You had a great launch that showed a lot of interest from the community. I still think there's room in the ecosystem for an open competitor to PH's closed model. But what did you do to capture that initial surge of visitors and bring them back? What were your plans to keep user engagement strong?
Here's an example:
When you posted this on HN 78 days ago, I asked if you had a daily summary email [0] like Product Hunt did. This is primarily how I interact with Product Hunt. An informal survey of my coworkers shows the same thing. We all read the daily email. It keeps us coming back to PH. This, IMHO, essential feature that Product Hunt had Open Hunt lacked on launch day.
For some reason I think you may have added it later, and I seem to recall I may have signed up for it. But looking through my emails I never received a single email from Open Hunt and, after awhile, I forgot it existed at all. Until today, when you announced you were shutting it down.
Engage your users. Capture visitors. Give them a reason to keep coming back and engaging with your product, or they'll forget it exists.