
Ask HN: Does the closed model of Product hunt really work for it? - superasn
Sometime back an open alternative of PH was created but I&#x27;m not sure how it is doing now. Haven&#x27;t seen or heard about it lately so I&#x27;m guessing it wasn&#x27;t as successful as everyone hoped it would be.<p>Are the founders of PH right in making sure it remains closed? Is curating by a few people a better alternative than a true democracy where anyone can submit<p>Just wondering about it, would love to hear your thoughts too..
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tyrw
We actually tried the "Reddit for products" model about a year before PH and
failed. They did a much better job cultivating a community and their site
looked much better, so I'm not surprised they had better success than us. We
also allowed anyone to submit.

Anyway long story short, about 90% of what was submitted was objectively
terrible, to the point that it made the entire site feel dumpy. Much more so
than your standard terrible content because it had the added negative of
trying to sell something. I don't know if PH started that way or not, but if
we had continued it was clear that a high level of curation was needed.

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iisbum
PH has always limited who is able to post things, primarily for this reason.

I know people have called them out for being elitist, but they have always
been very responsive to their community about posting things people make when
you reach out to them.

Yes it requires a little bit of work (and a good product), but it's not really
hard if you want to take advantage of what PH offers.

[Disclaimer: I'm a big fan, and very active user of PH for a few years now]

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stevekemp
The alternative site was called "Open Hunt" and closed down a year ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233967)

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superasn
Thanks. This is quite a good postmortem of the site and a very good insight on
what happens to a site after it drops off from the HN homepage.

A little OT but Anyone else have any numbers on how a successful launch did
after it dropped off the homepage.. How about Monicahq, it was quite a hit,
how many return visitors are you getting now?

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fratlas
I had something I created added to the site, and I had no previous knowledge
of it ever existing. Good discussion evolved around the post and some beta
testers. I quite like PH, never got the hate.

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andymoe
Don't know, but Angel List bought them for (rummord) 20MM in December 2016.

Never found PH or the stuff that showed up on it real compelling myself.

