Beacon

@dmitric @MikeOrMatt i'm a huge fan am closely reading / following / sharing with writerly friends - nice work! are the results what you expected? what have you guys learned since starting it? to what extent is it about competition or community? are writers as responsive as entrepreneurs are to getting in convos?

@eriktorenberg Thanks -- The results are not what I personally expected. I expected writers would mostly submit their own stories and try to get their own stories up to the top for the sake of competition -- like entrepreneurs who like to win on Product Hunt -- but for the most part they don't do that. Perhaps because it's not top of mind, or because they write for their own sake, or because an article doesn't have the same gravitas as a company you are putting all your waking hours into. They are definitely not as responsive in general. We have a few power users who now compete a lot after we added a karma leader board. Most of the power users aren't upvoters or commenters, they just love to submit things. I have observed the same pattern on reddit and HN though for power users who are mostly just chasing karma. We haven't really done much with community stuff because it was a summer intern project, and almost everything is entirely automated... but it's at a point where we are now getting writer leads from it, which is nice for our core business.

@rrhoover it's effective enough (keyword is enough) at bringing in new writers to the platform and increases awareness and distribution. It's definitely a workable channel, but as you know, it takes a lot of time and effort.