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Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

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Track Tech Trends Before They Go Mainstream — Hacker News Data Extraction

#webdev #ai #tutorial #productivity

Hacker News is where tech trends start before they hit mainstream. Tracking what gets upvoted, discussed, and debated on HN gives you an early signal on:

  • Emerging technologies (what developers are excited about)
  • Startup launches (Show HN posts with traction)
  • Industry shifts (what's being criticized or praised)
  • Hiring trends (who's hiring, who's laying off)

Two APIs, Zero Authentication

HN exposes two clean APIs:

1. Firebase API — official, real-time

https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/topstories.json
https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/{id}.json
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2. Algolia Search API — full-text search with filters

https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?query=web+scraping&tags=story
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Both are free. No API key. No rate limit anxiety.

What You Can Extract

Each story gives you:

{
  "title": "Show HN: I built a market research tool",
  "url": "https://example.com",
  "author": "startup_dev",
  "points": 342,
  "comments": 89,
  "created_at": "2026-03-20T14:00:00Z",
  "tags": ["show_hn", "story"]
}
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Search API adds: relevancy scoring, date filtering, tag filtering (show_hn, ask_hn, job, poll).

Use Cases That Generate Revenue

Trend detection: Search for "[your technology]" weekly. Track points/comments over time. Rising trend = market opportunity.

Competitive intelligence: Search for competitor brand names. See what HN thinks about them — unfiltered.

Content ideation: Top stories reveal what developers care about. Write content that addresses these topics.

Lead discovery: "Who is hiring" threads list companies actively growing. Target them for B2B services.

Product validation: Search for your problem space. If people are actively discussing the pain point on HN, there's demand.

Ready-to-Use Tool

I built a Hacker News Scraper on Apify that wraps both APIs. Search by keyword, filter by date/type/points, get structured JSON.

Also available: 500+ market research reports that include HN data as one of 9 verified sources.

Custom data extraction — $20, 24h delivery: Order via Payoneer | 77 free tools

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