May the Features Be With You: 8 New Additions to Boost Your HackerNoon Game

The below updates are reflective up to April 30, 2023

Hey Hackers!

The last months have been filled with new features, from a new Subscription Feature and Tech Brief Podcasts to comments reactions, poll comments, and Startups Of The Year 2023 launch.

Continue reading and be amazed by all our new shiny improvements added to the platform since our last product update on March 24th!

New For Writers

Subscription feature

Our new subscription feature allows you to connect with your readers in a whole new way. Now, your readers can sign up for your newsletter and receive your content straight to their inbox, meaning your audience will get front-seat access to your stories as soon as you publish.

How It Works

It's easy; there are 2 places where readers can subscribe.

Under your profile on the sidebar at the top of the story
On your profile page

You can even do it if you’re logged out - with or without a HackerNoon account!

This feature also lets you export the email addresses of your subscribers at any time. All you need to do is go to your Newsletter Stats page -> Download Subscribers

Pro-tip: read our dedicated writers’ note to get some tips on how to grow your mailing list and engage with your readers.

Lots of AI images Improvement

One of our favorite features got special attention these past months with new improvements. Starting with the ability to add AI-generated images along your story instead of just a featured image: click the + button on Editor 3.0 and select "Image" to get the image selector board and all the image-uploading options, including Stable Diffusion. Here’s a quick demo:

Another great feature is our new AI image generator model, Kandinsky 2, which uses visual embeddings as an intermediate representation in the generation process to give you very bright and artistic creations.

Still, on the topic of Stable Diffusion, notice the negative prompt option in the image above?! That’s new! It allows you to tell AI what you don’t want to see in your generated image 😉

Twitter Embeds on Editor 3.0

If you’re a Twitter user, this new feature will be perfect for you! Twitter embeds are now available on our editor 3.0 - just add your thread URL, select Tweet or Tweet Thread, and watch it load on your draft.

When a Twitter thread does not exist on the HackerNoon system, a message will show on the screen asking permission to load it. After that, wait for the thread to be created and automatically loaded on the draft after a fresh reload.

New For Readers

Catch The Tech Brief Podcasts on Your Headphones

Don't have time to read all the amazing stories on HackerNoon? No worries, we've got you covered. Introducing the HackerNoon Tech Brief Podcasts! Now you can tune in and listen to your favorite HackerNoon writers on the go. We've got everything from business and programming to gaming and tech stories.

Our daily podcast will keep you up-to-date with the latest tech news and insights. Just search for "HackerNoon Tech Brief" on Spotify, Deezer, or PlayerFM to get started. Check out our list of Tech Brief Podcasts on Spotify and start listening now!

Handling HackerNoon Newsletters Was Never This Easy

Whether you’re on the lookout for fresh and exciting content or want to unsubscribe from newsletters 🙁 there’s only one place you’ll need to go: your email settings!

Our user-friendly page gives you full control of what goes into your inbox, including our Tech Brief newsletters. You can easily activate or deactivate them from your profile settings, giving you a personalized and curated inbox that perfectly suits your needs. Don’t forget to click the save button at the bottom of the screen after customizing your preferences.

New Emoji Indicators

Remember Emoji Credibility Indicators? Our expert context tool has been providing transparency for writers and readers for a while now by disclaiming a writer’s vested interest.

And now, it has been further improved with added emoji credibility indicators, such as On the ground, Comedy/Satire, Fiction, News, Guide, Review, Press Release, Vídeo, Podcast, AI-assisted, Product Launch, and Interview, among others.

Comments, Now More Democratized Than Ever

Comments are one of our favorite ways of keeping in touch with you and seeing those user-on-user interactions always sweetens our day. This time, we took it further, allowing emoji reactions on comments and upvoting and downvoting!

Way to improve your comment experience, ahn?!

But that’s not all: now you can also add comments on any poll, which means you can now rage against or celebrate the most voted option, exchange opinions with other community members, and have fun while doing it.

Startups of The Year 2023

Startups of The Year (SOTY) 2023 has officially started, and so have the nominations and voting for the best companies around - this is your chance to help us recognize and celebrate the most innovative startups of the year and their impact on the tech industry.

What's new this year?

🌎 There's a global map! To get to a city of your choice, simply click on one of the dozen HackerNoon clocks on the homepage. You can also search for any city via the search bar, or any of the 6 regions, including:

🗳️ Last year's winners can be found in the "Last Year Votes" section under each city, like this one.

📜 Each city comes with a rich tl;dr of the history of the city, as well as the startups scene of the city. You could also browse around the web links for startups news within each city. For example, see the history of Singaporean startups here.

Make sure to visit startups.hackernoon.com and support your favorite startups!

And if you have your own startup on the run for Startup of the Year, don’t forget to claim it!

Thank you for being a part of the HackerNoon community and for helping us celebrate the best of the best in the tech industry.