I've done better, I can be honest about that. Way better. I'd give this a 5.5/10 on my scale. I wanted to focus in more on the type of things Hipmunk and hellofax are doing. Disruption as a whole is another topic and would take a lot of time to write, hence why I've held off.
As for the title. HN automatically changes from "X ways" to "How To", so I just did it to save the editors + pg time.
As a sidenote, the comments on HN have gone to shit lately. We always complain about HN going to shit,but I finally think it's almost at that point. Maybe it's Jacques leaving or something I can't put my finger on, but the magic is gone. A lot of the comments focus on minute points that don't address the topic at hand. Before you say "oh it's because it's your article", I say, hold on a second. The comments are focusing in on whether hipmunk is disruptive instead of the actual points of the article, aside from Swombat's. It's not even trolling. People are still very nice. It's just insight. I'm not learning as much as I used to here.
I wouldn't say it's because of your article, but I'm not sure it's such a new development... Geeks have always had a propensity for focusing on minor points of disagreement... (particularly when they disagree with the title/subject)
Focusing on the article, I think it would have been better presented as "Things Hipmunk is doing right" - then it would have an implicit context, and could be insightful without generalising to all disruptive startups. In a way, the "disruptive" tag did more harm than good, by focusing the discussion on people arguing over whether Hipmunk is disruptive according to their personal semantics...
Oh well!
(PS: Sorry for the 'tough love', but I knew you could take it ;-) )
Sure, but recently it's been arguments about minor points with no substance. I almsot feel like we're getting meta here. heh.
Don't apologize about the tough love! Listen, when I don't perform, call my ass out. I don't like sugarcoated things and when I'm below par, I need to be told. To me that's just straight up love.
Ok. I'll volunteer what I hope is constructive criticism.
- As others have mentioned, the title is misleading/bad.
- There's very little tying back what's being expressed to specific actions that Hipmunk has done. For instance the sections "Be Disruptive, But Respectful" and "Call Out Your Competitor" would have been better if they had actually pointed to or quoted from something issued by Hipmunk that was respectful or called out a competitor. Many of the sections use examples from completely different companies, which would be fine, if there was at least one specific concrete example from Hipmunk.
- Having been part of a recently built flights meta search engine I just see your bit about "Look For An Industry That Rarely Changes" to be completely uninformed. Not sure what scope you're talking about, but travel, airline, online booking and flight meta-search have all changed a lot over the past few years.
- In the one place where you did use a concrete example, "Work Towards Building Fanatics" the example is the mascot. A few more, and more substantive, examples would have helped.
- Finally it would have been appropriate to point out some of the weaknesses of Hipmunk to build credibility, and ease the breathless tone. Perhaps in the section about "power users." As someone who travels a lot I tried Hipmunk but currently mostly use Kayak (note that's not the one I worked on) because it has more flights and more search options. The pretty interface is nice, but power users, by definition, are willing to forego a pretty interface if there's more, you know, powerful options available. Kayak in its current incarnation just offers way more options for me to slice and dice the search to find what I want.
As for the title. HN automatically changes from "X ways" to "How To", so I just did it to save the editors + pg time.
As a sidenote, the comments on HN have gone to shit lately. We always complain about HN going to shit,but I finally think it's almost at that point. Maybe it's Jacques leaving or something I can't put my finger on, but the magic is gone. A lot of the comments focus on minute points that don't address the topic at hand. Before you say "oh it's because it's your article", I say, hold on a second. The comments are focusing in on whether hipmunk is disruptive instead of the actual points of the article, aside from Swombat's. It's not even trolling. People are still very nice. It's just insight. I'm not learning as much as I used to here.