Designer News Moderation Decline
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A story about why Andrew Wilkinson's acquisition of Designer News failed to maintain its success.
"I talked to Andrew Wilkinson about Designer News, which was basically a Hacker News clone just for designers. When I asked him how it was going, he said it's basically dead and done. He got his money back from what he paid, but he doesn't anticipate making much more.
Here's what he told me about why it failed: You have to get a whole bunch of people to visit daily, and you're only as good as your posters because it's social news. There's endless ways to game the system with bots, which people do a lot. This means you need constant moderation and algorithms, which requires expensive developers. You also need real live moderators, which is also expensive.
If the content quality gets bad, everyone just moves to Reddit. It's like catching lightning in a bottle - it has this magical network effect, but it's hard to maintain."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.