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Open Hunt — Open and community run alternative to Product Hunt
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@jsneedles @rrhoover and evidently mine can't be opened or voted upon bc it was posted after the other... also I provided feedback, did you get it? It said it'd go to the maker of the product.
@jacquescrocker - how does Ryan get my feedback?
@jacquescrocker - how does Ryan get my feedback?
@rrhoover The real question is: What if Product Hunt gets more upvotes on their platform, than Open Hunt?
@jsneedles what do you mean not the biggest cat fans? You heart-eye cat emoji at me all the time
@nivo0o0 These are the hard hitting questions that the PH community is not afraid to ask!
@nivo0o0 I wonder - what was there in first draft of @producthunt? I am sure Open Hunt will add features and fix things over time.
@jacquescrocker, a VERY IMPRESSIVE first effort. Keep your head in the right place and it will succeed. We need it to.
Hey @chrismessina why so much effort in trying to ridicule an impressive first effort? You're surely bigger than that man.
And to the people wondering why it doesn't have the same features a multi-million dollar funded alternative, ProductHunt started as a spreadsheet. That was before it became a place for "special people" to wield power.
What i'm certain is that this will prosper and at worst will make @ryanhoover seat up.
At best...
Top Hunter
@oothenigerian I'm not ridiculing anything. I support the idea of taking an idea, forking it, trying to make it better... I get that there's probably some desire for "more transparency" (which is relative, of course). I'm more interested in understanding the core motivations here, and what injustices are trying to be corrected by making the project open source.
Just because something is open source doesn't mean it's better, or that its governance will be less prone to cronyism, insiderism, or corruption. It just means that the source code is available for anyone to look at, and depending on the license, to be forked, contributed to, or built anew in another instance.
@chrismessina @oothenigerian I think you are mixing things up here. It's open not because its source code is available but because of the whole system is transparent and open. Here is FAQ you may want to read it: https://www.openhunt.co/faq
Open Hunt looks like a great opportunity for makers with early stage products to get feedback when they need it. The wisdom of keeping feedback private is questionable, but the community is young and will learn what provides its members the most value.
@kkdub I think hiding the feedback was a poor choice as well. But luckily it is open source and we can submit this as an issue! I bet it already has been.
The "problem" with PH is the *weight* people give it, A LOT OF WEIGHT. All those "Hyped bloggers" writing how PH drove signups and VC money is a double-edged sword for the product hunt marketing team.
The OMGWTFBBQness propagated through the interwebs at speed of light.
Yes, it's curated.
Yes, you might have the best startup ever and still not be featured.
Yes, there's a lot of secret-handshaking.
A lesson you need to learn ^
*You don't have to be featured on PH to become a billion dollar company*
<3 them or hate them! Why can't we just all hunt & chill? 👍
I'll admit I'm a little baffled, @jacquescrocker, as to where you see this heading. It's an awful lot of effort for a copycat product. What is your vision?
@kikischirr It's admittedly starting out as a bit of a copycat. However, remember the original Product Hunt HN post: "Hacker News for Products". So there's a slight bit of precedent there. We currently have some important differences (https://www.openhunt.co/differences) and I see Open Hunt further differentiating itself as it goes on.
The vision: a community targeted towards the very early stage product launches. Less curated, more community driven. Post the good stuff with the bad, and let the community work out which ones are the best (and the bad ones can ideally get some important feedback on how to improve).
Great job!
What is interesting is that, in other sites/communities, this project is receiving lots of good feedback. Only here, I see people making fun of it or trying to compare it directly with Product Hunt at its current stage.
Anyway, I don't think it's a replacement, but a very interesting alternative.
Good luck!
I think people forget that Product Hunt is not an overnight sensation it took a lot of time and effort to get here.
What people see as conspiracy and exclusion is just evolution of the platform and community that you see today.
Top Hunter
@jacquescrocker if you agree, then what's your core motivation or differentiator?
@chrismessina @mubashariqbal Copying and pasting this from their About page (https://www.openhunt.co/differences).
> Differences between Open Hunt and Product Hunt
- Open and Transparent
- Get Feedback on your product
- Audit Trail
- Community Governance
- Karma System (proposed)
- Queuing System (proposed)
In short, I think the goal is to borrow some elements that have worked on Reddit, make the code open source, and let the community drive the product roadmap directly.
@chrismessina they're not public. How they get to the makers, 0 idea. How do they know who the makers are, 0 idea. For something so open, there are a lot of questions remaining.
@jsneedles @chrismessina sorry, just not built yet :) i'll add that as an FAQ.
thanks for the feedback!
Gatekeepers ha ha. If you have a great product, it will be on PH. The community here is awesome, but like any community you need to engage with it.. Product Hunt is a curated list of the best products available. A list of everything just isn't helpful...
@danielkempe I concur. One improvement for this type of open submission could be adding categories/collections/tagging so that everything's not in one big bucket.
@danielkempe I disagree, PH is littered with Wordpress themes, incremental updates to old stuf and other assorted not-product stuff like movies, shows and so on...one must stretch his imagination to call it all product
@danielkempe completely disagree (with all due respect). There is an insider aspect to PH that is known and documented. Aside from "great" being a subjective term, a product will usually only make the PH top list if submitted by a curator/insider/gatekeeper (whatever term you prefer). Products submitted to upcoming by the general community rarely make it to the top (great or not).
@callmeed @danielkempe Erik, I think that "known and documented" is an odd term to use for Product Hunt's curation process. It's been a while since I checked the FAQ, so I'm not sure if it's in there, but I've heard the process discussed in numerous podcasts and interviews of the team, so it's not like there's a skeleton in the closet.
That being said, I hear you on the "insider" aspect. The invitation process could easily lead to cronyism, or to power-pandering invites. However, I have been very impressed by Product Hunt's consistent attempts to give voice to underrepresented groups in the tech world. For example, early on, they reached out to me and gave me five invitations, asking that I please give them out to women who would become great members of the community. (Note: I'm not the best curator, I think only 2/5 are active. 😅 But that gave me a strong appreciation for how hard it is to do this sort of thing.)
I'm not saying I'm against greater openness, but I do have faith in the team to adjust over time. And if anyone needs a reminder of what happens when there isn't curation, one needs only to looks at the screaming/crying/weird sexual advances that occurred during the Kevin Jonas AMA. (most of which were extremely cute, but some bordered on creepy)
@kikischirr thanks for the reply. I was referring more to posts than users and invites ... my comment was in the context of @danielkempe's statement that "If you have a great product, it will be on PH"–it's simply not true in a curated environment where only a handful of people can post to the front page. Just like there are great iOS apps that may never get featured by Apple in the App Store, the same applies here.
Take a look at these two links if you haven't already:
https://medium.com/@benjiwheeler...
http://recode.net/2015/06/18/pro...
Look, I really like PH and have found valuable products there. I also understand that "you can't please all the people all the time." But good things can go bad if growth isn't handled properly.
@itsnblackburn I actually think PH has lost something for me in their recent updates. The main list is no longer the first thing I see when I open the app. I find myself opening the app less now. 😖 I am also planning on contributing to OH. Looks like it could be fun.
What say this one be about featuring the feature-worthy - rather than featuring everything, carte-blanche, based on cronyism and inheritance - who the decision-makers at PH is a "somebody" elsewhere? Wouldn't that be refreshing?
Interesting idea - I read through their post on hacker news and don't agree with a lot of the beefing on there. I was granted commenting access without submitting a product or asking
Invariably, all this about PH vs OH is really trying to solve the same problem: discoverability. Can't see why the two can't co-exist like iOS and Android.
In the end, smart entrepreneurs will find a way to get their product in front of the right audience. And those with good products will succeed in the long run.
Product Hunt