Ask HN: Is ProductHunt Worth It? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Is ProductHunt Worth It?

#31

Post by NicoJuicy » Sun, Jan 09, 2022, 5:18 PM UTC

chuinard wrote: post #21

It's probably more worth it than Hacker News. I submitted my new site Cancel Culture Live (cancelculturelive.com) yesterday evening and it was just removed. Months working on a new shiny webapp, it starts getting a few upvotes and traction on HN, only to be removed?

'Cancel culture' is a political thing and against the guidelines, since it could create flame wars and unwanted discussions that are rarely useful: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

So it's more about the related topic than the webapp itselve. It's always been that way fyi

Re: Ask HN: Is ProductHunt Worth It?

#32

Post by specialist » Sun, Jan 09, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

nopenopenopeno wrote: post #25

ajimix wrote: post #13

Been in product hunt since it was invite only beta. Things have changed a lot. In the beginning it was a community about hunting great products and nice discoveries. Nowadays is about paying hunters with a lot of followers to post your products and asking all your network to upvote your product to brag about how you made it to top X of Product Hunt. The posting about nice products of the internet and discovering them…

About a decade ago, I started a few side businesses that I believe, in retrospect, were entirely reliant on a few of my personal connections with associates of popular blogs, most notably Hypebeast. Startup culture refers to this loss of curation as “democratization” which is a cynical gesture that really just means replacing things like person connections with a ‘highest spender’ promotion industry that is even more…

Yup. "Pay to play."

Re: Ask HN: Is ProductHunt Worth It?

#33

Post by bze12 » Sun, Jan 09, 2022, 5:32 PM UTC

A lot of startup/indie people take product hunt as false validation. It’s only worth it if you’re launching a tool for startups or remote work or something like that, anything else you’re just getting a false positive signal from early tech adopters. PH also lacks the sometimes brutal, honest feedback that HN has.

Re: Ask HN: Is ProductHunt Worth It?

#34

Post by replwoacause » Sun, Jan 09, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

Most of the comments on I see on Product Hunt look like they were paid for, are made in broken English, and sometimes don't make any sense. I don't trust what I see there.

Re: Ask HN: Is ProductHunt Worth It?

#35

Post by tjs8rj » Sun, Jan 09, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

swyx wrote: post #29

its just a massive pyramid scheme. everybody goes there to vote, and roll the dice on getting the #1 tag for fake social proof. its useful for social proof insofar as the vast majority of people dont know that product hunt is fake. semi related fun fact, i had a friend run the numbers for fun - 8% of "#1 of the day" winners die within a year of launch https://twitter.com/jakobgreenfeld/status/146816583831853875...

I don’t think there’s much that can be taken from that. There’s a lot of reasons products die within a year, the non-product hunt #1 rate is probably much much higher. People post products on there all the time that aren’t meant to be some startup in the first place

Re: Ask HN: Is ProductHunt Worth It?

#36

Post by brianwawok » Sun, Jan 09, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

petilon wrote: post #18

Posting on ProductHunt, if you're a small company, can be harmful. Program Managers of big companies prowl this site, looking for interesting ideas to copy.

If the only value of your business is an idea to add on to another business that is trivial to copy, rather you get shut down sooner than later.

Re: Ask HN: Is ProductHunt Worth It?

#37

Post by akadeb » Sun, Jan 09, 2022, 5:41 PM UTC

ushakov wrote: post #28

steelstraw wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything they could do to fix this?

implement voting ring detection like on HN

so that highlights content that has been upvoted by the majority?

Re: Ask HN: Is ProductHunt Worth It?

#38

Post by arisAlexis » Sun, Jan 09, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

ajimix wrote: post #13

Been in product hunt since it was invite only beta. Things have changed a lot. In the beginning it was a community about hunting great products and nice discoveries. Nowadays is about paying hunters with a lot of followers to post your products and asking all your network to upvote your product to brag about how you made it to top X of Product Hunt. The posting about nice products of the internet and discovering them…

Paying?

Re: Ask HN: Is ProductHunt Worth It?

#39

Post by CoastalCoder » Sun, Jan 09, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

I get the impression that almost every time a product-rating service becomes highly popular, it get coopted (or at least seriously compromised) by sellers. E.g., Amazon reviews, and This Old House (Bob Villa).

The only exceptions I can think of are Consumer Reports, and probably large newspapers. But I cringe that even relatively trusted sources like Reddit, Home Depot customer reviews, and RTings are doomed to this fate.

Is this simply as inevitable as death and taxes? Or is there some reason to hope for progress?

Re: Ask HN: Is ProductHunt Worth It?

#40

Post by andrewmcwatters » Sun, Jan 09, 2022, 5:52 PM UTC

CoastalCoder wrote: post #39

I get the impression that almost every time a product-rating service becomes highly popular, it get coopted (or at least seriously compromised) by sellers. E.g., Amazon reviews, and This Old House (Bob Villa). The only exceptions I can think of are Consumer Reports, and probably large newspapers. But I cringe that even relatively trusted sources like Reddit, Home Depot customer reviews, and RTings are doomed to this…

This seems like a game theory problem, doesn't it?