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Our product (http://grasswire.com http://grasswire.com) was recently also on the top of HackerNews and ProductHunt (Show HN:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id
by austenallred 12y ago
Our product (http://grasswire.com http://grasswire.com) was recently also on the top of HackerNews and ProductHunt (Show HN:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7954327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7954327 , ProductHunt: http://www.producthunt.com/posts/grasswire http://www.producthunt.com/posts/grasswire). No TechCrunch writeup yet.
Not all posts are created equal, so it's important to note that we never hit #1 on HN to my knowledge. We were #2-4 for the majority of the day, and fell off the front page about 24 hours later. We also had a blip where we were removed before we could show our post wasn't a dupe, so we lost an hour there.
HackerNews Traffic:
HackerNews day 1: 5,750
HackerNews day 2: 1,115
HackerNews day 3: negligible
HackerNews Total: 6865
HackerNews was posted on a fairly slow Friday, so it's probably different if you post Monday morning. We had 82 total upvotes on HN.
On ProductHunt we were/are one of the top products ever, so I have no idea what it's like if you don't get a lot of upvotes. We also posted to ProductHunt on Monday morning.
ProductHunt Traffic:
ProductHunt day 1: 1,273
ProductHunt day 2: 465
ProductHunt email: 1,114 (this is rough, because I only have it as "direct" traffic, so I'm estimating what our direct traffic is on a given day and subtracting that out. But we're new enough this could be off).
ProductHunt day 3: 247
ProductHunt total: 3,126
Day 3 is today, so I don't have much data, but ProductHunt certainly has a slower drop if you're going to die. Though, again, that's probably only true if you have 150+ upvotes on ProductHunt.
But that's quantitative. Let's go qualitative.
As far as the feedback we got, HN was 10x better. Almost all of the people commenting on PH work for PH, so I assume there's a lot of dog fooding going on. It's a very young product, so it's understandable, but I can't see that growing unless there's more happening there.
Some negatives of ProductHunt are that I've had people go through and tweet at everybody who voted for us (including me) because your twitter account is publicly listed when you vote. That's kind of annoying.
Overall, why not post to PH? But it has a lot of ground to make up before it catches HN. Anecdotally, I check every single "Show HN." I've maybe clicked on two or three things on ProductHunt, mostly because I don't care enough about other people's products to seek the site out specifically.
- aagha 12y agoThanks for posting. I saw grasswire when it was posted on PH and immediately took to it; I think you're doing a great job with "visual news". Re your question: Overall, why not post to PH? Because, for the most part, you can't. You have to be invited to do so, making it (near?) impossible to get on unless you know someone who knows someone who already has access. What do you mean by "Almost all of the people commenting on PH work for PH"?
- rrhoover 12y agoI (founder of PH) have the same question re: "Almost all of the people commenting on PH work for PH." You can see the list of people that are or have worked on Product Hunt on our about page (http://www.producthunt.com/about http://www.producthunt.com/about). ~95% of the posts and comments are submitted by people that don't "work" for Product Hunt. aagha is correct in that we've limited the number of people that can post. If anyone could post a product to the homepage, it would be overrun with self-promotion and frankly noise, with the way it's currently designed. We're working on a recommendation system so that people in the community can refer others to join the conversation in addition to a new posting flow that allows anyone to submit a product to be curated by the community. It's early days and I empathize with the frustration of not being able to comment or post on the site. We're working hard to open it to a larger audience.
- aagha 12y agoWe're working on a recommendation system so that people in the community can refer others to join the conversation Don't you this just perpetuates the "bros" ethos? How likely is a solo entrepreneur in his mid-40's working on a web startup and plugged into the Digital Valley but unable to attend meetups in the city to get an email from someone in the community of your friends and their friends? I think the chances are low. Perhaps you should allow people to request a membership. I tried to submit a cool startup I found to PH last week and quickly determined I couldn't. Before that, I'd been checking PH ever morning to see what was cool and out there. After not being able to participate in the community (or the conversation--you could easily moderate comments) its basically fallen off my radar and I've stopped visiting.
- austenallred 12y agoSpeaking about our post specifically, two of the three commenters had "x for ProductHunt" in their bio.
- minimaxir 12y agoSome negatives of ProductHunt are that I've had people go through and tweet at everybody who voted for us (including me) because your twitter account is publicly listed when you vote. That's kind of annoying. Wait, what? Is that expected behavior for PH?
- rrhoover 12y agoWhat were they tweeting exactly and why were they messaging people that voted for the product? We have seen founders reach out to people that upvoted on Twitter, thanking them for their support but that's different than what Austen described.
- austenallred 12y agoThey tweeted at everyone that voted for us and said, "I see you voted for grasswire on PH. Check out our similar product." If you want, Ryan, email me and I'll send you details. Don't want to out anyone publicly.
- rrhoover 12y agoI see. Now that you mention it, I do remember seeing that cross my "Product Hunt" search column on Twitter. That's not the first time someone has promoted their own product in that way but from my knowledge it's uncommon.