The Roundup
Everything you missed this past week on Product Hunt: Top products, spicy community discourse, key trends on the site, and long-form pieces we’ve recently published.
“Not only is Fortnite the new hangout spot, replacing the mall, Starbucks or just loitering in the city, it's become the coveted 'third place' for millions of people around the world” - Owen Williams
2018 was the year of Fortnite. Drake played streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins. The game launched on iOS. And the Switch. And Android. It even partnered with the NFL. 🎮
Since the third-person shooter game officially debuted a year and a half ago, it has turned into a cultural phenomenon that now has over 200 million registered players.
But in the past few weeks, we've read a lot less about the game itself but more about what the game has created — a communal “hangout” spot for players online.
In a nutshell, it's become a place where your friends are — and that sounds a lot like social media. 🤔
“Just speaking for our family, it's still clear to us that Fortnite needs tight rules in our house, but we've shifted to thinking about it less as a video game and more as we might think about a teen talking on the phone for hours.” - Ernie Tedeschi
Fortnite's success as a social network largely stems from that fact that it's really for anyone (even Drake) — it's free to play and available on every device.
This year, we also saw a few Fortnite-focused apps emerge specifically around community:
FortLeague is an iOS app that gives players rankings in the game 👀
Where Should We Drop decides where you and your squad should land on Fortnite 🙌
Last week, Remove.bg launched and blew our minds.
“This is a huge time-saver for stock photos.” - Trish
“No more stupid work in photoshop 🕶” - Dariusz
“I was fully expecting this not to work, but it did it pretty much perfectly.” - Dan
Remove.bg is a simple tool that removes the background of any photo in 5 seconds.
According to the Maker Benjamin Grossing, Remove.bg was originally part of a bigger app, but they decided to release it as a standalone tool since removing photo backgrounds can get superrr tiresome. We're anxious to see what the “bigger app” might be....
Until then, some of the most recent photo editing tools out there to play around with this week:
📸 Lensa will improve your selfies with AI
📸 Affinitiy is a professional photo editing tool for your iPad
📸 Artini is a photo app for the ~artist~ in you
📸 Luminar is superrr easy to use and has AI editing features built in
📸 Lightroom — because it's a classic
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you had a baby with Elon Musk? Of course you have. Thankfully — with the power of AI — you can find out what your baby would look like.
Last week this tool launched, giving anyone with a web browser and internet access the power to swap faces with Elon (or anyone, including your friends).
Reflect isn’t the only one using AI to transform photos.
😯 Morphin (early access beta) puts you inside your favorite GIFs
😯 Face Swap Live lets you switch faces with your friends in real-time (like in Face/Off!)
😯 Emojiface turns your face into an emoji
😯 Zepeto turns your selfie into a Pixar character, currently at the top of the App Store
😯 Headface will turn you into Obama or Trump
😯 Lensa, #1 on Product Hunt today, will make you even more beautiful (made by the team that built Prisma)
Give Reflect a try and share your Elon baby photos with us on Twitter. We’ll RT our favorites. 😊
"I mean like, but anyway" - a five-word acceptance speech at the Webby Awards
What do Beyonce, Pokemon Go, Instagram, Lady Gaga, The Women's March, Airbnb, GIPHY and The New York Times all have in common? They're all Webby winners.
In honor of new tech related categories, we partnered up with the Webby Awards to tell you: your startup can win a Webby Award too!
Here's how it works:
1. Go to http://webbyawards.com 💻
2. Your startup might fit one of the Apps, Mobile and Voice categories 📱
3. Fill out the form, select what applies to you (Social, Games and Entertainment) 📋
4. Select featured categories to enter (This is the first year honors for Voice are included) 😉
5. Submit your application and hope the judges will choose you 🤞
The Webby Awards are judged by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Members include Alexis Ohanian (Reddit), Biz Stone (Twitter), Emily Weiss (Glossier), DeRay McKesson (Pod Save the People), Opal Tometi (Black Lives Matter) and more.
The deadline to enter (for reduced pricing) is Friday December 14th.
Our first-ever Product Hunt Makers Festival has been a celebration of creativity with teams and individuals from all corners of the globe coming together to launch something. Our showcase last week had close to 100 projects across our six themes: social impact, remote workers, voice and audio, health and beauty, inclusion and brain stuff. Makers also built awesome products outside the six categories!
We were so impressed with all of the projects that came out of this year’s Makers Festival. In fact, we're already planning the next one 😏
So without further ado, here are our winners and the runners up in each category:
Social Impact 👊
Cultural Fit is a collaborative list of cultural traits that make you love your workplace
Runners Up
Firebusters is a tool that automatically reports fires (as small as a tree!) to pinpoint its exact location
The Incredible League of Makers is a community for people to build and launch things that solve the world's problems
Voice & Audio 🗣
What would you choose is an Alexa Skill for the Makers Festival
Runners Up
Shuffl.fm is a music assistant that uses hands-free playback and discovery
Voice Lightshow lets you ask Alexa to start a light show
Health & Beauty 💅
Lab Lyfe is an app that offers guided self-experiments in diet, wellness and lifestyle
Runners Up
Keepin' it feel is a reflection exercise is for understanding your emotions
Therma lets you track symptoms and medication for your loved ones
Inclusion 🌎
Femake provides lots and lots of data on female makers
Runners Up
YC Census is an incomplete census of Y-combinator startup batches
Handsfree.js is a drop-in library to create computer-vision powered handsfree interfaces for the web
Brain Stuff 🧠
Teeny Breaks is a Chrome extension showing you one mindfulness tip based on science every time you open a new tab
Runners Up
21 Days MVP provides a starter kit to create and validate your idea in 21 days or less
Paper List syncs your paper and electronic to-do lists
Remote Workers 💻
Yelling Across Cubicles is like walkie-talkie for remote teams
Runners Up
My Timezone Is makes it super easy to update and share your current timezone
IndieWorkspace shows you the desks of other indie makers
Other 🤷
200 Words a Day wants to help anyone be a writer, 200 words at a time
Runners Up
Eureka is a web app that allows employees to put forward suggestions within their company
Stomp is a tool that helps you backup your email subscribers from email marketing platforms
Upvote Bell is a dashboard for your Product Hunt projects where you can see a chart with upvote stats
Congratulations to all and thank you to everyone who participated!
As expected, we a saw a large global turnout of makers from dozens of countries creating unique solutions within voice/audio, social impact, health/beauty, remote working, brain stuff, inclusion and more. A few of these include:
💅 Keepin’ it Feel – A reflection tool for understating your emotions
😎 360 Calm – Guided VR relaxation and cognitive therapy
🗣 Yelling Across Cubicles – A walkie talkie for remote teams
👩 FeMake – The home of data on female makers
🕒 My Timezone Is – Easily share your timezone
Voting ends December 2nd. Next week we’ll announce the winners.
Huge thanks to all of you who participated, helped a fellow maker, and helped spread the word. 🙏
The company also released their SDK a few weeks ago, which has already generated several million dollars in revenue.
The details
With the new app, users create Genie clones of themselves via "Wheels" to select from over a million different combinations of skin tone, eye color, hair style, clothing and accessories. Unlike other emoji apps — where avatars all virtually look the same — Genies are all unique in both physical appearance and personality.
Here's where it gets super interesting: Your Genies can communicate with each other. 😯
Scientists and engineers at Genies studied hundreds of millions of user chats to develop an algorithm that detects over 180 small mood changes. Using keyword and sentiment analysis, Genies can act out things you say in real-time. Genies can also communicate with each other in groups of up to six people, and be used across iMessage, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, to name a few.
A brief history of Genies
Last December, Genies came out of stealth with a beta app to deliver the most buzzworthy stories of the day to users alongside an avatar that does something related to the news. At the time, the startup was valued at $100M from top investors. 😳
Some immediate reactions on Product Hunt:
"So cool! A Genie could react to news that Elon Musk’s SpaceX landed its Falcon 9 rocket with an avatar shooting into space 🚀🌌" — Niv
"As a 17 year old, I can see this spreading like wildfire in high school and college campuses around the country." — Sameer
"Genies might be a preview of the future of media. At least, this is probably what their investors (including NEA, Foundation Capital, CAA, Trinity Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, and Maveron) are hoping for." - Ryan
Today, the company disclosed an additional $10M in a second round of funding, bringing its total capital raised to $25M.
Genies is backed by an all-star lineup of investors, including: NEA, BoxGroup, Lerer Hippeau, CAA Ventures, Trinity Ventures, Foundation Capital, and many others. Celebrities have also invested, including Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony, Joe Montana, Shawn Mendes, A$AP Rocky, 50 Cent, The Chainsmokers, among others. 💸
What's next
Genies also announced a partnership with its first global advertiser, Gucci, for users who want to dress their avatars. 👠
Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by Product Hunt and sponsored by our friends at Genies.
Last year we ran our first ever hackathon online with over 4,000 makers participating from all over the world. 🌎
This year we’re calling our 2018 hackathon a Makers Festival, welcoming all types of makers to build together over Thanksgiving week. It’s a chance to connect with other makers to solve interesting problems, challenge yourselves to create something from scratch and win your very own kitty award (more on that later). 😉
Who is Makers Festival for?
Makers Festival is for everyone! Not just coders. All types of Makers and Creators are welcome to participate: Designers, photographers, illustrators, artists, writers, videographers, etc.
What can you make?
You can make anything — it doesn’t have to be an app, bot or website. It might be an e-book, interview series, photography collection, a painting, a song, etc.
Rules:
* There's no restriction on team size
* All participants must sign up here
* All participants must complete all three assignments (Project page, Upcoming page and Medium post)
* All participants must complete their submission form by November 24 at 11pm PST
* Winners will be chosen by the Product Hunt community with our team’s input, and the winners will be announced on November 26 right here in the Product Hunt newsletter 🙌
We went down the Product Hunt rabbit hole and found 10 cool desk accessories, do-dads, and gadgets:
💡 The aerelight A1 is an ultra thin OLED lamp with a built-in wireless charger for your phone.
🖥 Lifta Desk Organizer is a minimalist, woodgrain lift for your monitor.
🖼 Retro Patents adds some visual appeal to your space, showcasing patents from PlayStation, BlackBerry, Tesla, and others.
🔴 The famous Fidget Cube will keep you occupied... although your desk neighbor might not appreciate it. ;)
🚦 For many, open office spaces are the worst. BusyLights is the “do not disturb” for real life.
🏠 De-sk is the LEGOs of desks, completely modular to fit your space.
🔋 Peel beat Apple to launch with their Super Thin Wireless Charger for iPhone (and Android).
☀️ Wynd is a personal air purifier that's small enough to fit on your desk.
💪 Hovr is a silly-looking device that will help you burn calories while sitting at your desk.
What would you add to this list? Snap a photo of your favorite desk products and share it with us on Twitter. We'll RT the most useful, creative, or ridiculous recommendations. 😉
Some initial reactions from the Product Hunt community:
“Looks like a scene from a Kingsmen movie” — Kaivalya
“Feels like this can deliver on the promise of smart watches to provide less disruptive notifications.” — Kris
“I AM SO EXCITED TO ORDER MINE” — Skylar
While the Focals look like Warby's, they're not priced like Warby's. They're available for pre-order for a whopping $999, a heavy price tag for this first generation model which ships sometime next year. But new tech like this always starts expensive before it becomes affordable for the mainstream, and fortunately there's competition for your eyes:
• Apple is rumored to be building smart glasses.
• The hyped Florida-based startup recently launched the Magic Leap One.
• Snap has v2 of Spectacles (which lacks an AR HUD... for now).
• Google Glass still exists, built for the enterprise.
And many others are competing in this space, hopeful to become the next big platform, the same way the iPhone changed the world when it was introduced by Steve Jobs in 2007. Take a look (pun intended... sorry) at the Focals and feel free to share your thoughts in the discussion.
