In the times of World of Warcraft, virtual power positions quickly appeared on eBay and high point user accounts reached up to $2K.<p>Hacker News has its own karma based system, which gives high karma users a power to create destinies of stories and also users.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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?
"Hacker News has its own karma based system, which gives high karma users a power to create destinies of stories and also users."<p>HN karma gives high karma users a power to change the color of the top bar when they're logged in.
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.<p>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.
<p><pre><code> All: Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!
Karl: Who leaves Atlantis off the maps?
Lenny: Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
Alien: We do! We do!
All: Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star?
We do! We do!
Skinner: Who robs cavefish of their sight?
Homer: Who rigs every Oscar night?
We do! WE DO!</code></pre>
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.<p>Works, as opposed to what some people suggested in some comments.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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