Inauthenticity of Product Hunt
My Phung
10 replies
Maybe it's just me, but I really expected more from product hunt. I'm here like most people to get recognition for a product I'll launch. 95% of the posts here are indirectly or directly marketing their product. The comments are flooded with people pasting their link in.
It seems to be that product hunt is a place where people come in to take, take, take and leave after they launch so that they get the numbers they're looking for. People are in on it because they get the followers in return so that they get a bigger upvote count on their launch day.
It's like a popularity contest where everyone is being fake. Is this how it is? Where are the genuine posts and authentic comments?
Replies
Mark Lemuel M@kilopolki
in today's standards , influence is everything, Like Andrew Tate Said, there are people out there who is 10 x dumber than you doing stupid things, yet they earn 10x better than you. this is the honest truth about influencing people, they love to just take and not give. me? I believe in the power of compounding and giving. The universe isn't selfish. it will provide what you made out of efforts.
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I share your sentiment and feeling about PH. I have been on X (formerly Twitter) spaces for two years and have talked to many makers, builders, and marketers. When you are in a room (virtual or real) and talking to other builders, founders, and even marketers, there is a better sharing of ideas and advice that takes place without leaving links behind. I wish PH had an audio channel to communicate directly in rooms.
The audio communication is more authentic than any written form I have seen online. I will confess that I come here almost every day, pick a few topics that interest me, and respond. Only sometimes do I pose a question or ask for feedback—most of them have gone unanswered or barely answered.
I hope we can do both give and take. Some of us have decades of experience running different types of businesses. In my case, I wrote a dozen books on tech, built three B2B companies, and am now exploring B2C—a completely different way of marketing. I am here to learn and share both.
I'm not leaving a link to the Twitter handle, but if you want to join X spaces and talk, please reach out to me in the DM.
@shownotes Yes sir! I've seen your twitter page. You're doing great things. Good luck with it all
What may you suggest be PH’s utility be beyond launching new products? Id like to see more collaboration and feedback loops on products in PH for hackers and testers, both during pre launch and for major enhancements. This may stimulate more genuine engagement and provide value to builders who are looking to improve products.
@teddy_atkins That's a really hard problem to solve. Sam Parr, founder of The Hustle, and now Hampton, a community for CEOs, has been working on developing communities for years. He says communities are especially hard to build, and leaders should be wary of who joins - because any member is a value add or value subtract. The culture of the community builds itself, and if it goes too awry "you should just start over".
Andrew Chen, general partner at a16z and author of The Cold Start Problem, says that there is always going to be a 'hard side' of a 2-way, 3-way, marketplace to bring in. Who are the main users of product hunt, and what are they looking for? We'll get back to Andrew later.
- All kinds of founders at different stages launching their product
- Early adopters looking to try new products
So where's the problem?
Let's talk about tinder, a common network app. Tinder today has many more men than women. Generally, women can afford to be selective, and generally men have to "spray and pray". In it's early days Tinder was exclusive to attendees of college parties - frats and sorority members; back then there was a rough 50/50 population and the founders were surprised to see people on tinder for a few hours a day on average! Back then the community was small and concentrated.
Product hunt's base of founders are like the men who are looking to attract early adopters and "spray and pray". On tinder, it's the men who will be judged more by features that make them attractive. On Product Hunt it's the founder's copywriting to get upvotes and bring in users, and it seems as though they're attracting mostly the same "gender", or user group to do that now.
Andrew Chen states that there's an S curve associated with building networks. You start small, and grow exponentially, but as the network gets larger the value decreases and people leave. A modern day example is someone being fed up with trash posts in their feeds on social media. At some point the network feels too large and it gets overwhelming for people, so the company will try to reduce the appearance of it's size by curating content to the user, creating categories, etc, creating private groups, etc. - this way the company can still grow.
In conclusion, building a network is extremely hard. It's one of the hardest kinds of businesses to develop. How does tinder solve their problem of quality over quantity today? They don't, they've actually leaned into it with the pricing plans that mostly men are buying to meet even more women.
If ProductHunt's goal is to promote genuine discussion, then it must lean into the interests of the people who want to promote their product, but do so in a way that incentivizes authenticity. Right now many people are rewarded for plugging their links in every comment section.
It's not the people's fault, it's how ProductHunt designed their website to be. However, I would urge ProductHunt to focus on this problem because it WILL devalue what it means to be #1 product of the week. This community needs to see an influx of early adopters, and maybe be more selective about who can post a product. Maybe a review process, maybe you have to be at a certain stage, sent a certain number of comments, upvoted a certain number of times, be followed by a number of people, send 10,000 words. Whatever needs to be done to balance out the number of founders and the number of genuine early adopters
@teddy_atkins I gotta add a thought. I spoke as if early adopters are the ONLY ones who might make meaningful contributions to the community, but that's not at all the case.
But generally, early adopters aren't the ones promoting product links.
There are many many mini networks within this founder community, and they operate on different value transactions. Finding a way to subsidize one side of the market will help promote the activity you want to see. Governments do this all the time for their state of responsibility, and companies do this for their company
Ah, Product Hunt - the virtual jungle of promotions and product selfies! It's like everyone brought their megaphones to a quiet library. Where did the good ol' genuine conversations disappear to? Let's sprinkle some authenticity in this tech cocktail, shall we?
@thestarkster I'm here to meet people 1-on-1. If you'd like, want to set up a google meets and connect with each other?