Why this blog will never appear on the front page of Lichess

The Pub Sub Model

Lichess uses pub-sub (or at least I think that is what it uses) from a high level, basically, pub aka publisher posts a message that the sub aka subscribers receive and then can act upon it. below is an image explaining the idea.

In Lichess cases the user who posts the message aka the blog gets posted in the message queue and the subscribers aka the followers of that user will receive that message as a notification. Now Notification service can be connected to create a sort of Pub-Sub + Notification database that will keep track of notifications users have caught and possibly not spam them! I am not so sure about how Lichess would do it, but generally below shows what I'm talking about it.

How Do Blogs Get Popular?

Well that's a big question I had while making this blog, but I think it comes down to 3 things

- The number of subscribers the publisher has
- The rate at which the publisher gets new subscribers to sub to his messages
- the quality of messages sent

Let's think about it in detail,

if I have 2 subscribers or in Lichess terms 2 followers who will receive a notification when I publish this blog, the chance of that blog being in front of the Lichess page will be really low, because Lichess will always broadcast a blog with more hearts. After all, the system assumes more hearts = good content (widely accepted content), which makes sense. From that logic no matter how well my blog is, and how well it is written it's no use!

Now you are thinking how those rando non-popular stat guys get their blog post on the front of Lichess front page?

That's where the rate at which the publisher getting newer subscribers gets to play,

see the trick here is once a publisher posts a message, the message will stay there until the pub deletes it, so when new subs subscribe to the pub's messages as time goes even though in the start the pub had fewer subs to like or upvote the blog, eventually as more subs subscribe to it (by marketing/social media sharing/word of mouth sharing) than eventually as time goes the pub's messages will get delivered to subs and than they can hear it or not.

Now see the thing is the rate of getting new subs to a pub is also related to the pub's message content! So even though I have 2 followers (let's say) I write well blog posts, that Might attract new subs, but Might is the big word here because quality is relative to the reader, so if you are going to fully rely on your messages quality than it might be a tricky luck game, because some might love your work and other might not. So, of course, you did have to spend good time on making sure the quality is there, because if it's a good piece of work, it can attract more subs, and increasing subs => getting more subs to like the messages and the more the likes the more popular it gets!

Why this blog will never appear on the front page of Lichess

The reason why this blog will NEVER appear on the front page of Lichess because first I don't have that many followers, nor I'm going to market this blog on social media, and finally the quality is ok (to me) but not the best-written blog.

it breaks the following rules

- The number of subscribers the publisher has
- The rate at which the publisher gets new subscribers to sub to his messages
- the quality of messages sent

The only real way this blog can get there is if the share rate (sharing by spreading the word) or organic marketing happens where the pub doesn't do much, but it's the subs who either like the message or share it with others!

(Note I am NOT asking to do this, but if you want to test/break the system you can)

That is the pub/sub model in a nutshell
Cheers guys
- Noob