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Ask HN: When will the first HN account appear on eBay?

10 points by tantadruj ↗ HN
In the times of World of Warcraft, virtual power positions quickly appeared on eBay and high point user accounts reached up to $2K.

Hacker News has its own karma based system, which gives high karma users a power to create destinies of stories and also users.

Since first page HN listing with an interesting title can generate 2000+ UQ visits in 6 hours to a specific target group, this definitely has some commercial value.

We've seen bots that automatically submit influencer blog posts to HN to gain karma. There are some Chinese farmers on HN which are building their karma to impress pg for YC submissions.

When will the first HN account appear on eBay? Or will it be single upvotes sold to generate long term income for farmers? Do you think this is already happening undercover?

22 comments

[ 0.76 ms ] story [ 960 ms ] thread
mihar
Should happen soon because people are attracted to power by nature. Let's wait and see what kind of valuation one HN karma point gets.
rf45
I'd say, round $0.1 right now.
limmeau
I don't think anyone would want to buy my account for $78. That's a pair of headphones or a big harddisk or nine months of Dropbox.
tantadruj
Until you put it on eBay/market, you'll never know :) but I think $78 is pretty viable if you put yourself in pants of somebody that has to test/launch something
rokgregoric
My bet would be more like $0.01 and a $100 for a 1000 point account.
franze
why the jump in valuation at 1000?
rf45
Wouldn't there be an escrow problem ?
tantadruj
I don't think so, because this can be done over a cup of coffee. Everybody is in the Bay Area anyways :)
dwwoelfel
Will someone please explain why this has been voted down so far. I could understand a 0 or -1, but in this case, I don't understand what warrants another downvote when it is already at -4.
limmeau
The rewards of owning a high-karma account are limited. You don't get to upvote a frontpage item more than once (or do you? not at 780). Your comments may receive an occasional fanboy upvote, but that only creates more karma and doesn't shift the visibility of your message by a large amount.

So in conclusion, I don't think HN accounts will be traded much. Perhaps more if the frequency of "free invites to our beta service for HNers with 1000+ karma"-promotions increases.

bmelton
While you still only get to upvote once, as I understand it, that vote counts more than once based on your karma.

Regardless, while you might get high karma values based only on article submissions, that isn't going to impress anybody. When PG is looking at your HN account, he's almost certainly looking for insightful comments, vs. just a high karma score.

It's really hard to farm out quality comments to somebody else, and have it matter at the same time.

pmjordan
as I understand it, that vote counts more than once based on your karma.

Unless there's been a recent change, each vote has the same weight unless it triggers voting ring detection.

hcho
When the price of a high karma account becomes attractive to the owner. So, probably never.
TuxPirate
We have been maintaining a set of HN accounts used to rank stories on the first page and it has been a valuable asset in gathering instant attention of a fairly large amount of users in a short amount of time.

Works, as opposed to what some people suggested in some comments.

tantadruj
I knew it :) Thx for being sincere.
TuxPirate
I'm such a good liar.. On the internet.
JoeCortopassi
Meta-threads like this are a perfect illustration of how HN is declining. It does nothing to motivate/inspire hackers and startups. Instead we waste time up-voting/discussing things that have no relevance to real life. If someone wants to waste money buying an account based on "Karma", let them. Karma = nothing in real life
dwwoelfel
Someone could sell their HN account in real life.

"Relevance to real life" is not a good indicator of a submission's suitability for HN. The Minecraft CPU has less relevance to real life than this submission, but a Minecraft CPU definitely deserves the front page.

pg
"Hacker News has its own karma based system, which gives high karma users a power to create destinies of stories and also users."

HN karma gives high karma users a power to change the color of the top bar when they're logged in.

rms
I had thought about doing this for a while and giving the money to charity so that pg would look bad for banning me, but was convinced that it was more valuable to have my HN account. I think right now I'd value my Hacker News account around $5k, so would probably sell for $5k or more to the charity of my choice.

It's not my karma points that allows me to get things on the front page, but my intimate knowledge of the Hacker News ecosystem and voting process. The bonus I receive for having a possibly recognizable username is minimal.

As far as I know, Hacker News is the last reach of the social web that has not been hijacked by people selling votes. But I'm probably wrong.

tptacek 

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