What is social OSINT monitoring?
Hacker News and Reddit are two of the internet's most important discussion platforms for technology, security, and business intelligence. Monitoring mentions of companies, products, domains, or individuals across these platforms reveals public sentiment, security disclosures, data breach discussions, and competitive intelligence that may not appear in traditional news sources.
Key Terminology
- HN Algolia
- Algolia maintains a real-time search index of all Hacker News content including stories, comments, and polls. It provides full-text search with relevance ranking and date-based sorting — much more powerful than HN's built-in search.
- Reddit JSON API
- Reddit exposes JSON endpoints for search, subreddit listings, and post details by appending .json to any URL. This provides structured access to posts, scores, comment counts, and metadata without requiring API authentication.
📰 HN & Reddit Monitor — Frequently Asked Questions
What sources does the social monitor search?
This tool searches Hacker News via the Algolia API and Reddit via its JSON search endpoint. It returns posts matching your keywords with engagement metrics including score, comment count, and posting time.
Can I monitor mentions in real-time?
The tool performs on-demand searches rather than real-time monitoring. For continuous monitoring, you would need to re-run searches periodically. Results are sorted by relevance or date depending on your preference.