The Contradictions that Make Product Hunt Such a Confusing Product

Given its name and its mission — its “a place for product-loving enthusiasts to share and geek out about the latest mobile apps, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations” — it would seem unlikely that Product Hunt itself would be anything less than an extraordinary product. The founding story, that it started as an email list, grew up to join Y Combinator and get funding from Andreessen Horowitz, is perhaps the epitome of the modern startup ideal. It attracts hundreds to its happy hours and meet ups, and people blog constantly about how “Product Hunt helped me launch my startup”. It seems to have become indispensable.

And yet, when I look at Product Hunt, I find myself more than anything confused at the contradictions that lie at the heart of the product.

Contradiction One — Product Hunt is about community

The refrain, espoused over and over by founder Ryan Hoover, is that Product Hunt exists only because of the community. The hundreds of people who seemingly populate the always interesting, always growing list of cool products, who upvote the best of the best to the top of the list, who create collections, write blog posts, and attend meet ups, are the heart, apparently, of the product. Hoover often shares snippets of new designs and ideas with his followers (social or entrepreneurial) to gauge response and, presumably, direction.

And yet, the entirety of the Product Hunt list is discovered by a small subset of the population. Upvoting is open to anyone, but commenting is also restricted. There are some ways to get an invite (knowing someone who knows someone, it would seem), and while copying theFacebook is often a good way to go, I’ll circle back to why this community structure creates issues for the Product Hunt product over and over again. There are countless queries on blogs, message boards, and even Quora about how to get a product hunt invite and people who can post products to the list have gone so far as to put disclaimers on their website contact forms.

Reddit is an obvious inspiration for Hoover, and while PH has varied in many ways, this contradiction lives at the heart of both communities. Thus far PH has spared itself the worst of Reddit’s problems, but only by having seemingly complete control. It seems unlikely that this control will be able to outlast PH as it grows (if it grows). By staying in a much smaller vertical than the reddit behemoth, Hoover has bought himself some time to continue his dominance over the community, but if and when he has engulfed the entire San Francisco startup scene, the cracks will begin to show. Snapchat tours of the PH offices will no longer keep users feeling like they are on the “inside”.

Contradiction Two — Discovery is key

As I quoted above, the stated goal is that Product Hunt is a place for people to “share and geek out” — presumably this means discover and discuss. When your website is a list of products for people to discover and vote, the action you assign to the first click on a product is hugely important. When Product Hunt first started, the click took you directly to the site you had clicked on. An obvious KPI for Product Hunt should be, if it isn’t already, how many people it sends to the sites it features. This, it would seem, makes a strong case for getting people out of producthunt.com and into the actual products as quickly and effortlessly as possible.

And yet, when you do click on a link, you are taken to a spiffy producthunt.com page with images of the link you clicked on, a discussion board, and a CTA to go visit that site. On its own this wouldn’t be entirely confusing — its common practice on community sites. However, remember that community structure I discussed earlier? This giant discussion board is viewable, but for the vast majority of users, they cannot contribute to the conversation. So much for community. Why keep users inside producthunt.com if they can’t contribute to the discussion. If the goal is to educate them, by showing them the conversations of the “experienced” makers who have access, then its belittling and offensive. If the commenting limitation is simply, as stated, to “maintain the quality of discussion”, then only put the discussions so front and center for people who can comment, or perhaps work on finding ways to improve the quality of discussion with a wider audience should be prioritized more highly than it has been thus far.

Over the course of September and October, the top 10 products received a total of 14,929 votes, but a paltry 621 (4.2%) comments. The most commented item (as a percentage of votes) was TLDR by inside.com, which came in 4th by number of votes for its launch day, with 533 votes and 115 comments (or 21.5%). Following in second was Travel with Makers, with 228 votes and 49 comments (it came in 3rd for its launch day).

If the goal of the product is to promote conversation (as its UX would suggest), these numbers should be much higher (the highest commented item in the timeframe was Super Top Secret Product Hunt Beta, with 153 comments on 1190 votes, or 13%). If the goal is to keep the commenting high quality, as Hoover and team suggest, the product should be designed differently. Pick one, and stick with it.

Contradiction Three — “Product” has a definition

When it launched, the definition of a product varied widely. Digital, physical, new, updated, almost anything was a product. And understandably, as PH has grown, the definition has refined. With the launch of new category verticals (games, books, podcasts), the obvious lines are being drawn.

And yet, the main feed retains much of the variety it has always had. Websites, services, iPhone cases and keyboards, cars (tesla, obviously), new apple products, business cards, blogs, APIs, podcast players, updates to productivity apps galore, and even new Product Hunt features all fall into the category. Sometimes an update will be labeled as such (Overcast 2.0). Other times complete rebrands get just the name (Asana). Its almost like the wild west, except its everything that the silicon valley crows finds interesting (and sometimes, as with The List App, Hollywood too).

Contradiction Four — Teams are just as Important as Founders

One of the early improvements of PH was to add a credit not only to the “hunter”, but also to the “maker” — usually the founder of the company or product that was featured. I’ve often found the fetishism of the founder a bit disconcerting, and the elevation once again of only one of many individuals behind often dreadfully complicated products felt uncomfortable to say the least. Eventually, room was added for a group of “makers” to be headlined, improving the chances that all of the many hardworking individuals behind the scenes had their moment in the spotlight.

And yet, the whole group of makers is still hidden behind a click, while the hunter is featured front and center. With the launch of PH Live, once again founders are front and center offering their boundless wisdom, while the rest of the teams that built the products remain name and faceless in the background.

It is especially odd to me that this team focus is so missing from Product Hunt (and is the reason makerhunt.co and makerba.se popped up so spectacularly), given Hoovers apparent focus on showcasing that his whole team is behind the things he is often credited for (even the PH about page randomly re-assigns the team head shots to ensure fairness). Again, the community structure made it hard for Product Hunt to decide whether to feature Makers or Hunters on the frontpage — it chose Hunters, in a nod to its need for good content discovery.

Ultimately, if Product Hunt is truly (as Hoover says) about the community then this confusion will inevitably reach a tipping point where fun products no longer outweigh a confusing experience. If community is only a tool being used to scale up before some eventual monetization scheme (remember, PH is venture backed) the design, the UX, and the decisions behind them fall far behind the importance of a steady flow of new (and preferably featured or as of yet undiscovered) products.