Comment by YeGoblynQueenne
3 years ago
I was going to say this is totally pointless. And it is but it's also fun.
But, does it mean that HN is now a proper social medium? Or can I still brag about how I don't use social media at all ever (except linkedin)?
"Social media" has no real definition, I suppose, but I don't consider a crowd-sourced link aggregator with comments to be that. You probably at least need primarily user-generated content and some way to explicitly follow specific people and customize the information view based on a user's personal network. We have no networks here. Also, no avatars, sparse profiles many don't even fill out, all leads to users who are less memorable than even the old vBulletin days. I can think of exactly two users off the top of my head whose user names I'd even recognize. I think that is part of the point, too. You're supposed to focus on the information content here, not the person who submitted it. It's backwards compared to what I would consider social media, where the focus is very much on who.
It's a third party service that's entirely external, separated from and unaffiliated with HN, so your illusion of not using social media can remain undisturbed :).