The Leaderboard

TestFlights are cool again.

Or at least that’s the feeling we and many others are having rn as a new wave of creative consumer apps emerge. It feels like 2013.

We’re increasingly seeing more buzz around TestFlight apps in the wider community, but it’s not always clear how to get an invite, so we decided to build a thing.

Sign up to receive a new unreleased app every Friday by texting (415) 481-3148. If you have an unreleased TestFlight app you'd like to submit, send it here.

Note: As with all early experiments, this launch itself isn't perfect and we recognize many of our friends in the community won't have access on day one. To reduce scope we're limiting this MVP to iOS apps to start with. We're also unable to text outside the US or Canada as our text provider lacks international support for now. We'll expand based on the demand and learnings over the coming weeks. Feedback and ideas are very welcome! :)

In early June we wrote about dating in the age of COVID-19. Love can happen during lockdown, and Makers have been finding creative ways to help relationships blossom regardless of local restrictions.

Since then a few creative products emerged to help you find a date, maintain meaningful relationships, and maybe meet your true love (cue the harps). Here are a few:

Filter Off launched this week as a shelter-in-place-friendly, video speed dating app.

Struck is an astrology-based matchmaking app, connecting compatible people based on astrological synastry. They’re quite literally helping the stars align. 🥁

Karma App creates AI-powered matches by asking series of questions to set up conversations based on shared interests.

Arithmr matches people based on their YouTube viewing history. Those endless hours of cat videos might change your love life.

SKWSH markets itself as the anti-ghosting app. It will take you from match to date in 96 hours to avoid endless back and forth, and even date suggesions based on your interests and location.

Vocol uses voice technology to connect potential dates on WhatsApp. Record a 5 second voice note and Vocol will suggest a date via WhatsApp based on your voice.

Toodls allows you to host in-person or virtual events based on interests. Find new friends or lovers through shared interests by throwing your own event.

woAIni finds your Twitter crush. Submit your username and AI will identify who you're crushing on and how compatible you are.

Datetime helps to keep the conversation flowing with question prompts to use during dates. Think flashcards but for dating.

That Day is aimed at helping to keep relationships healthy by reminding us about the meaningful days and moments to celebrate with little nudges.

To view more trending dating products, you can always follow the Dating topic.

Instagram just dropped Reels, its TikTok competitor, live in over 50 countries including in the US.

Last month we wrote about Facebook’s upcoming play for TikTok which has recently dominated the headlines with speculation of a US ban or sell off to Microsoft. Naturally, many creators are nervous which makes now the best time for Reels to launch.

With Reels you can create short videos to share with friends directly on Instagram. Record and edit 15 second multi-clip videos with audio, effects, and new creative tools. Anyone can create a video to share with friends, and for public profiles these will be discoverable in the Explore section within the app.

Unlike some of its previous expansions, Threads and Direct, Instagram decided to bundle Reels into its main app. This means creators don’t need to rebuild a new following to reach their audience and consumers don’t need to try to fit yet another app on their homescreen. We’ve seen Instagram use this strategy before when they introduced Stories – clearly inspired by Snapchat – four years ago.

Are you team Instagram or team TikTok? Can you be both?

Flocknet launched yesterday as a tool to help you better understand your Twitter followers. Use it to sort your people by job, location and keyword. The result: A powerful personal CRM built on top of Twitter.

Maker, Aaron Ng, shared;

“We've heard more and more stories about how Founders are now finding their lead investors on Twitter, how early-stage startups are recruiting a significant number of their hires from their Twitter network, and how Investors are sourcing investments through their followings. People are already using Flocknet to keep track of their Twitter network, hire, find sales leads, friends, and even romantic partners”

Flocknet might look familiar for the astute. A year ago Aaron built Flock as a weekend project, frustrated by Twitter’s lack of tooling to filter followers. Now part of Y Combinator’s latest batch, Aaron’s aim for Flocknet is to build the “ultimate people search engine” starting with Twitter followers.

Early responses from the community:

“No better way to tap into your twitter data; super impressed and looks pretty polished.” – Himank

“Both searcher and provider get more information leveraging twitter (tweets, likes etc) than if they just relied on CV's or application forms.“ – William

“I've been a user for several weeks now. This is by far one of the best tools to interact with Twitter.” – Nick

If your own following is a too small for Flocknet, but you want to utilize Twitter to discover specific people, you can always use Tweeple to search a wider net of folks by their interest or occupation.

For those looking for more traditional personal CRMs check out Uphabit, KeepMyFriends and Dex (also a YC-backed company).

Our networks are bigger than ever before in the Internet age. We have friends and acquaintances scattered across multiple online communities (like Product Hunt!) and social networks. There’s a reason we’re seeing increased demand for something to help manage connections more efficiently. Until Elon and team launch Neuralink, we’ll use apps like Flocknet.

A couple of weeks ago we wrote about OpenAI’s newest project, GPT-3. We predicted that we’d see some interesting projects emerge as this became more widely available. So far we haven’t been disappointed.

In the last week, VWO launched a competition to pit GPT-3 against human copywriters. The ‘friendly’ competition is set to run this month testing AI generated headlines, button CTA’s, and product copy against human-written versions. The tests will be conducted on VWO or any A/B testing platform, meaning anyone can participate.

In an about turn, rather than pit AI against human writers, student maker Qasim used GPT-3 to help make writers block a thing of the past. Shortly uses GPT-3 to allow writers suffering with block to hit a button and AI will continue where they left off, generating new creative plots and story developments.

Rather than focus on functional copywriting and storytelling, the folks over at Themesberg tested GPT-3’s ability to assist humans in writing code. GPT-3 Tailwind CSS uses GPT-3 to build Tailwind CSS code snippets. Currently still a work in progress, maker Szőgyényi admits the project is far from perfect, but has trained the AI to work with buttons, inputs and lists. The aim is to save humans time and effort building user interfaces.

If this short overview has piqued your GPT-3 curiosity but you don’t yet have access to test out yourself, you can view more projects and demos on GPT Crush.

Are you brave enough to test your copy writing skills against the machines?

Over the years we’ve seen a ton of new tab browser extensions. Some of our personal favorites: Momentum, Unsplash Instant, Tabby Cat, Tabagotchi, and of course, The Product Hunt Tab. 😉

Yesterday, myFrontpage launched to give everyone the POWER to create their own new tab experience. Using its visual editor, you can customize your page with preset widgets, including welcome text, the current weather, random memes, jokes, and even xkcd comics. It’s refreshingly simple – you don’t even need to register an account.

MyFrontpage was built by An, an 18 year old maker from Germany. In his launch introduction:

“I never really liked the default page which showed up when opening up a new tab in my browser. I see it hundred times each and every day. And yet, it's unpersonal, not really customizable and actually kinda boring. That's why I created myFrontpage.”

This isn’t An’s first product (as evidenced on his Product Hunt profile). He’s also built:

• First Tweets, a directory of the first tweets ever tweeted
• shrtcode, a secure link shorter alternative to bit.ly
• Tele.rocks, a TV channel built on top of YouTube
• RSS API, a tool to convert RSS feeds into a JSON API
• SnackLog, a food tracking web app

We’re inspired by community members like An and many of the other young makers on Product Hunt from around the globe. Keep building, friends. 😸

Facebook’s experimental NPE team have recently launched their latest creation, E.gg, a goofy personal webpage creator that is reminiscent of the 90’s. The app feels very nostalgic, a hat tip to the days of GeoCities and MySpace.

Kevin, from NPE, shared;

“It all started when a few of us found ourselves missing the raw and exploratory spirit of The Early Internet and began to wonder things like: Is this misplaced nostalgia? What was _actually_ so special about that time?”

The result of this train of thought was E.gg. A blank canvas for self-expression with GIFs, text, and shapes. The idea is that you can be ‘off-beat’ and ‘mis-matched’ without drawing a critical eye from peers to represent your half-formed ideas and passions.

Early feedback from the community is largely positive;

“Tumblr, Google Sites, WordArt, ~a e s t h e t i c~, it’s all in the beautiful and zany world of e.gg!” - Khoi

“This gives me early internet vibes — that landing page is crazy (in a good way)“ - Anthony

“I... I'm in love 🥺 Literally can hardly wait to try this out, mind is BUZZING with ideas” - Alexander

E.gg isn’t the only site drawing early 90’s internet vibes of late. Dating app Struck's aesthetic is very retro and reminds us of Poolside Fm, itself a visceral throwback for the senses. Could it be that with all the progress and complexity of modern technology, we’re craving the simpler times where we could all just innocently hang out with everyone’s first internet friend, myspacetom?

If you want to take a step back in time, there are plenty of products out there tugging at our nostalgic heart strings:

Stackoverflow 90’s: Bring back the '90s to StackOverflow with this retro looking Chrome Extension

Icon rewind: Don’t like change? Get old icon logo’s for the apps on your phone with MSCHF’s 22nd drop

Retro Wave Generator: Bring back the 80s with this throwback image creator

My 90’s TV: Watch the TV shows from your childhood and wind back the years

Macintosh.js: A 1991 Macintosh in an app - for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Transfer files in and out, mount disk images, and time-travel back to the 90s.

GifCities: Discover the GIFS of the early internet with this retro animated GIF search engine

The Internet Arcade: 900+ classic arcade games from Joust to Paperboy, free and playable in your browser

Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by Product Hunt and sponsored by our friends at monday.com.

Organizing a team can be a challenge, especially remotely. Knowing what each department is working on, from sales to ops to project management, is not easy. monday.com has been working on some things to help.

Their platform gives your team organizational knowledge to be able to move quickly. You can outline projects, assign ownership and make sure communication is super clear across the team (without email – goodbye, inbox zero anxiety). monday.com is designed to provide a big picture view of what teams are working on, enabling them to work better together.

But monday.com isn’t new to the scene (anyone remember dapulse?). They’ve doubled in size a couple times since 2012 and dog-fooded along the way.

Since then they’ve been working with some big names including companies you probably haven’t heard of like Uber, Universal Studios, and Walmart 😉. When a whole organization’s workflow is on Monday’s platform, everything can be managed from one place. This makes growing your business, opening a new office or preparing for the unexpected much easier.

They’re offering the Product Hunt community a 30 day free trial with premium customer support to help get your team started risk free.

Yesterday MSCHF – the “Banksy” of the internet – dropped the Alexagate, a privacy hat for Alexa.

Like a tinfoil hat to block the aliens from reading your mind, the Alexa hat blocks Bezos from listening to your bedroom banter.

Here’s how it works: The Alexagate uses pulsed ultrasound to jam the device’s microphone. Simply clap or tap the Echo 3 times to unjam the signal. Repeat to reenable privacy mode.

While expectedly tongue in cheek, MSCHF’s 26th drop reflects a growing sentiment: Consumers are increasingly distrusting of Big Tech and perhaps rightfully so as more of our lives, physically and digitally, integrate with technology. The result: Privacy tech is hot rn.

Over the weekend Mozilla quietly launched its VPN service to encrypt your network activity and hide your IP address.

Last month Jumbo announced a massive update (and $8M in funding) to make it easy for consumers to monitor and control their data. The app can notify you when your SSN, credit cards, or passwords are found on the dark web. You can also use it to quickly delete data collected by Facebook, Google, and others.

Hey, a new email platform from the Basecamp team and most upvoted product in June, took a hard stance in support of consumer privacy with email screening and pixel blocking so senders cannot see when (and where) you open emails.

Unsurprisingly, former US presidential candidate, Andrew Yang, is getting in on this. “Today, I’m announcing the launch of the Data Dividend Project. A movement to empower Americans to take back control of their data.” he announced on Product Hunt.

These are just a few recent, popular launches, but there’s a rabbit hole of privacy tech to explore here.

Cappuccino launched on Product Hunt over the weekend with a fresh take on social audio. Record a short voice memo, or ‘bean’ as they call it, to share with your friends and family. This ‘bean’ could be a short anecdote from your day, a joke, a thought, anything really. Every morning at 8am the app delivers a ‘cappuccino’, a compilation of you and your friends’ audio stories.

Olivier, Cappuccino cofounder, shared:

“Our goal with Cappuccino is to provide an amazing way to start the day with a daily show created from the voice messages of your friends.”

Although early days for the team, the feedback from the Product Hunt community has been positive:

“Been loving using Cappuccino these past few weeks, such a lovely and more intimate way to connect with my family and friends.“ – Anthony

“It became such a joy to play my cappuccino as I'm getting ready for the day ahead, and have my morning filled with the voices and stories of my closest friends.” – Sarah

“I really enjoy the unique way the app connects you with your friends. It's almost like a mini-podcast consisting of snippets / slice of life insights from friends.” – David

We’ve seen an increase in audio products launch on Product Hunt this year. In person encounters have been harder to maintain with social distancing in place, but social connections are more needed than ever.

We talked about this in more detail at the start of the month covering the 2.0 launch of YAC, and back in May with the launches of Watercooler and Walkie. Although these products are more geared to work-based audio communication, Cappuccino brings the focus back to smaller social circles with friends and family.

Makers are finding creative ways to use audio to help us remain connected, in what feels like a disconnected world. People are expanding their social network on Clubhouse; deepening their connections with their team using YAC, Tandem, Walkie, and Watercooler (among others); and creating more intimacy through audible stories with Cappuccino and Saga.