The Tech Beat and 18 Other Mind-blowing Features: the Age of Writers and Readers

The below updates are reflective up to September 30, 2022

Product is 90% creating “delight” and 10% functionality, and even amid a new Noonies season, our devs haven’t stopped working around the clock to keep improving your experience on HackerNoon.com! Since our last product update on August 11, we’ve tweaked a few quirks and introduced new features we hope you’ll love.

#Fresh for Readers

The TechBeat and Trending Companies, now Live on Homepage

Introducing: the Tech Beat - a Trending Technology Stories page where our readers can check the most popular stories by reads, engagement, latest, and comments. This is part of our strategy to provide readers with more data all around, similarly to the Trending Tech Companies launched last few months.

You can start your expedition through the Trending Tech Stories and Companies by visiting HackerNoon's homepage, where you'll find some spicy updates live! For a detailed report on the trends:

• Visit the official TechBeat and subscribe to our weekly newsletter to check what Top Trending Stories broke the internet in the past 24 hours;

• Discover trending Tech Companies Pages and subscribe to the Tech Company Brief (sent every week on Monday/Tuesday and written by a human editor!) to get the free and timely data-driven insight into which tech companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness.

  
  

Github: verified ✔️

Developers keep the world going! At HackerNoon, we have a strong developer Community willing to freely share the knowledge they've acquired. Our Community has now published nearly 10,000 stories and counting on all things related to software development.

Hence our strong bonds with GitHub, which has been one of HackerNoon's closest allies for some time now, and we've treated it with special care.

Emoji Credibility Indicators 😋

Ever read through an article thinking to yourself: should I trust this writer? What's their vested interest? Worry not - the Emoji Credibility Indicators are here to add this kind of context to your stories, from sponsored and original content to educational content, providing transparency for writers and readers alike.

Emoji Credibility Indicators are chosen by the writer, reviewed by the editor, and displayed on the story page below the contributing writer's biography. A story can have multiple emoji credibility indicators, and readers can search stories based on a category.

In order to see the indicator descriptor (i.e. "👁️ Original Reporting"), readers need to hover over the emoji. This action will display a sentence stating the meaning of the indicator concerning the story (i.e. "This story contains new, firsthand information uncovered by the writer.").

A few examples of emoji credibility indicators are the following:

HackerNoon strives to answer that question, leading by example with emoji credibility indicators.

Turn Your Favorite Quotes into Shareable Images

You know when you’re reading a great story, as you often do on HackerNoon, and find a quote that launches you into a mind-blowing realization? And now you want to share it with the world. We’ve been you! That’s why our devs created a quote-sharing feature! So, whenever you highlight a text in a story,  you can either copy the text or generate an image. If you choose the latter, you’ll get your quote as a HackerNoon image to hold or share on social media. Sweet, right?

Noonification as Blog Post Forever

More great news: our Noonifications emails will live forever as HackerNoon stories!

Forget about going through your email inbox in search of the top stories - now you can access the all-time best tech stories on our website! How? Every time Noonification runs (every day at noon), a new draft will be created and submitted to the Noonification account. This historical curation makes it easier to share and reflect on what professional technology editors read as you search for and enjoy them at any time!

Moreover, having your stories featured on the Noonification means more distribution and views for your work. By compiling the greatest stories in one piece, HackerNoon can expand the level with which we share them with our readers.

To read Noonification on HackerNoon, go to "Read" on the top Nav bar and select "Noonification." You can also find the articles on the #noonification tag!

Polls’ Glow-up

You’ve met our polls on the homepage and we’re sure you have loads of fun voting each week. Now, we’ve made it even more entertaining by adding a page where all polls are stored for posterity! Moreover, every poll will have its own page dynamically generated so our users can share it and embed it in stories!

#Fresh for Writers

Profile Pages Got a Facelift

Profile Pages are all about you, our users, being the center of attention! Let us demonstrate what we mean 😉

1. Your profile's name and @handle are in the upper left corner with the biggest font to make your name stand out.
2. Your bio stands right underneath, with a maximum of 3 lines to keep everything aligned. A good reason to be succinct with your bio :) !
3. Total time read is on the upper right (a user’s favorite), followed by the social media div.
4. A show-stopping badge section where it'll show the badges earned. What are badges, you ask? To start, nominees and winners of Noonies, Startups of the Year, and Writing Contests will get them (see here for example). We will add other badges for all users soon!

5. On to the good stuff!

   1. If you are one of HackerNoon’s verified writers, users can sign up for a newsletter that’s all about you! They’ll find it on the left side of the screen, along with an about page on the right side.
   2. If you have optimized your Call to Action: you can see it green, grey and even rainbow color, full-width and more eye-catching than ever.

6. And it all ties together with the buttons section, which is in the bottom center. Here you can consult stories, comments, favorites, bookmarks and saved quote images!

A Draft Eden

We know what it is like to have so many ideas that one draft just doesn't suffice. And if you're the kind of writer who likes to jump back and forth between drafts, we've made some changes to guarantee that that is as painless as possible. Thinking about people who have too many drafts, our talented developers created a page solely for that purpose, making it easier to find what you're looking for. Thus, if you don't want to look for your story-to-be on the writer's dashboard, you can hit Drafts on the Sub Nav and see that page come to life.

Mention Your Favorites

We've all heard the saying "built on the shoulder of giants." Well, mentions are a way of building on top of what others have done. As nothing is built from the ether, it's completely okay if you're using others’ content to back your own pov. When you give people, companies, coins, or other stories a shoutout, your story, in return, carries more weight. Readers will get a more comprehensive understanding of the matter at hand. And you, the author, will not fear the shame of the "credit stolen" label because we know you did the hard work!

That’s precisely where story mentions come in handy: all your mentions now show at the bottom of your story page. This new feature makes it easier for readers to spot all your mentions and for you to keep tabs on your tags on stories.

Story Stats’ New Aesthetic

Your story stats pages have been remodeled!

Our devs have added a line graph showcasing the total amount of time read to give you the complete picture of your story's success. Moreover, the comment section has expanded to full-width, displaying commenters, the story's writer, date, and time. The vertical line distinguishes the writer and other commenters!

We have also added a 2-column-layout for reactions and around the web:

• The reactions default section exhibits the number of reactions for each emoji. When clicking on each emoji, another section will appear with the number of users who reacted using that emoji.
• Around the web contains links to where the story was shared, with related publications and/or platform thumbnails.

CAPITALIZE IT!

So you’re writing a story, hit publish, and then notice you forgot to capitalize your title. Bummer! That stops now. Our devs made the necessary changes so that you won’t have to worry about uppercases anymore. All your future draft titles will be automatically capitalized for your convenience.

Pin It!

If you are a minimalist, we hope you love how our WYSIWYG editor is a simple blank page with plenty of possibilities for your writing. However, now you also have the option to pin the story settings to get quick access to important functions, such as messaging an editor, optimizing our 8 tags, or adding context to your story via Emoji Credibility Indicators.

Jazz up your Links

Another fun feature you’re about to become thigh with is the embeds in stories. What’s this, you ask? Well, it’s a game changer for your links: when you paste a link URL on editor 3.0, a pop-up will appear asking if you want to embed your link. Tap the embedding button to watch the magic happen.

More Noonies

Noonies have reached the threshold of 100k votes and surpassed last year's votes total with only 1 month left!!! 🍾

Voting closes on November 15, and now is a good time to remind your community to support you!

And did you know we have a Noonies’ easter egg? Just search your screen’s upper right corner to hear the official Noonies Jingle!

#Fresh for Brands

Limited pricing BAA is Live

We love our brands and want to help them make the most out of HackerNoon products while getting the best cost/value ratio. Thus, our Brand As Author program has been updated to include a limited-time offer that will get brands some incredible discounts. If you scroll down the BAA program page, you'll find a Countdown Timer that lets you know how long you have to jump on our special prices.

Until the 31st of October 2022, brands can get their hands on the following discounts:

• 63% Discounts on 5 BAA Credits
• 70% Discounts on 12 BAA Credits
• 80% Discounts on 52 BAA Credits

Visit the Brand As Author program to find out more about our offer.

$100 Per Story Promotions Are Live!

Following the efforts of the HackerNoon team to consistently up the game for the brand content published on HackerNoon, every brand story now receives $100 on social media ADs!

Brand stories now benefit from personalized Twitter ads targeted specifically to the story’s audience to make sure a story reaches its widest user base.

The moment a story is published, it gets right into the distribution workflow! The story is automatically shared on our major social media channels - Twitter and Facebook. Once the story is shared with our 83,000 Twitter user base, its distribution effect is multiplied by creating a Twitter ad to increase the traffic to your story. Check out this story for more details.

Winners, you shine bright like a diamond!

If you ever tried your luck in a writing contest, we know you’ve put all your heart and computer parts into it. And if you won, you should have your award hung high and proud on the greenest website on the internet. That’s why our devs created a special landing page just for our writing contest winners - so they can forever live in our heads, rent-free.

Scoring Some Game Pages

Trending Blockchain Games pages are officially out! Similar to companies and coin page listings, the weekly trending blockchain gaming report is a free and timely data-driven insight into which blockchain games are rising and falling in the public consciousness. It's a great way to learn the business overviews and stay updated on the internet mentions of the Blockchain Games that run the world.

If you'd like to have us create your Blockchain Gaming page, you can fill out this form.

Slogging along!

Hackernoon took Slogging to new heights, making it available to download on the Slack App Store. Slogging is a Hackernoon app that allows users to turn meaningful tech conversations into high-value Hackernoon articles. The recent launch facilitates downloading the app and adding it to existing communities - within seconds, tech and marketing companies with large slack communities can access Slogging and start repurposing everyday discussions. Try it out here.

Thank you all for being a part of the HackerNoon community!

Post written and compiled by Linh, Mónica, and David!