Over the last 10 years (đ¤Ż), Product Hunt has grown from a newsletter into a large and complex directory of products. Many moons ago, we introduced topics as a way to organize our growing catalog. Unfortunately, over time, theyâve gotten less useful. There are some interesting and useful topics, but thereâs also many of varying specificity and clarity like âbaseballâ, âphysicsâ, âDJ Khaledâ, and âWork in Progressâ.
While many people in our community are interested in whatâs new (aka, the homepage), thereâs an equally large use-case for finding a cool product to solve a particular use-case, whether thatâs a new link-in-bio tool, AI avatar generator, or investing app. Because topics donât have a clear ruleset or taxonomy, they arenât a great way to explore Product Hunt or find products that solve specific problems.
Today, weâre adding categories to the mix.
Categories are a new taxonomy for Product Hunt that is focused on what your product does. Superhuman is an email client. Zoom is video conferencing software. Later is a link-in-bio and social media management tool.
TLDR;
Categories are what your product is or what problem it solves. (AKA, not AI)
Topics might include general industries, specific features, technologies, or keywords (like AI).
At the moment, categories are meant to supplement topics. Topics will still exist, although you can think of them more as âadditional flavorâ than a primary taxonomy.
Itâs not perfect
Like any new feature, there are kinks to work out. Weâll be adding additional categories, and changing the taxonomy around a bit as we learn from you.
How can I edit my product categories?
While we got started on categorizing existing products internally, there are plenty we havenât got to yet, and there are plenty of products that have launched over the years that simply defy any normal categorization structure (thatâs ok).
You can edit the category of your products by editing your product pages (read more about this in our
help article). Not everything will fit perfectly in one of our initial categories âÂ
let us know if you think thereâs a bucket of products that weâre missing.
Please send us any feedback, categories weâre missing, or suggestions around taxonomy.