Assuming I'm reading the data correctly, your friends' votes were rejected by HN's software on that second submission. Randomness is the biggest factor on /newest, which is why we allow a small number of reposts to begin with: to give good submissions multiple cracks at the bat.
Thanks, helpful to know! I would have thought reposts would be penalized. Is there anyway to potentially mitigate the randomness factor though? For example by measuring things like impression time, bounce rate, and so on.
