Ask HN: Side projects initially developed for personal use that became products?

I initially built PhotoStructure on nights and weekends for my family. I work on it full time now. https://blog.photostructure.com/introducing-photostructure/

<plug> If you don't have your photos and videos well-organized, or you're nervous at all about the photos of your loved ones being used for adtech or surveillance training data, or you'd just like to try out a fun "serendipity" interface, installation takes less than a minute and then it runs politely in the background.

I'd love to hear what you think.</plug>

I did this for my Chrome extension that audits websites for web best practices: https://www.checkbot.io/

It started as a collection of scripts I wrote to test localhost + production websites for problems while I was doing web development. Other developers I knew were keen to try a user friendly version so I polished the interface and released it as a product.

I reckon probably most. I made Bulk Resize Photos (https://bulkresizephotos.com) because resizing to particular dimensions was a problem I'd run in to continually for years. (Eg. creating different sizes of icons for mobile apps, but also other situations that I don't even remember)

This is the path my product took, a stock option scanner [0] that I originally created to find trades for myself. I noticed requests for such a tool being made in the investing communities that I follow, so I polished the UI and released it as a freemium product.

[0]: https://omnieq.com

Norton Utilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Norton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Utilities

i built opensimworld.com because i wanted to find and copy 3d stuff from other players. It grew to a community for its very small niche.

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