Hacker News vs Slashdot – Post Mortem Analysis

In March, two of our articles were featured on the frontpage of both Hacker News and Slashdot.  After reading a recent post on HN with details of a post mortem analysis, we realized it was important that we share a bit of our analytics as well.  We logged into our analytics account, and we were absolutely stunned.

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Long Live Slashdot

Our interview with Suren Ter posted on March 14, 2012, featured the most discussion amongst all posts on that date.  We found it quite interesting that the thread had ignited so much discussion.  When a colleague notified us that the article was featured on CmdrTaco’s website, we braced ourselves for the impact of the Slashdot Effect.

Hacker News aka Literate News

Our article on Hacker News was about the loved and hated Bitcoin.  With only 73 votes, the article remained on the frontpage for the greater part of the day on March 17, 2012.

An Analysis

As there are many variables at play, it would be naive to claim that these results can be used to formulate any conclusion.  However, it appears it may be safe to say that Slashdot is no longer the Slashdot that we all once knew.  Further, it is highly likely that readers on Slashdot scan headlines (or read summaries/excerpts) whilst hackers on Hacker News read and digest everything (or click and idle).  It is quite arguable that the contents of the stories played a role in shaping these results. However, based on others’ post mortem analyses of HN posts cross referenced against the large volume of discussion on our Slashdot’d post, this argument may not be valid.

Statistics on Alexa still show Slashdot as more popular than HN:

Web Browsers

For the most part, it looks like Slashdot is read by a fairly equal share of Chrome and FF users, whilst HN definitely favors Chrome.

Operating Systems

This was a bit of a shock.  One would imagine Linux to be the top contender from HN, but it appears Steve Jobs’ legacy remains the champ.

Please let us know in the comments if you have had similar or conflicting results to the ones we have published.