[liface]

Platform starts, intelligent, well-spoken early adopters sign on.

Fast forward 7-8 years. Platform is overrun by normal people.

Early adopters leave and move on to the next platform

The cycle continues.

[kordless]

Where are we going again?

[egeozcan]

We don't have to go anywhere. It's the joy of trying new ways to communicate and having feedback.

So we're going nowhere. We're just running in circles. Social circles, I guess.

[chippy]

Back to the safety of IRC - #hackernews freenode

[ducuboy]

It doesn't have to be this way.

If the platform is designed to cluster the users based on their interests automatically, you'd have early adopters and normal people co-existing without bothering each other.

That's what I'm working on now.

[transpy]

Let's see how (or if) Quora or HN follow that path.

[mtalantikite]

Well, HN used to be much more technical early on, so I'm sure some would argue it's already happened.

Long gone are the days of waking up to a front page full of Erlang posts in an attempt to scare off the general public whenever there was press about HN. I think it's been accepted that HN is more just general interest about startups these days.

[colinbartlett]

I don't really see Quora ever getting the regular Joes.