
Product Hunt's Response to Accusations of Exclusivity Is to Increase Exclusivity - minimaxir
https://medium.com/@minimaxir/product-hunt-s-response-to-accusations-of-exclusivity-is-to-increase-exclusivity-3758ac23f152
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flashm
My main issue with Product Hunt is that most of the products are so trivial
that it almost seems like a parody site.

A sample from right now:

'The funniest dog name generator ever'

'Fast and easy way of collecting email addresses'

'Finally, an emoji keyboard for the modern desktop'

Don't people have more interesting things to do with their time, or try to
create more interesting, useful products?

~~~
untog
Product Hunt's greatest success is being the perfect reflection of the Silicon
Valley industry and mindset that surrounds it. Whether you consider this a
feature or a bug is a personal judgement.

Personally I'm glad it exists because it seems to divert at least some of the
vacuous SV sycophancy away from Hacker News.

~~~
mbavio
Your first paragraph deserves to live in a poster.

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rl3
>Submitters without any network at all are _screwed._

If success in becoming featured on Product Hunt is contingent on the
submitter's network, then the submitter's product is probably of such quality
that they're screwed anyways.

That, or their product is solid but it simply isn't appealing to the PH crowd.
You see cool stuff every day that fits that description, usually accumulating
a mere handful of votes. Generally speaking, the more niche the product is,
the more likely it is to end up in that category.

Product Hunt is ruthless curation. It isn't designed to be fair. Suffice it to
say, exceptional products—or products that make waves elsewhere—are almost
assuredly bound to do well on Product Hunt, regardless if the author even has
an account there, let alone a network.

To be clear, I'm not defending insider voting rings, I'm just saying the best
strategy is to trancend them entirely.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
The difference is where the product shows up on the PH page.

With a network, you automatically get access to the front page. Without it,
you won't even show up on the site even if it's the best product in the world
for the PH crowd.

~~~
rl3
It'd still be posted on Product Hunt though, despite no self-submission.

That said, banking on PH to carry your initial launch is a bad idea if you've
no network there, let alone posting ability.

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gravity13
This is exactly what happened to Digg. You had people getting paid to get
stuff up on Digg's front page. So Digg introduced friends and the ability to
see what friends are digging. And they banded together to really ruin the
experience for others.

During the time it happened, I did a bit of offhand calculation and found that
of all the posts on Digg's front page, most had the same 100 or so "power
diggers" in the first 200 likes of the submission. And these 100 users were
authors of at least half the submissions on the front page, many of which were
clear promotional ads.

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taytus
So people are more worried on being featured on PH than having a profitable
business? Am I the only one who couldn't care less about PH?

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PM_NAKED_PIKS
Way too many idiots playing entrepreneur. My customers aren't on PH. Most, if
any "customers" on PH are short lived.

~~~
taytus
I honestly don't get it. Maybe is my fault, I don't know, maybe I'm missing
something.

~~~
w1ntermute
You're not missing anything. Product Hunt will fade away as the VC bubble
continues to deflate.

~~~
PM_NAKED_PIKS
This. Don't get attached to PH, when the bubble is a poppin' PH will be gone.

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callmeed
It's sad. The response PH gave in December dodged the true question of _how do
things get to the homepage_ [1]. Defenders stuck to the concept of "Great
products will make it to the homepage"–in reality, everyone knows that's
complete BS.

I find myself going to PH weekly now instead of daily. It's almost predictable
the things you'll see there now (yet another mockup tool, "ProductHunt for X",
trivial toy app, etc.).

Maybe a site like this simply can't scale and keep this format.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/679150836862218241](https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/679150836862218241)

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cynical_sheet
Product Hunt is the mirror image of Silicon Valley startup VC scene. It's all
about connections, nepotism, pedigree, ass-kissing and brown-nosing.

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w1ntermute
Product Hunt's problem is that even though a less exclusive/biased system
would create more value for users, such a system wouldn't allow PH to capture
much, if any, of that value for themselves. By enabling biases in their
listings, they're able to shift some of that value from the users over to
themselves. It's good for the companies that get more attention than they
deserve, and most consumers won't find out due to information asymmetry and
apathy.

It's the same reason why you can't trust Yelp reviews - they needed to
generate revenue somehow, and the only real option was to offer to hide
negative reviews in return for money.

~~~
cperciva
_the only real option was to offer to hide negative reviews in return for
money._

I don't understand this. Why couldn't they sell "you seem to be looking for a
dentist... this other dentist (who paid for this advert) has a higher rating
than the one you're looking at right now"? It seems that Yelp could have been
in the enviable position of selling advertising which is actually useful to
the viewer.

~~~
Fede_V
Because then why would any dentist who is not at the top pay for advertising?

~~~
cperciva
Because they would gain customers who were previously looking at inferior-to-
them (according to Yelp ratings) dentists.

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teleclimber
It's too bad OpenHunt didn't take off. But of course why would it? With no
public commenting system it simply isn't "sticky" enough.

[https://www.openhunt.co/](https://www.openhunt.co/)

HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10759879](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10759879)

~~~
fweespeech
Yeh but it also takes a substantial, sustained effort to build a community and
after the initial launch the OpenHunt crew stopped.

[https://www.openhunt.co/audit](https://www.openhunt.co/audit)

Maybe no spam for all of Feb?

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wnm
> The front page real estate taken by the in-network posts comes at the
> expense of those out-of-network in a zero-sum game. Submitters without any
> network at all are screwed.

I don't know if that assessment is true. I don't have a network. If I submit
something to PH and someone with a network upvotes it, their network is now
more likely to see it. So if you create something cool, that a few people with
networks discover on the upcoming feed, you're chances to reach even more
people and get the foot in the door (and land on the frontpage) are higher
now, with this new front page algorithm, no?

~~~
minimaxir
Granted, if you don't have a network, your submission is stuck in the
"upcoming" purgatory, so that issue already blocks the probability of a
serendipitous upvote.

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timrpeterson
Thanks for the analysis. I'd be curious to see PH's traffic. I get the vibe
from checking # of retweets/hearts on their tweets that PH has peaked and are
now on the descent.

