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Comment by jacquesc | Hacker News Reader

For a bit of background:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739875

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10741827

I've been a Product Hunt user from their initial HN launch and am still a big fan. They've made a very important impact in the tech scene. Open Hunt is an honest attempt at a community run alternative, tailored to giving / getting feedback, and finding very early stage stuff.

Would love your feedback!

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I'd personally like to see other account options than Twitter (specifically email-based accounts).

Agreed. Initially, I canceled the OAuth request because I thought I had missed other options, but really Twitter is the only option. I don't love that it wants to read all of my tweets. Would love to see more integrations (and I'm sure they're coming) :)

Also there's a redirect through something called https://oauth.io which I've never heard of so now I'm thinking that oauth.io has some kind of access to my Twitter account rather than openhunt.co?

We use oauth.io as a hosted service to handle to interchange. I've been using them for years and believe them to be trustworthy.

It probably makes sense to switch off them in due time (since it's just one more dependency). But it allowed us to launch fast.

I'll create a github issue to track this.

Did Ryan Hoover ever respond to all the negative sentiment about PH?

No. The only comment is a "Sorry": https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/676926628979720192

Which is to be expected, "vocal minority" and all.

That doesn't read to me as "Sorry". It's more "oh well".

Agreed - that sounds more like regret that it changes the replied-to tweet's author's perception, than it is any form of regret that Product Hunt works that way.

It's the classical "I'm sorry you feel like this".

Only twitter account means I can't login/signup (I don't have a twitter account).

Then sign up for one then. Or don't sign up for OpenHunt. It's really that easy.

My bad, I thought they were looking for feedback.

we are! much appreciated

twitter only login is going away soon

Sorry - reread your post. On first read it came off as one of those people that don't have facebook because it's 'cool' not to have facebook (or so they think).

Why twitter, though? It doesn't look like twitter is doing too well recently.

Or instead of forcing users add Facebook, Google and LinkedIn if you want for people to use social login. You can always use one of the social login api like OneAll.

As the chief complainer about Product Hunt, I appreciate that transparency is out front-and-center, with clear documentation on how your service aims to avoid the same pitfalls.

That being said, it reminds me of another service with the same goals: Ello, who also said they were not going to take venture capital. We know how that turned out.

I mentioned in the threads that a Hacker News/PH competitor may not be better mechanically. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done there, particularly with ranking algorithms.

If it gets to the point where it needs revenue to handle the hosting bill, it'll be organized as a non-profit and the community will decide how to handle things (via ads or whatever else).

Personally - as feedback - I don't have problems with it being a for profit company.

> There's still a lot of work that needs to be done there, particularly with ranking algorithms.

Well, that is part of the value of a community/open source project, is the fact you can experiment/test various ranking algorithms rather openly without the assumption of malice/rigging.

Tbh, I think the OP has the right idea [in general] but the wrong execution. [e.g. The jab at PH in the name, rebranding after the initial influx of traffic, no clear strategy for experimentation with ranking algorithms in a crowd/open sourced manner, private comments]

I'm curious how quick they'll note the issues and address them. I considered building something but I keep running into RL related time constraints/problems that make it impossible for me to commit time before Jan. xD

I don't recall Ello saying they wouldn't take capital. Do you have a link to where they said that?

They did say they would not monetize users via privacy invasion like Facebook.

I double checked this now and it turns out you are correct. The verbiage Ello used was "Ad Free" and they had taken Seed prior to launching.

I've heard rumblings that people have been posting their competitors to Product Hunt before they're ready, thereby sabotaging their launch plans. What do you think can be done to avoid similar bad behavior on OpenHunt?

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