Comment by dang

Comment by dang 2 months ago

29 replies

View on Hacker News

I've often thought about building something like this into HN itself and having a 'meet' tab at the top. There are so many people, me included, whose lives have been changed by HN. I would love to find a way to encourage more positive effects in the real world. Not sure exactly how this would work, but it's encouraging to see the community taking up the cause again, and I'll be interested to hear about how this goes. If people start having real meetups maybe we can sponsor a semi-official thread about them or something.

mikeknoop 2 months ago

I met my Zapier co-founder bryanh through HN 15 years ago when someone made a similar service to OP called "hacker newsers". We were the only two people in Missouri at the time which led to a meetup. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1520916

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  • spatx 2 months ago

    That's such an inspiring story! It's amazing how serendipitous connections can lead to something amazing. I had a similar experience meeting my previous co-founder at an in-person event in Austin where I was presenting. There’s just something special about those chance encounters, whether online or offline. I've also met a few incredible folks here on HN discussions in my city. It's one of the things I truly appreciate about this community—never know where the next great connection might come from.

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elashri 2 months ago

The problem will be that once this goes from the front page (on a weekend) then the chances that people will remember the site are low. Nevertheless there will be users who will not see the submission and would be otherwise interested into trying that. I think the voice chat with HN that was submitted last year (was it last year?) showed us that mostly after a day or two you couldn't find any activity.

I don't know how to solve that unless you actually have your idea of having "meet" on HN itself.

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  • robbomacrae 2 months ago

    Or turn it into something wider than HN.. a button that can be added to any page on the internet that becomes easier to recall "hey I wonder who else likes or wants to discuss this article on meet.x?

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  • generalizations 2 months ago

    Could even add a 'meet' entry to the tagline above each comment, if they use this. Presumably only visible to other people who set this up. Could be a good way to remind people it exists.

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  • zh3 2 months ago

    If enough people add the tag to their 'about' page, that could help keep it going.

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coffeemug 2 months ago

I would love to see a messaging system on HN. There are so many great people here; but most don't put an email link in their profile. I think adding very simple messaging (just enough to exchange contact info) would be a very positive force in the world.

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  • justmarc 2 months ago

    Upvoting this.

    It is extremely frustrating when you recognize a like-minded individual, you want to engage with them, befriend them, for the benefit of both, and you're just unable to because they neglected to add some contact detail/link/hint.

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  • fortran77 2 months ago

    I would imagine if they don't put an email (I don't) they don't want to be contacted. If people want to find me badly enough, they do--it's happened several times!

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    • justmarc 2 months ago

      This can't possibly always be true.

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      • wingworks 2 months ago

        I never had any contact details in my profile, in fact it was empty before today. I would actually love to meet like minded people. Just never thought anyone would want to (or be able to, I live kinda way out from where you'd normally find tech people). + couldn't be bothered to setup a burnable email in case of spam.

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detourdog 2 months ago

I would love to have a meet tab. Maybe those that want to meet could fill in the zip code and maybe a date range.

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  • BrandoElFollito 2 months ago

    I do not know how zip codes work in the US, but in France this is very, very specific to the city you live in. There is no concept of "area".

    The first 2 digits of the zip code are an area, but a large one.

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    • detourdog 2 months ago

      I think that is about the same as the USA. Do you think zip codes wouldn’t work. I thought that it was the simplest mechanism. A city is an area and it is easy to tell how close to a zip code one is.

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      • BrandoElFollito 2 months ago

        In France the zip code has the format XX-YYY

        XX is the départment, one of the two major administrative divisions in France. It is made of communes - "cities".

        It can be rather small like 75 - Paris, or of the size of half of Massachusetts (about 11000 km2).

        The YYY means that you are in this department but there is no distance relationship between the numbers. And then of course you can have a city in 78 a km away from a city in 92 and 30 km away from one in 78.

        It is true that this at last gives a rough estimation of where someone is

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        • detourdog 2 months ago

          I will study our zip code I do know that they seem to follow a sequence but I have never seen it broken down.

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spatx 2 months ago

I'm a little late to this thread, but I agree with others; the 'meet' tab would be an incredible addition to HN. Perhaps it could include features like location-based topic filters or even a 'looking to meet' tag where users can express interest in meeting others with similar interests. To keep things safe and inclusive, maybe we could have a 'verified meetup' system where members can host and vet events before they’re posted. I'll shut up before my brain dumps all my thoughts here.

On a related note, for any HNers (or hackers) in/around Austin, TX that want to meet, I'd be happy to help organize a meetup in Austin, if you're interested in connecting.

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amjoshuamichael 2 months ago

The issue with these kinds of meeting services seems to be that as the population of the online community goes up, the overall quality, and likelihood that you'll meet a real, friendly person, goes down. It's not guaranteed, but the ideals and culture of hackernews could help realize the full potential of that dream. As it says in the welcome page, "A community site that becomes popular will decline in quality... by making a conscious effort to resist decline, we can keep it from happening." I definitely think it would be something worth trying.

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ksec 2 months ago

Love a meet tab. I once tried to arrange a meet up in Hong Kong but then real life and work got in the way.

Would love an easier and semi official way to get things started.

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PromptCoding 2 months ago

might be cool to have HN demo days run in different cities regularly

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