Hunting the Hunters – Tips for Releasing on Product Hunt
1–10 of 13 posts
Re: Hunting the Hunters – Tips for Releasing on Product Hunt
#2To follow up on #5, talk like a human. People are generally turned off by PR speak so I recommend makers be personable. :)
Re: Hunting the Hunters – Tips for Releasing on Product Hunt
#3This article fails to mention one of the most popular "tactics" for releasing on Product Hunt: begging your friends for upvotes.
In fairness, the OP did not explicitly ask for upvotes on Twitter, just provided a link to his Product Hunt submission. ( https://twitter.com/aten/status/511904562857254914 ) The difference is that doing that on Reddit or Hacker News will get your post killed and you potentially shadowbanned. And justifiably so, since putting an emphasis on social media popularity in determining ranking takes away from the quality of the submission.
If you don't believe that upvote begging is a problem on Product Hunt, just look at Twitter. ( https://twitter.com/search?q=product%20hunt%20upvote&src=typ... ) Note how most of those have Favorites and Replies from Ryan Hoover himself or another employee.
I doubt this policy will be reversed since it's the reason PH became so popular, but this is the primary reason I'll never take Product Hunt seriously.
Re: Hunting the Hunters – Tips for Releasing on Product Hunt
#4This article fails to mention one of the most popular "tactics" for releasing on Product Hunt: begging your friends for upvotes. In fairness, the OP did not explicitly ask for upvotes on Twitter, just provided a link to his Product Hunt submission. ( https://twitter.com/aten/status/511904562857254914 ) The difference is that doing that on Reddit or Hacker News will get your post killed and you potentially shadowbanne…
Not sure I follow. So you are dismissing PH because some people are publicly asking publicly for instead of via gchat, gmail and FB like ppl do for HN?
Re: Hunting the Hunters – Tips for Releasing on Product Hunt
#5This article fails to mention one of the most popular "tactics" for releasing on Product Hunt: begging your friends for upvotes. In fairness, the OP did not explicitly ask for upvotes on Twitter, just provided a link to his Product Hunt submission. ( https://twitter.com/aten/status/511904562857254914 ) The difference is that doing that on Reddit or Hacker News will get your post killed and you potentially shadowbanne…
We discourage people from explicitly asking others to upvote their product and you may notice often times product with a high upvote count are actually at the bottom of the page or removed entirely for trying to game the rankings. It's not perfect but we have systems in place to ensure the products featured toward the top, are what the community genuinely thinks is most interesting or useful.
Re: Hunting the Hunters – Tips for Releasing on Product Hunt
#6This article fails to mention one of the most popular "tactics" for releasing on Product Hunt: begging your friends for upvotes. In fairness, the OP did not explicitly ask for upvotes on Twitter, just provided a link to his Product Hunt submission. ( https://twitter.com/aten/status/511904562857254914 ) The difference is that doing that on Reddit or Hacker News will get your post killed and you potentially shadowbanne…
Not sure I follow. So you are dismissing PH because some people are publicly asking publicly for instead of via gchat, gmail and FB like ppl do for HN?
Actually, if you do that on Hacker News, you'll kill the post too. (upvotes from the direct submission URL but not from a HN referrer are not counted.)
Re: Hunting the Hunters – Tips for Releasing on Product Hunt
#7This article fails to mention one of the most popular "tactics" for releasing on Product Hunt: begging your friends for upvotes. In fairness, the OP did not explicitly ask for upvotes on Twitter, just provided a link to his Product Hunt submission. ( https://twitter.com/aten/status/511904562857254914 ) The difference is that doing that on Reddit or Hacker News will get your post killed and you potentially shadowbanne…
Agreed, I only recently found out how much Product Hunt relies on astroturfing tactics to grow their userbase and promote the site, but whenever I'd check it I was always baffled by what was getting to the top of the "best new products" lists. Their growth hacking and employee "hustling" seem to mess with the quality, so it's just not reliable. I'd actually figured it was organic because top entries still only have about 200 upvotes despite Product Hunt having 50,000 users.
Re: Hunting the Hunters – Tips for Releasing on Product Hunt
#8This article fails to mention one of the most popular "tactics" for releasing on Product Hunt: begging your friends for upvotes. In fairness, the OP did not explicitly ask for upvotes on Twitter, just provided a link to his Product Hunt submission. ( https://twitter.com/aten/status/511904562857254914 ) The difference is that doing that on Reddit or Hacker News will get your post killed and you potentially shadowbanne…
We discourage people from explicitly asking others to upvote their product and you may notice often times product with a high upvote count are actually at the bottom of the page or removed entirely for trying to game the rankings. It's not perfect but we have systems in place to ensure the products featured toward the top, are what the community genuinely thinks is most interesting or useful.
That's simply not true. minimaxir just linked to hundreds of Twitter results (as recent as yesterday) of you favoriting and positively commenting on tweets from companies that are explicitly asking for upvotes on their products. I also learned that Product Hunt does this because I've heard/read you specifically mention it in interviews, saying "it grows the site."
https://twitter.com/search?q=product%20hunt%20upvote&src=typ...
Re: Hunting the Hunters – Tips for Releasing on Product Hunt
#9This article fails to mention one of the most popular "tactics" for releasing on Product Hunt: begging your friends for upvotes. In fairness, the OP did not explicitly ask for upvotes on Twitter, just provided a link to his Product Hunt submission. ( https://twitter.com/aten/status/511904562857254914 ) The difference is that doing that on Reddit or Hacker News will get your post killed and you potentially shadowbanne…
We discourage people from explicitly asking others to upvote their product and you may notice often times product with a high upvote count are actually at the bottom of the page or removed entirely for trying to game the rankings. It's not perfect but we have systems in place to ensure the products featured toward the top, are what the community genuinely thinks is most interesting or useful.
How do you discourage people, exactly? (genuine question)
Is there a warning on submission that says something like "Please don't ask your friends to upvote your submissions. If you do, your submission may be penalized. The best products stand on their own merits."? If that's the case, then why do you Favorite Tweets from companies begging for upvotes instead of warning them that their behavior is unacceptable?
I personally have received spam asking for Product Hunt upvotes ( http://i.imgur.com/B5hLdYG.png ), and you of all people should be interested in not supporting that.
Re: Hunting the Hunters – Tips for Releasing on Product Hunt
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
We discourage people from explicitly asking others to upvote their product and you may notice often times product with a high upvote count are actually at the bottom of the page or removed entirely for trying to game the rankings. It's not perfect but we have systems in place to ensure the products featured toward the top, are what the community genuinely thinks is most interesting or useful.
That's simply not true. minimaxir just linked to hundreds of Twitter results (as recent as yesterday) of you favoriting and positively commenting on tweets from companies that are explicitly asking for upvotes on their products. I also learned that Product Hunt does this because I've heard/read you specifically mention it in interviews, saying "it grows the site." https://twitter.com/search?q=product%20hunt%20upvote&…
I favorite to show people I'm listening (read-receipt). It's not an endorsement for asking for upvotes. I realize how this would be misinterpreted so perhaps I'll avoid that in the future.