Product Hunt Has Released YourStack, A Social Network Where People Talk About Products
The team that built Product Hunt — a website that helps you find new tech products — is releasing a new site that shows you all types of products that your friends and public figures recommend.
Called YourStack, the site is open to a wide array of products — including apps, books, and cookware — no matter when they were released. It’s also social: You can follow people if you like their taste in certain things.
“YourStack is going to be about following your friends, people you like, or experts in certain areas,” Ryan Hoover, the founder of YourStack and Product Hunt, told BuzzFeed News. “It’s a network.”
Owned by AngelList, which bought Product Hunt in 2016, the new site feels like a traditional social network, with profiles and a central, running feed of updates from people you follow. But it’s all products — no political rants, selfies, or job updates.
On Monday, a day before launch, early test users filled YourStack’s feed with reviews of books, headphones, drinking glasses, and the Peloton bike. There were also a few tech products, like AirPods and LinkedIn. “Most efficient way to work out. Keeps me highly motivated to sweat my ass off,” wrote one user about the Peloton. “The most comfortable vessel to drink a hot or cold beverage in,” wrote another about Bodum Pavina double-wall glasses.
Several high-profile tech executives have already joined the site, including venture capitalists Naval Ravikant and Sarah Tavel, Behance founder Scott Belsky, and former Tinder chief product officer Brian Norgard. Their recommendations might help keep YourStack vibrant as it works to gain its footing.
The site will also have pro tips, or tips from people about how to best use certain products (like the trick to get someone to unfollow you on Twitter), and questions meant to spark group discussion like “Which business book had the biggest impact on your thinking?” and “What do you use to manage your personal to-do’s?”
Review fraud may become an issue for YourStack as it grows, as it has been for Amazon and Yelp. Hoover said the site is sharing spam and abuse detection systems and moderation practices with Product Hunt. YourStack only allows users to create accounts using Twitter log-ins, which should cut down on fake accounts.
As reviews pile in, YourStack aims to become a Yelp for products. If you’re looking for the best air fryer, for instance, you could search for air fryers and dig through which of them have been “stacked” the most (“stack” is YourStack’s word for share) and then read through the comments and discussion.
“We’ve looked a lot at Yelp from a social perspective,” Hoover said. “We’ll be introducing categories so you can filter down to the ‘cars my friends drive,’ ‘most popular board games,’ ‘trending products among people in my city,’ and other ways to explore.”
Product Hunt, Hoover said, is near breaking even after selling to AngelList in for a reported $20 million. With that side of the business in good shape, it was time to try something new.
The team that built Product Hunt — a website that helps you find new tech products — is releasing a new site that shows you all types of products that your friends and public figures recommend. Called YourStack, the site is open to a wide array of products — including…
