I find the docstoc widget very intriguing, given how everybody here pretty much knows about Scribd as the startup to have opened up this arena. Although I'm not a Scribd user, the CrunchBase profile for docstoc is a bit annoying: "The YouTube of documents," even though that's what Scribd was intended as, over a year earlier.
One submission points to a new technology. The next points to the relevance, timeliness, and implicit power of the Hacker News community. If you've ever tried to market something you know how hard it is to be picked up by big-name bloggers; TC has as many as 3 million viewers a month between uniques/RSS. That's tremendous exposure, and it started right here only 12 hours ago.
If that marketing message doesn't speak to you that's fine... just don't vote it up.
By the way, thanks for the credit, but I never asked for it -- not in my tip to Mike Arrington, and not in this post which follows. That's not the story, and that's why I chose not to highlight it. Anyway I credited HN (not myself) in my message... Mike pulled the TC link from my email signature.
If you forwarded the link to TC, that's a testament to them following emailed tips, not News.YC.
It's also naive to chalk a story-meme's advance up to any one hop-path, because these things go in waves. If the concept has legs, it appears multiple places in rapid succession no matter what.
Also, TC has picked up things from News.YC before (hence the 'another' in your headline), and will again. Do we need an 'echo' story post every time? At best it's self-congratulatory fluff.
Which I brings me to the ultimate reason I didn't like this submission. I can no longer read TC directly because it's all snark, sophomoric analysis, sensationalist linkwhoring, and self-congratulatory fluff. I don't want News.YC to be thought of as a TC-feeder; I don't want hat-tips from TC to News.YC bringing more of that comment-community, hair-trigger-attention-span, and traffic-at-any-cost attitude here.
So there you have it. If it's impactful news that breaks at TC, it's still a good submission here too. If it's something we already read here, or echo-chamber navel-gazing ("look, he likes us, he really really likes us!"), it dilutes the unique value proposition of this forum.
I'll return the volley one more time. If you want the last word it's yours, but I don't think either one of us wants this to go any farther.
Like it or not, this site is at times as much about business as it is about hacking (see an Entrepreneur/Builder conversation vis a vis the top post on News.YC at the moment). That's owing to the culture PG has created by virtue of his writing.
The fact that you don't like TechCrunch isn't the point. 3 million others do. So getting noticed -- or at least having the potential to get noticed -- on that scale is a great business/marketing feat for Dragicevic, Ramos, Bibliowicz, and the other professors behind DimP.
At the very least a story like this is encouragement for the guys putting in thankless hours on a startup most of us will never see or hear about.
And as for posting an "echo story" every time a service that's mentioned here ends up moving on to other mainstream outlets... of course I'm not for it. Not at all. But you make it sound like getting picked up by big bloggers happens every day (or even every week) around here. For better or worse it's just not that frequent. So I believe this one had merit. That's why I shared.
I know you have solid intentions and I admire your inclination to defend the HN community from what you interpret as a potential threat. I don't agree here, but I understand your position.
