
Show HN: Siftery Trending Products - m1chael3ma
https://siftery.com/trending
======
skewart
It's always interesting to see what tools people are using, but to be honest I
was a little disappointed that everything on the list is a well-established,
already popular app. I was hoping to see more in the way of new and up-and-
coming stuff. In other words, I don't gain anything if a website tells me
GitHub, Slack, and Sketch are popular.

That said, I think the overall problem of productivity/business software
discovery is one that will grow in the coming years as we see a shift away
from traditional enterprise dev and sales and towards a more consumer-like
model. And Siftery is smart to try to build buyer trust and own the buyer side
of the equation. We may well see a lead gen industry emerge in b2b software
that looks a lot like the lead gen industry for consumer products like, say
credit cards.

~~~
ggiaco
Interesting thoughts! We're definitely trying to strike a balance between
reliability and short-term popularity. One of the ways we're trying to solve
is by every day pushing up "wildcard" products that are getting traction.

Another of our bets is that since a user can only recommend a product once,
over time the more obvious products should find it relatively more difficult
to get new recommendations and newer products will surface.

This effect might become more noticeable with some filters (e.g.
recommendations only from YC companies).

~~~
someotheruser1
IMO you need two lists: "Popular Lately" which is what this list is now, and
ALSO "Trending" which is sorted by some measure of recent growth.

That way up and coming stuff doesn't have to dethrone github/slack/etc in
order to get seen.

~~~
ggiaco
Separately, one thing I'd be excited about is filtering by users at companies
in a certain grouping (e.g. by Geo, industry, or some other affiliation like
YC or 500 Startups alums). Siftery can do this since users have verified
business e-mails.

Does this sound interesting?

~~~
skewart
Slicing and dicing in that way by geo, industry and whatnot, would be very
interesting as someone looking to build and sell software. It's always really
helpful to know what different kinds of prospective buyers are currently using
- and if they're excited about it or not.

As a prospective software buyer, however, it doesn't necessarily sound all
that interesting. I mean, so what if a lot of companies that are in a similar
location and industry to mine use Bitbucket. That doesn't tell me if it's
actually great or if they just don't know any better. And if fin-tech
companies that went through YC love using Aha for product roadmapping, it's
kind of the same thing - what does that really mean?

That said, I can see some situations where it would be interesting. If I'm
looking for software that has intense compliance or performance requirements,
then know what other people in my industry use would be helpful - so I would
know that I'm making a reasonable decision.

Also, what would be super interesting would be knowing what software
transitions/replacements people have made. For example, if I'm using JIRA and
not really loving it it would be really cool to know what people who have left
JIRA have used to replace it. A lot of times I've found myself not entirely
satisfied with some work/productivity app and wondered if there's a better
option out there, but then found it can take a lot of research and
experimentation to answer that question so I just go back to the status quo.
Seeing that a lot of people have happily made a transition I'm considering -
or maybe a slightly different one - would be cool. Of course, you may well not
have that kind of information for a long time.

------
teej
From the "how does this work"

> How do products trend? What causes a product to trend? Products are ranked
> based on the number of users who have recommended the product in the past
> month (we’re using a rolling 30 days).

Ok so this isn't trending, it's popularity. Typically you want to normalize
such that items with evergreen popularity get sifted out and you're left with
items growing in popularity.

A marginally better approach might be to look at % of like growth month over
month, with some floor of likes so that going from 1 to 100 likes doesn't
dominate. This isn't perfect but it should kick google drive, Dropbox, and git
out of the list.

~~~
ggiaco
We're looking into ways to improve the ranking, so thanks for sharing that
teej. We actually started with a normalized and more complex algo that was
more along the lines of what you suggest, but the resulting feed had mostly
random products and was not very helpful for more casual users. It also made
it difficult to understand _why_ a product was ranked. I think you're right
that as it stands, we can do more to surface younger products. So far, we're
doing it manually with "wildcards".

I mentioned in another comment that one of our bets is that since a user can
only recommend a product once, over time the more obvious products should find
it relatively more difficult to get new recommendations and newer products
will surface.

e.g., if we did a filter of recommendations by YC companies (or more extreme -
YC founders), then something like Slack would be popular the first month, but
then have few remaining votes. Thoughts?

~~~
teej
You need to separate the concept of popular and trending. Make two lists. Have
a popular list at a couple fixed time grains - all time, last year, last 30
days (what you have now). Then for your trending list use a z-score like
described in this stack overflow post [0] to normalize. I honestly wouldn't
invest a ton of time trying to do something fancier then that. You're trying
to rank with one signal, you can't expect computers to perform magic.

I'd also consider a third list - highlighted. Have your team internally pick
something new and interesting once a month. Finding novel and interesting
things is something humans are really good at.

[0] - [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/787496/what-is-the-
best-w...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/787496/what-is-the-best-way-to-
compute-trending-topics-or-tags)

~~~
ggiaco
Thanks. Great link. It does seem that having multiple feeds is emerging as a
consensus suggestion.

------
tarr11
I like the idea of a social network of businesses first, individuals second.

The problem in this space (usually encountered when typing "Quickbooks
Reviews" or "Quickbooks vs Xero") is the results do not feel trustworthy,
mainly because there is no provenance of the reviewer. It feels like the
reviews can be bought.

If you can build a high quality review and dataset, that answers detailed
questions about the product in an objective fashion, that would be very
useful.

~~~
skewart
I agree.

> It feels like the reviews can be bought.

I assume Siftery's business model depends on getting paid by software
companies when a prospective buyer makes a purchase after visiting Siftery.
Maybe it's more advertising-based though? (Siftery folks, please correct me if
I'm wrong).

Like all affiliate marketing, there's a fundamental tension between
maintaining customer trust by actually making good, honest recommendations and
maximizing profits by directing consumers to products whose makers are willing
to pay more. A lot of affiliate marketers start out very consumer-focused in
order to build a strong brand that consumers trust. They later find it very
hard to resist the temptation to maximize revenue by making bad but profitable
recommendations later on. Of course that will catch up with them eventually,
but they can exploit the inertia of a trustworthy brand for a while.

All of that said, hopefully Siftery will be able to provide good, consumer-
focused information. There is real pain point around learning about this kind
of software.

~~~
vammok
> A lot of affiliate marketers start out very consumer-focused in order to
> build a strong brand that consumers trust. They later find it very hard to
> resist the temptation to maximize revenue by making bad but profitable
> recommendations later on.

spot on! this is one of the reasons why we want to entirely avoid any sort of
lead-gen or affiliate business models that depend on revenues from sellers of
software or services. we're planning to make money from buyers with higher
value tools that help them after the discovery phase -- for example, providing
insights into pricing, helping automate the RFP process and potentially
helping them manage billing etc. early days though!

------
activatedgeek
I don't understand what problem is this solving. Another ProductHunt?

~~~
ggiaco
With PH there are some similarities (both are product feeds after all), but
substantial differences in the feed mechanics and results. Siftery's ranking
is based on recommendations coming from verified business users and the
products listed all have business use cases. Products also have a persistent
identity (i.e. a new one is not created each time a product is created).

Ultimately, the are different products at the top of each feed, as would be
expected from their different use cases and different (if to some degree
overlapping) audiences.

We think Siftery Trending is a place where b2b products can go after launching
and "graduating" from a community like Product Hunt. One way we're thinking
about it is that Product Hunt is to high school what Siftery Trending is to
college. There's a time and place for both!

That's my take, but additional thoughts/feedback appreciated.

~~~
agitator
I think [https://founderkit.com](https://founderkit.com) is a better
comparison to what you are providing than product hunt. I agree Product Hunt
seems to target consumers more, whereas Siftery and Founterkit are providing a
service to businesses and founders.

One thing I would find of value is a means for differentiating all of the
different services being reviewed. I think everyone knows that slack is the
foremost business chat app, etc. But what are the specific things that make
the app at #2 different that I might be looking for that would make me chose
it over what's in the #1 spot.

