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Comment by nothxbro | Hacker News Reader

Worth noting is that this was essentially number one on product hunt, above all other items.

Meaning, the product hunt results shown are the absolute best result you could hope for and most users will receive a far smaller amount of visits. PH gets a bit of hype because its invite only and people assume it has a big impact, but for most folk it would be much more impactful for their launch to even be on a smaller tech blog like Read/write or recode.

For the average person who gets on PH and gets the normal amount of upvotes (around 10-20 ) you can expect a blistering 250-500 visits. You would get more traction just posting a comment in a HN article. PH seems more powerful because its invite only and has tons of hype around it, but it does not deliver on results yet.

Surprised that HN numbers were so high, but not surprised that Techcrunch was number one. They still have a great share of the market when it comes to initial exposure.

View on HN

A good rule of thumb with Hacker News is that you get 90-100 unique visitors for every upvote on a post given that it hits the front page. (as someone whose blog has hit the top of HN multiple times, I can attest to this)

The app received 6100 hits with 76 HN points, so that's a good estimate.

I'm not a fan of Product Hunt because it's an echo chamber personified. It's what happened to Quora, and I don't think that strategy will work twice.

I'm not a fan of Product Hunt because it's an echo chamber personified. It's what happened to Quora, and I don't think that strategy will work twice.

Here here. I think Product Hunt is interesting to look at once in a while to see what others think is hot, but I hate the closed nature of it. There's no obvious way to get selected to make submissions or comments.

In fact, when I read Carlos Bueno's post on QZ, the first thing I thought of was Product Hunt--an echo chamber of like-minded folks with their own exclusive club on who gets to submit which startup; and not only just submit, but even comment! It's a fantastic article worth reading:

The next thing Silicon Valley needs to disrupt big time: its own culture

http://qz.com/225782/the-next-thing-silicon-valley-needs-to-...

Someone's created a "product hunt-like" subreddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/producthunt) that I think is actually a better idea: Anyone can up-vote a submission, anyone can comment, and moderators can separate the wheat from the chaff. Too bad it's not more popular.

EDIT: Fixed typo

The way to get selected to submit or comment appears to be ryans buddy or that buddies buddy. Its a really misogynistic way to do it and minoritys and women seem to be under represented.

I am sure if he chimed in here, he would say something along the lines of "We are super excited to open it up to everyone but want to do things correctly and not hurt the quality! With that in mind we are only letting a few people in at a time!"

Which of course means a huge amount of straight white dudes on the site and no transparency about what is submitted or chosen to be on the site.

> to be ryans buddy or that buddies buddy. Its a really misogynistic way to do it

That's an odd way to say that; are you trying to say that nepotism in general is inherently misogynistic in some way? I mean, sure, Ryan's buddies are straight white dudes because Ryan is a straight white dude, and people tend to make friends with people they share culture with. But if Ryan was a gay black lady, nepotism wouldn't somehow cause her to want to hire straight white dudes nonetheless, would it?

That would be prejudice or sexism anyway. I'm with derefr; please explain how PH's processes are characterized by the hared of women. That's a rather strong claim to be tossing around flippantly.

Ryan is a straight white dude, and people tend to make friends with people they share culture with.

Diversity is a cultural trait.

For some.

@derefr Yes, that would happen. Thats why the PH way of doing things is shitty.

Product Hunt started with my startup friends -- mostly guys, not dissimilar from Silicon Valley in general.

You're absolutely right that Product Hunt needs more gender diversity and it's something we're working on. This topic has been on my mind well before it came up in a recent thread on PH (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/made-with-code). Erik and I spent the last few weeks emailing dozens of women in the community to (1) get their thoughts on the product and (2) ask for recommendations of other women they know that might be interested in contributing. We have a long way to go but it has helped.

We're working on a recommendation system to give people in the community the opportunity to invite new contributors. Additionally, we will soon have a new posting flow to allow anyone to submit products to be curated by the community. These won't solve the diversity problem but will help make things more transparent.

If you have suggestions or ideas on how we can make it more inclusive and welcoming to a broader audience, please share.

EDIT: I'm also trying to get more women on the Product Hunt podcast (e.g. https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/480421396690907138). I have 3 scheduled over the next month with women founders and investors.

Open it up to everyone, that's how you can make it more inclusive.

edit: The invite-only thing is incredibly lame. I signed up a few minutes ago to see what product hunt was all about because it was being discussed in this thread (never heard of it before). I doubt I'll lose any sleep over forgetting its existence.

That's a great point. So many sites - including TC/VB - are the same folks all the time. And they might be keeping up with startup news, but they aren't potential end users.

"The way to get selected to submit or comment appears to be ryans buddy or that buddies buddy. Its a really misogynistic way to do it and minoritys and women seem to be under represented."

Quick anecdote to rebut this, I was 'selected' to submit.

I don't know Ryan, other than I know who he is. I don't know anyone that knows Ryan (I don't think). Like pretty much everyone reading this comment, I am pretty sure he has no idea who I am. I follow him on Twitter, he doesn't follow me.

I was 'selected' because I hit Ryan up on Twitter with a quick link to our product, he took a look and decided it was interesting enough for PH, so gave me permission to submit. It was that simple.

Granted, I certainly don't tick any diversity boxes, but I think it would be a stretch to suggest that my ethnicity, gender, or sexuality had anything to do with my selection.

For transparency, here is the conversation that lead to my 'selection': https://twitter.com/phixx/status/469208498597679105

And here is the outcome: http://www.producthunt.com/posts/alleyoop

Disclaimer: I like shiny new things, and PH scratches that itch for me.

I mod /r/SideProject, which is a subreddit similar to Product Hunt. Do you have any recommendations on how to prevent the subreddit from turning into an echo chamber?

http://www.reddit.com/r/sideproject

Have you thought about joining forces w/ /r/producthunt and/or /r/startups?

/r/startups and /r/sideproject currently have linkbacks to each other. Are there any other ways you would suggest?

I think that much of it comes down to community management. (e.g. preventing trolls from taking over, continuing discussion threads)

Yeah my stats were 100:1 too: http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/18839832580/reddi...

I just pulled a list of the top most trafficked products (by unique outbound clicks) posted to Product Hunt in the past week:

1) Meeet http://www.producthunt.com/posts/meeet - 4,827

2) ProducTind http://www.producthunt.com/posts/productind - 4,301

3) Fatherly http://www.producthunt.com/posts/fatherly - 4,036

4) Moment http://www.producthunt.com/posts/moment-2 - 3,833

5) NEED http://www.producthunt.com/posts/need - 3,815

6) Grasswire http://www.producthunt.com/posts/grasswire - 3,802

7) HTML 5 Up http://www.producthunt.com/posts/html-5-up - 3,775

8) Machete http://www.producthunt.com/posts/machete - 3,534

9) Withings Activité http://www.producthunt.com/posts/withings-activite - 3,052

10) YIX http://www.producthunt.com/posts/yix - 3,043

Note this includes clicks in the email and on the site but doesn't account for referrals via Twitter and other WOM channels.

Based on my relatively small sample size (a couple of times on HN frontpage and TC), a feature about a utility like this that sits on the Lifehacker homepage for any significant amount of time will demolish the sources mentioned here in terms of actual resulting usage.

I'd love to compare. Any tips?

I think Lifehacker editors read a variety of blogs, so if you appear in one of those, you probably have a better chance of getting noticed. It's been a while, but probably smaller blogs that are focused on new companies - KillerStartups, MakeUseOf, ProgrammableWeb, that sort of thing. You can also try emailing them (tips@lifehacker), but I imagine that they don't read all of those.

I'll try. Thanks

It's also worth noting that these services do not live in a vacuum. People seeing the story on Hacker News may well have later seen the story on Techcrunch but skipped over it. I read all three websites daily so I would be counted where I simply saw the story first.

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