HN frontpage 3 years ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20070405175109/http://news.ycombinator.com/

by whyleyc • 16 years ago

152 53 16 years ago

web.archive.org

Thought it would be amusing to take a trip down memory lane. I'd forgotten that we used to be "Startup News". Standout items for me:

- DropBox soliciting early feedback - PG's business plan for ViaWeb - Even then people were complaining about YC News addiction :)

Other frontpage editions here: http://web.archive.org/web/*/news.ycombinator.com

biggitybones• 16 years ago

Pretty cool to see Dropbox's Tell HN post on there.

eekfuh• 16 years ago

Exactly what I was thinking. -- Update 4/4/07: We haven't launched yet, but we are admitting people into the beta. We'd be happy to keep you posted about the beta program and launch (your email won't be used for anything else.)

far33d• 16 years ago

Ah how times have changed. Two of those top stories were submitted by me (albeit, not very interesting ones). I haven't submitted a front page story in ages.

whyleyc• 16 years ago

Made me chuckle - I'd forgotten that we were "Startup News" back then too. Posts of interest for me include:

- The original DropBox post

- Paul Graham's business plan for ViaWeb

- People back then complaining of addiction to YC News :)

Other frontpage versions at http://web.archive.org/web/*/news.ycombinator.com

Estragon• 16 years ago

  People back then complaining of addiction to YC News :)

It's interesting, that link isn't in either the archive or the contemporary HN. I wonder what happened to it...

edw5192• 16 years ago

I'm interested in almost every item on the hn front page from 3 years ago. Now I'm usually interested in only about 25% of them. I wonder what's changed, me or hn?

winter_blue• 16 years ago

It's sad that HN had lost so much of its former quality. Makes me yearn for the good old days.

philh• 16 years ago

If you're comparing your current interest in two iterations of hn, presumably it's hn that's changed.

For myself, if anything I'm more interested in today's front page, but there's not much in it. And I'm more into the hacking aspect than startups specifically, which might be relevant.

iamwil3• 16 years ago

Probably half and half. I read less than half of the stuff on HN now.

Part of it is a lot of it is not new now. I've read a lot about the lean startups, or joel's ben and jerry vs amazon, or mel the programmer, or the 500 mile email. I've been here long enough to have seen repeats of the same themes. As you grow, the less things surprise you, and hence perhaps less interesting.

And the other part is that I don't really care for the apple gossip, or a picture of woz, or the lighter stuff, but then again, I've only sporatically submitted stuff too.

I've noticed you've submitted less stuff and don't participate as much. The edw519 era has gone, where you submitted stuff and commented. Nowadays, it's the patio11 era, where he submits his own stuff and comments.

iamwil3• 16 years ago

Then again, glancing at the front page, there are still interesting things. Perhaps I just have less time to read it all and this is a compromise.

edw5192• 16 years ago

The edw519 era has gone

Oh I sure hope not. I love building things. I love hacker news. And I love talking about building things on hacker news.

It just seems that lately, I've been doing a whole lot more building than talking. Whenever I take my hn breaks, not much on the front page jumps out at me, so I just get right back to work. (This is a good thing).

It's probably just another phase. For the edw519 era to be truly gone, they'd have to pry my keyboard from my OCD hands.

[Ditto on patio11. Great stuff.]

sophacles• 16 years ago

When I first found HN I would eat up every design and technical story. I was all "w00t new knowledge!". Now I look at half the stories and go "bah, I bet that guy just discovered closures" or whatever. Amusingly, at that time I had been looking for a new "way technical" community to learn from, and now I'm here going "man, either HN sucks or i need to level-up". Looking at the 3 years ago page, I realized I need to go level-up.

tl;dr -- anecdotal evidence of iamwill's point.

tptacek2• 16 years ago

Apart from the Apple stories, the lists look pretty similar to me.

alexgartrell2• 16 years ago

Less the Apple stories, it's certainly not "harder" news than we have today.

  2. "I'm addicted to YC News"
  23. "Worst Company Names"
  24. "How to Kung-Fu Battle with investors"

FWIW, I've seen no discernible drop in quality since I registered here about a year ago.

dhimes• 16 years ago

I even feel like upvoting some of the comments.

Edit: doesn't work btw

chaostheory6• 16 years ago

IMO The changes in content probably stems to new.yc's name change from "Startup News" into "Hacker News".

I should start changing the content that I post.

bradgessler• 16 years ago

I found the % of interesting stories the same as is today.

locopati• 16 years ago

The more things change the more they stay the same?

MSFT: Always one step behind I am addicted to YC News Why to Not Start a Startup

GFischer• 16 years ago

Quite a lot more emphasis on startups. I like the current mix of news more (I wasn't here back then), but the original crew apparently doesn't like it that much (I've seen complains about us new readers turning this into the new Slashdot/Reddit/whatever)

yread• 16 years ago

Interesting to see the points inflation: where would you now find a 3 hours old story with 14 points? Certainly not at the top of front page!

jonp• 16 years ago

There's currently a 3 hours old story with 13 points in position 27; ie near the bottom of the front page.

joegaudet• 16 years ago

Where are all the Apple and Erlang stories?

apgwoz• 16 years ago

Also interesting to note that there are 50 stories on the front page instead of 30. Was loading 20 more stories really that inefficient that this had to be dropped?

coderdude• 16 years ago

Probably. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1283312

fogus• 16 years ago

Viewing your 3-years-hence profile is fun too. http://web.archive.org/web/20080113124511/news.ycombinator.c...

strait• 16 years ago

HN has now gone back in time and jumped itself!

Legion• 16 years ago

I'm glad it's not called "Startup News" any more. I probably would have just glanced at the page and left. And then where would I find the kind of techy, software development article links that I regularly add to my company's wiki?

Readmore• 16 years ago

Haha awesome! One of the, very few, days that one of my posts was in the top 3. Thanks, you just made my day.

yan2• 16 years ago

Does anyone conclusively know what happened to nickb?

prakash• 16 years ago

The last Miles & I heard from his friend, Nick B was/is alive. After that we didn't pursue it.

brown9-2• 16 years ago

Wow, I was just accidentally browsing the "3 years ago" HN for about 5 minutes, not even realizing that I wasn't looking at the current view.

jayair• 16 years ago

I remember emailing Dharmesh after he made that post. I was still in school and had just started getting absorbed into the startup culture.

rokhayakebe• 16 years ago

I felt emotional for a quick minute.

chaostheory6• 16 years ago

The change in content is by design: http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=78166

PG: "As of today we've expanded the focus of news.ycombinator.com from news about startups to news interesting to hackers generally. To reflect that we've changed the name to Hacker News."

"The goal is not to have just articles about hacking, but articles of interest to hackers. We're not trying to make something like programming.reddit.com, but something like www.reddit.com was in 2006."

ashishb4u• 16 years ago

How come nobody appreciated the UI!!! I personally believe HN has an awesome UEx quotient and would look the same even 3 and more years later!!

iamelgringo• 16 years ago

The articles were really only the gravy. The meat and potatoes back then were the discussions and comments.

ax0n• 16 years ago

While there are less "start a thread without a URL" discussions on the HN front page these days, I still value greatly the HN discussion about the links.

jrockway• 16 years ago

The leaders page is interesting: http://web.archive.org/web/20070406233614/news.ycombinator.c...

I think I've gotten more karma on some posts than existed in the system at that time :)

mwilcox• 16 years ago

Holy shit, 2007 was 3 years ago

chipsy• 16 years ago

I have some occasional complaints, but I like it how it is now, and it seems to be handling growth reasonably well. I vaguely remember reading it when it was Startup News, but I feel like I've absorbed most of the "common startup knowledge" already, hence those articles are ones my eyes drift pass. There was also a lot more overt pg-fandom in the early site.

elblanco• 16 years ago

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

danudey• 16 years ago

Did anyone else open the page in a new tab and forget about it, and then later on wonder why the heck every link on the HN front page went to archive.org?

It was crazy confusing until I noticed the address bar.

samratjp• 16 years ago

The page back then feels like a small village community. There aren't a crazy number of comments, just a few tacit ones. Today, HN feels like as if the small village had a gold rush of visitors and "tourists."

HN frontpage 3 years ago

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