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23 Comments

PSA: A hunter can hunt your product on Product Hunt without informing you or crediting you

We'd been planning to launch Across on Product Hunt with all the recommended steps. But today, someone who we've never met and is not a customer posted Across to PH. When I emailed Product Hunt to take the post down, they would not do so, and they have said we cannot repost the product when we are ready.

This seems like a terrible way to treat makers.

  1. 4

    Wow, that sucks! I would try pinging their founder @rrhoover on Twitter - Pavin.

    1. 2

      I pinged ProductHunt but no response

  2. 3

    Buying premium ProductHunt Ship allows you to bend the rules a bit. They will never say so in chat, but if you play a proper word game they will hint you that Ship makes them less strict.
    I know it sucks, but if PH is key to your growth strategy, this at least gives you an option.

  3. 3

    I'm personally getting quite disillusioned with those huge popular platforms that focus so much on curating content.

    How can they refuse taking down info on your own product...

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      The other side is that the product is public. Someone decided to send a link to it. It's not that they're publishing wrong or deceiving information about it.
      BTW - you can always post the product again with some "major announcement". For example, JotForm has no less than 10(!) posts. They only have one product as you know, but they call it with different name every time: JotForm for mobile, assign by jotform, jotform 4.0 - it's all the same product, with an additional feature that they've decided to highlight

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        They said we can only do major announcements every 6 months. It's pretty ridiculous that they did not even credit us as makers

        1. 1

          Well, JotForm posted 8 or 9 times in the last year alone. The most recent 2 posts were 15 days apart.
          So I'm not sure they enforce it.
          Or they get paid by them..

        2. 0

          you can ask the hunter to add you as a maker - that hunter might not know you right? you can also reach out to them instead of complaining on this forum ;)

          1. 1

            Yeah that's true. The bigger issue is that we wanted to launch when our product was ready and not before though

            1. 1

              is it live and can people sign up to use it? Then, go with the flow ;)

              WHY DOWNVOTE ME? lol

      2. 2

        Went to PH now and discovered that they have just made another post about HIPAA compliant forms...
        They are certainly (ab)using PH as major marketing channel.

    2. 1

      Curating that content (ie: not everyone can post to the frontpage) is what makes it interesting right? Not every shitty product makes it to the frontpage, the community also decides.

      1. 1

        Yeah true, I guess i was just annoyed that it ruined our planned launch

  4. 2

    I had a similar situation recently. I scheduled a launch for 1st April but later on I knew I couldn't make the deadline so I tried to change it but unfortunately there's no way to edit your scheduled post on PH.
    Not only that but there's no way of even knowing you scheduled a post. You literally can't access your scheduled post. PH's UX internally is really crappy.

  5. 2

    I have hunted a couple of products without informing makers, but all have made it into the top 5 of the day, and I did tag the makers and try to present the brand as correctly as possible. Some makers are impossible to reach out to though and I wanna share cool products.

    Once I was requested by a company that changed their mind to take a post down so they could launch at a later date and PH did it promptly.

  6. 2

    In the end it's just an aggregator just like HN where everyone can submit interesting products, links and articles. I'd say there's a bit of an unwritten rule on PH to not do that but if someone is not aware of that there's not really anything is stopping them.

    There's no mention of anything like "Is this your product or something you found?" in the submission interface so you can't really blame anyone for not knowing that. A bit odd that PH doesn't really have a proper process for "claiming" a product.

    1. 1

      "I'd say there's a bit of an unwritten rule on PH to not do that" --> IT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE WEBSITE TO DO THAT

      You can "claim" your product by reaching out to the hunter and ask them to add you as a maker. And YES, Product Hunt could add an option, but that would be spammed to death if someone posts the new Tesla cybertruck ;)

      1. 1

        No all-caps necessary. I know it's the purpose, that's why I said it's an aggregator like HN (where everyone can share interesting products, links, articles,...).

        What I'm saying is that I don't blame anyone for posting someone's products they are not affiliated with as there's no rule against that. Not everyone is aware of the unofficial etiquette to add the Maker / ask them if they have a launch planned already.

        1. 1

          yeah sorry this just really triggers me haha. What I actually want to say: be happy that someone thought you were interesting enough to share on Product Hunt. No ready yet? Go with the flow --> reach out to hunter or Product Hunt to get added as a maker (then you can also adjust the post texts/images etc. if you want), dive into the conversation and make the most of it.

          There will never be a rule to posting "someone else's" product as, again, that is why Product Hunt exists.

  7. 2

    Oof, that stinks! As @bramk mentions, it looks like it's an open playground for sharing cool projects you come across. Perhaps that's quite a compliment someone posted your project? That is, if it wasn't done maliciously.

  8. 0

    "But today, someone who we've never met and is not a customer posted Across to PH. " --> NO SHIT, that is the purpose of Product Hunt haha.

    People who find interesting products can post and share them on Product Hunt to show them to the community.

    1. -1

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