[simba-hiiipower]

well, i tend to view reddit as the 'hacker news for everything' if that counts..

otherwise, i don't really think so. but i'd argue its related in that reddit has made such sites largely unnecessary. subreddits can be as narrow or broad in topic, and as open or regulated in curation as one wants. i see little value in a 'finance news' (for example) when there's /r/finance and probably around 100 other finance-related subreddits out there..

[pmelendez]

There exists /r/programming and /r/coding and HN is still here.

In my opinion the success or failure of a site like this depends whether or not it has enough traction to start a good community, which at the end is what makes the difference.

[simba-hiiipower]

while i think it is a factor, i don't buy the whole 'good community' thing being as important as many here make it out to be..

i think hn benefits mainly from the fact its backed by some big-name influencers whose activities are highly relevant to its target audience. their presence is essentially a feature of the site that provides value beyond ‘link aggregation and discussion’.. it’s a differentiating feature, and is one that’s very difficult one for a new entrant, like a subreddit, to overcome. it also probably helps a lot that hn predates reddit..

these other ‘hn-like’ sites have no such differentiating features, and that’s why i don’t see them ever taking-off.. and given that reddit already exists, they’re often competing against subreddits which benefit greatly in terms of visibility.

[queensnake]

> hn predates reddit.

It doesn't. Paul Graham has said he made it to be like Reddit 'used to be' (in the early days, most of Reddit's users were sock puppets of the founders, and it was pretty high quality).

[vasilipupkin]

I personally don't give a rat's ass about the influencers. I come here for the articles and general discussion.

[dpeck]

hn is interesting because its the intersection of technology/startup life/entrepreneurship and all the sub genres within those.

Intersections don't translate as well to subreddits.

[ckarmann]

Something that differentiates reddit with the set of HN clones is the discovery: on any subreddit you have a list of other subreddits and you can search for them if you want to explore about a new thing. Every HN clone is its own little island and can only count traffic from Google to build a community after the initial HN announcement. They should try to link to each other, or at least there should be a wiki page somewhere that lists all HN for X.