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What's your take on the Product Hunt drama?
Looks like i missed something over the weekend, but this morning I just saw all the Product Hunt drama. Fun reading, these were some of the good ones:
Drama
- nico's bomb: https://x.com/nico_jeannen/status/1840348855289905567
Drama
- nico's bomb: https://x.com/nico_jeannen/status/1840348855289905567
- producthunt ceo response: https://x.com/rajivayyangar/status/1840391051871408614
Reactions:
- @alexanderisora : https://x.com/alexanderisorax/status/1840438603186667813
- @jimraptis meme lol https://x.com/d__raptis/status/1840486699182248210
personally, I think Nico said what a lot of people feeling but raw off of the non-featured deflation.. the Producthunt guy responds too quick imo (reply at height of emotion) and sounds way out of touch, but he did make me laugh, like Jim's meme. I just didn't understand what he means by interesting product because it's hard to judge:
https://x.com/graeme_fulton/status/1840690148503142816
@bentossell reply nails it https://x.com/bentossell/status/1840443801724129738
Reactions:
- @alexanderisora : https://x.com/alexanderisorax/status/1840438603186667813
- @jimraptis meme lol https://x.com/d__raptis/status/1840486699182248210
personally, I think Nico said what a lot of people feeling but raw off of the non-featured deflation.. the Producthunt guy responds too quick imo (reply at height of emotion) and sounds way out of touch, but he did make me laugh, like Jim's meme. I just didn't understand what he means by interesting product because it's hard to judge:
https://x.com/graeme_fulton/status/1840690148503142816
@bentossell reply nails it https://x.com/bentossell/status/1840443801724129738
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I've never really used Product Hunt as a user, only to launch things.
It was cool when everyone launched with 0 user to get some early feedback. Now everyone waits to have users to get upvotes & pay for advertising.
It has become useless except for getting a high DR backlink.
I mean even @levelsio is not posting his own projects there anymore.
I prefer to focus on real acquisition channels.
And for the community part, it's way better here on WIP.
yeah I miss the old one :(
AI has taken over PH, they need an invite only or something
I completely agree with you. Recently after actively spending months on PH, I can say other Indie Hacker communities like WIP and IH are way better than PH community which is kinda become like social media influence crap. Most of the discussions only happen to gain followers and benefit launch upvote count rather than genuine feedback oriented which it used to be.
Bad take by the PH CEO. He seems to think he or his team should decide what "good" products are. Well, ok, but his track record isn't particularly great if you look at the stuff that got featured so I'm not sure why he's so full of himself.
What he doesn't realize is that he is nothing without people posting on his site, and this kind of gatekeeping behavior will only cause people to stop using it.
Their traffic is tanking for a reason and I hope they die at this point and get replaced by something much more useful.
yeah it's a tricky one, feel like saying nothing sometimes is better.
But this has put Product Hunt on the radar again at least
like you say it's hard for them to judge what is "good", I don;t think the rules on the help page make it any clearer
I don't care too much about the debate. Has their model evolved and gone into the wrong direction? Potentially. Should we throw stones at them until they fix it? Nah. It's fine if they die.
I'm more excited about the new builds that will bridge the gap for indie makers. I think @marc will potentially do something with BetaList, and Dragobert is building LaunchDay: x.com/dagorenouf/status/18407…
woah the replies on that dogobert thread are insane, so many alternatives, surely one will make it !
Yeah, I’m actually excited for that launch haha
I'm genuinely surprised there hasn't been a competitor sooner. This looks like a train wreck, and worst, it seems like they're not being transparent on what the criteria is to get featured (except throw a lot of money at PH or game the system).
Anyway, I love seeing it when a competitor surfaces to either make the original level up and get its shit together or die a painful death.
Either way, I've got popcorn ready.
I think there have been lots of competitors, but they don't really stick cos it's a huge job to make something new and then keep people engaged, and then keep out spammers too!
haha yeah good entertainment 🍿, first time I've been engaged in maker stuff on twitter for ages
I somewhat agree with nico. I have used product hunt from a long time and was again an active user couple of months ago for almost 6 months. In that time frame, I observed many things have changed in the PH, some for good but mostly for bad. PH kind off promotes products which are of big startups having good marketing budget and those companies literally pay PH hackers having huge whatsapp/discord groups to purchase the Upvotes. Right now, there is almost little to no chances that an indie product would be in top 5 even after passing the guidelines provided by PH.
In short, the platform is widely abused by money and power of VC backed startups which makes it not suitable for indie hackers anymore.
I guess I've been wrong saying AI spam, sounds more like VC spam from this..I remember praising the bootstrapped dropdown to help you find bootstrapped products, but they removed it ..not sure what the thinking is
yeah, it was a real useful feature. Might have been disappeared due to AngelList acquisition.
Glad it is happening, IMO the platform is really low value for end users in 2024, and just something that marketing teams feel like they have to do.
I missed the whole thing and honestly I don't really care that much because I am not TA of PH. I have never used it as a user for discovering new products. I think it's a terrible product for that purpose.
As people said, it's a nice place to boost your SEO in the beginning and might be get a few test users here and there (I think you can get even more from X/LinkedIn) but apart from that I don't see much value in it.
I'd love to see this lead to a more interesting projects launching as competitions. E.g. IH product updates from actual founders I always enjoyed more so maybe they will bring it back now. Or something new entirely.