‘JMAP (YC S10) Linux Inside is hiring‘: The Quest for the Perfect Hacker News Title
As a longtime web scraper and proxy expert, I know firsthand how valuable exposure on a site like Hacker News can be. With over 10 million monthly visitors, a spot on the coveted front page brings coveted tech traffic many startups crave.
I‘ve consulted data engineers at Y Combinator companies that attribute much of their hockey stick growth to a single HN thread. I‘ve also worked with bloggers who consider a front page appearance their big break.
But with thousands of headlines competing each day and a community obsessed with quality, grabbing attention is easier said than done. Just ask the 66.2% of submitters stuck at 2 points or less.
Curious what separates the attention grabbing outliers, I dug into the data…
Analyzing 2.8 Million Hacker News Headlines
As an experienced Python developer, I extracted 2,867,760 headlines posted from Hacker News inception (February 2007) through December 31st, 2019. This 158 GB dataset came from here.
After cleaning and processing in Spark, I systematically evaluated what high scoring posts had in common. My mission? Statistically determine and generate the perfect attention grabbing HN headline.
Here‘s what I uncovered…
Key Factors for HN Headline Performance
Brevity Wins: 1-2 Words Gets Most Upvotes
Length didn‘t impact median points as most posts never take off:
But for 5+ point posts I found extreme brevity crucial. One word winners included "Atom", "Hyperloop", and a famous release.
Recommendation: Craft succinct catchy headlines under 10 words.
Ask HN & Jobs Listings Overperform
Predefined categories like Ask HNs and jobs listings edged out classic posts.
For 5 point+ posts Ask HNs performed best by a wide margin. Job listings also did multiples better than classic headlines.
Recommendation: Consider an engaging Ask HN question or relevant job opening.
Mentions of YC Companies Correlate +376 Points
I found a +376 point lift for posts referencing Y Combinator backed startups.
Recommendation: Work in your YC pedigree if relevant.
Key Words: JMAP + Linux Inside
I analyzed words correlating to higher median scores. JMAP and Linux Inside stood out.
Recommendation: Consider integratiing industry terminology if not shoehorned.
The Winning Formula
After crunching 2.8 million headlines, my data backed "perfect" Hacker News title would be:
JMAP (YC S10) Linux Inside is HiringThis checklist optimizes all the key factors I found:
✅ Extremely short at 4 words
✅ Mentions a YC company + pedigree
✅ Asks a question
✅ Contains a high performing keyword
✅ Job listing catches attention
I submitted a post with this title to validate my methodology. Fingers crossed!
Bonus Insights
Python Edges Out JavaScript
Against conventional wisdom I found Python slightly more popular than JavaScript:
PyTorch is also gaining rapidly on TensorFlow reflecting the ascendance of deep learning.
HN Lingo Trends
As an avid reader for 10+ years the rise and fall of tech buzzwords is fascinating.
Seeing React skyrocket reaffirms my belief it will stand the test of time unlike early leader Backbone.js. The explosion of generative adversarial networks and Reinforcement Learning also show the immense progress in deep learning just in the past few years!
I plan to continue mining this HN dataset for new insights over time. Let me know what else you would be interested in seeing analyzed!
