many times if your nearby is absolutely not appropriate for kids and I’m quite liberal on what’s appropriate beyond normalizing emotional damage.
Not all games are created equal, I loved Zelda tears of the kingdom and the sounds and rewarding game were in my opinion addictive however they are not in the same league as roblox
The best part is when you get a cohort of a few families to go camping and teenage daughter forced dad to drive 45 minutes each way for cell service to avoid breaking the daily login chain.
I don’t think people appreciate how these mechanisms impact society as a whole
> Should you focus on SEO in the early days of your startup? Probably not
I would completely disagree with this (product dependent).
If your product is a consumer app - I would highly prioritize and understand SEO before even having a product complete. Develop a good understanding of SEO around your product domain and niche.
Some of these sites - wow. I literally can’t fall asleep right now (reading this in bed) scrolling through all these. So many good resources. Thank you for sharing. This is why I love HN
Using a webcam, monitor finger movements and find mistakes (using some sort of AI video analysis) to help user figure out how to improve. It's a hard thing to build but if you build it there is going to be paying customers. You can even sell hardware and subscriptions with it. Lots of schools want this!
Cool! I found your solution a while ago while searching for something similar, do you plan to support other locales and/or keyboard layouts in the future?
Good point - yeah, the idea is that it can help users stop looking down at the keyboards. It serves as a visual guide for how to position there hands correctly using the standard “touch typing” positioning.
Thanks for mentioning it was confusing - I’ll add a short Driver.js walkthrough that explains what it’s for
In general - I don’t know if it’s a coincidence but here on HN for example, I’ve noticed an increasing amount of comments and posts emphasizing the narrative of how “well- intended” Anthropic is.
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