It's true many of my startup friends are on Product Hunt. I trust that they will add useful contributions to the site because I know them. But the majority of the people (95%+) aren't my "friends" per se. The community has grown largely by referrals of existing community members and founders who's products have been submitted at some point.
I recognize the frustration some people have in not being able to contribute but the product as it's designed right now, will not scale if it's completely open to the public. We're implementing some changes in the coming weeks to prepare for this.
Again, I don't want anyone to feel "excluded" and are making a concerted effort to grow the community carefully. In the meantime, please add your name here and we'll send you a note once it's opened up: http://bit.ly/ph-contributor :)
I also find Product Hunt to be alienating and therefor a bad overall experience. I understand wanting to limit who can post new submissions at first, to avoid too many self promotional posts, but I don't understand the rationale behind preventing users from commenting. It's especially perplexing because the quality of comments on Product Hunt is pretty low right now so I'm not sure what you're even protecting. There are a lot of comments that don't add any value to the conversation, that say little more than "Thanks" and "Great job!", and hardly ever any substance filled replies. If you're worried about spam, I would think putting new commenters into a moderation queue until they've proved themselves to be worthy contributors would be an easy enough solution.
I love Show HN posts so I should be one of your biggest fans. I want to be. I love reading about new products and I love discussing them. But every time I visit your site I feel like I'm treated like a second class user. I wonder how many others feel the same.
EDIT: I do think Product Hunt will be a successful venture for you. It's a decent idea but more importantly you're hustling hard to build a community, which is no easy task. Most developers tend to put in a lot of hours building something scalable but are too far outside their comfort zone when it comes time to find and engage with users. That's something you're excelling at and I think it's the reason Product Hunt will ultimately succeed. I just think you're making a mistake with some of your earliest adopters. You should be treating us as if we're special, because we are. Instead you're asking us to be a part of your community but barring our ability to communicate.
"But every time I visit your site I feel like I'm treated like a second class user."
This is certainly not my intention. You make fantastic points, avalaunch. We're in the middle of adding threaded comments, upvoting, and other changes to the product pages so that more people can interact. Right now it gets a bit difficult to follow a conversation when there are 20+ comments. Once this is ready, along with a few other things, we'll open comments to more people and maybe everyone.
It's always easier to expand outward but you can't take away functionality or features from people. Slow and steady.
I appreciate your being frank. The problem is despite your interest to be open your personal network already makes you and the site bias. In all likelihood your are missing great products that come from other technology hubs. I'd much rather it open up and become more international. Until then it's a clique
Comments
product hunt is clique. submission is limited to owners and owners friends.
It's true many of my startup friends are on Product Hunt. I trust that they will add useful contributions to the site because I know them. But the majority of the people (95%+) aren't my "friends" per se. The community has grown largely by referrals of existing community members and founders who's products have been submitted at some point.
I recognize the frustration some people have in not being able to contribute but the product as it's designed right now, will not scale if it's completely open to the public. We're implementing some changes in the coming weeks to prepare for this.
Again, I don't want anyone to feel "excluded" and are making a concerted effort to grow the community carefully. In the meantime, please add your name here and we'll send you a note once it's opened up: http://bit.ly/ph-contributor :)
I also find Product Hunt to be alienating and therefor a bad overall experience. I understand wanting to limit who can post new submissions at first, to avoid too many self promotional posts, but I don't understand the rationale behind preventing users from commenting. It's especially perplexing because the quality of comments on Product Hunt is pretty low right now so I'm not sure what you're even protecting. There are a lot of comments that don't add any value to the conversation, that say little more than "Thanks" and "Great job!", and hardly ever any substance filled replies. If you're worried about spam, I would think putting new commenters into a moderation queue until they've proved themselves to be worthy contributors would be an easy enough solution.
I love Show HN posts so I should be one of your biggest fans. I want to be. I love reading about new products and I love discussing them. But every time I visit your site I feel like I'm treated like a second class user. I wonder how many others feel the same.
EDIT: I do think Product Hunt will be a successful venture for you. It's a decent idea but more importantly you're hustling hard to build a community, which is no easy task. Most developers tend to put in a lot of hours building something scalable but are too far outside their comfort zone when it comes time to find and engage with users. That's something you're excelling at and I think it's the reason Product Hunt will ultimately succeed. I just think you're making a mistake with some of your earliest adopters. You should be treating us as if we're special, because we are. Instead you're asking us to be a part of your community but barring our ability to communicate.
"But every time I visit your site I feel like I'm treated like a second class user."
This is certainly not my intention. You make fantastic points, avalaunch. We're in the middle of adding threaded comments, upvoting, and other changes to the product pages so that more people can interact. Right now it gets a bit difficult to follow a conversation when there are 20+ comments. Once this is ready, along with a few other things, we'll open comments to more people and maybe everyone.
It's always easier to expand outward but you can't take away functionality or features from people. Slow and steady.
I appreciate your being frank. The problem is despite your interest to be open your personal network already makes you and the site bias. In all likelihood your are missing great products that come from other technology hubs. I'd much rather it open up and become more international. Until then it's a clique