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.
Most of our (globally distributed) Product Hunt team will be in town along with several internet friends. Here's what to look forward to:
🍹 Open bar (two drink max — be responsible!)
📸 GIF-powered photo booth
😎 VR games
😻 Kitty swag
💦 LaCroix (of course)
☕️ Fee-flowing Philz
🙌 Friendly folks
🤔 And a few other surprises
The event is free to join with an RSVP thanks to our awesome friends at: Google Play, Zendesk, Grammarly, Algolia, Intercom, Omni, and Spoke.
Join us and fellow makers, reporters, investors, and friends by RSVP’ing here. The first 100 people to arrive get a coveted kitty t-shirt. 😸
P.S. If you’re building an Android app you should know about Google Play’s Start on Android program which can help you recruit early beta testers, get direct UI/UX feedback from Google experts, potential Play store featuring, and $20k in Google Cloud and Firebase credits. Learn more here.
P.P.S. If you’re outside the Bay Area and want to host a Product Hunt meetup in your city, let us know! We’re happy to help.
These animated characters is a preview of our immersive avatar future, an evolution of digital self-expression and communication. The OASIS isn't far away. 😉
In the early days of the internet, online communities were text-based. We hung out on bulletin boards, IRC channels, and on AIM (RIP). As broadband and smartphones became more accessible, that’s dramatically changed.
Existing platforms, like Twitter and Messenger, adopted photos, GIFs, and stickers. Newer entrants like Instagram and Snapchat flourished as visual mediums, eventually introducing face filters, inspiring a waves of rainbow throw-up around the world. 🌈
The next evolution of communication will be driven by expressions, mirroring the fidelity of IRL interactions, without the anxiety and privacy concerns inherent with traditional video communication. All of the major players are weighing in: Apple’s ARKit, Google’s ARCore, Facebook’s AR Studio, and Snap's recently announced Lens Studio.
In the meantime, here are a few fun avatar apps to try:
💃 Gabsee: Put your 3D avatar in the real world
📺 Toonstar: Host a TV show with a cartoon (yes, this is weird)
😮 Mirror AI: Turn your selfie into an emoji (backed by YC)
🗞 Genies: Create a next gen bitmoji that reacts to the news
🎤 MyIdol: This is just creepy and awesome
Now for some fun: Share your avatar creation with us on Twitter as a photo or video. We’ll RT the most creative. 😸
⬆️ 2.5M+ upvotes were generously awarded from across the world. Go back in time to see what you missed.
🌎 4,500+ of you from 124 countries joined the Product Hunt Global Hackathon. Here are the winners.
🔥 5th most upvoted product of the year was Firefox's new browser (we didn't see that coming).
💰 800+ cryptocurrency and blockchain-related products launched. Sign of the times.
💌 260+ daily newsletters written. Explore them all here. This one was the most popular of the year.
📘 1 Product Hunt book published (so far! 😏)
📝167k+ followers on our Medium blog, which grew to the 14th most followed on Medium in 2017. 👏
👥 1M+ registered users reached (even though the majority of visitors never login). To see your user #, visit your profile.
On a more personal note, I'm pumped by the response we've received from Ship, our first paid offering. We introduced the private beta toward the end of the year, now used by hundreds of paying teams to build an audience and communicate with their users. We have a deep roadmap of improvements (hint: messaging is a big focus for us), focused on helping makers ship better products.
Today we're introducing a new program to help makers ship in 2018. If your New Year's resolution is to release a product for your startup or just a side project, take a look. We're offering a massive discount on Ship Pro plans, early access to Team Profiles, and kitty stickers to 50 applicants. Sign up here.
– Ryan Hoover ✌️
Over 4,500 makers from 124 different countries participated in the Product Hunt Global Hackathon this November, competing for $250,000 in prizes. According to the judges, the results were seriously impressive.
Today we’re excited to announce the 10 winning teams across 6 categories: Blockchain/Crypto, Social Impact, AI/Machine Learning, Augmented Reality, Slack, and Google Assistant – in addition to the 3 grand prize winners.
Category Winners
💰 Blockchain/Crypto: Supermax
🙏 Social Impact: Donate Your Website and Sempo
🌐 AI / Machine Learning: Audify
😮 Augmented Reality: Scavengar
🍭 Slack: Klue
🗣 Google Assistant: Autometa
You can read a detailed breakdown of each of the categories and the winning teams in Winners of the Product Hunt Global Hackathon announcement on Medium.
Grand Prize Winners
🥉 3rd Place: Kenza is a plug and play application for data scientists and developers to quickly build, train, and deploy ML models at scale. The entire judging team was impressed by how easy this service is to use compared to existing solutions.
Thanks to our partners, the Kenza team will receive $15,000 in AWS credits, a Global Classroom Course from Girls in Tech, and access to Stripe Atlas. Congratulations to Pavlos, Alex, Thelxi, and Joakim!
🥈 2nd Place: SweetBud is a magical coffee cup lid that makes any coffee taste sweet using electrical currents to stimulate your tongue. The entire team was impressed by the uniqueness of this solution and the amount of progress made in just a month.
Sierra and Simon will receive $25,000 in AWS credits, a Global Classroom Course from Girls in Tech, and access to Stripe Atlas.
🥇 1st Place: Token Tax files all of your cryptocurrency taxes for you, integrating directly with Coinbase’s API to import all of your investments and export a single PDF that you can submit directly to the IRS.
Huge congratulations to our top winners, David and Alex. They’ll receive a $100,000 in AWS credits to pursue Token Tax (or any other project you’d like), a fully-inclusive trip to TechCrunch Disrupt, a Global Classroom Course from Girls in Tech, and access to Stripe Atlas. 🎉
On Friday, Anil Dash tweeted: "Who is a person (not counting family) that opened doors for you in your career when they didn’t have to?"
The tweet has since gone viral, with thousands of replies pouring in. Anil has brought the same question to the Product Hunt community, asking you to show gratitude to the people who've opened doors for you in your career (we'll RT our favorite responses on Twitter).
Everybody who works in the tech industry has had their "big break" – a single, defining moment that changed their professional lives forever. Yours has just arrived.
We've partnered with General Assembly to let a one lucky winner attend one of the biggest tech conferences of the year. We can't say which event, but it rhymes with "Schmoogle Eye Oh". Enter to win.
The winner will also receive:
✈️ $500 airline credit from anywhere to Mountain View
🏨 Hotel and transportation credit around the city
🛠️ $200 credit for any General Assembly development class
😻 Meet the Product Hunt team in San Francisco!
The app looks a lot like Snapchat, Houseparty, and Facebook's Bonfire with a focus on playful face filters and group video chat. But unlike these incumbents, Messenger Kids puts parents in control, COPPA compliant so even children under 13 years old can participate.
Unsurprisingly, the app was met with mixed reactions. Cynics might criticize the app as solely a diabolical plan to incubate a new generation of Facebook addicts. Optimists see this as a way to empower kids to participate in our digital future, in a safe way. Regardless of your POV, this is a smart way for 14-year-old Facebook to bring a new generation of people into its ecosystem.
What do you think? Add your thoughts in the discussion. 🤔
Today's inaugural deal comes from Setapp. Described by The Next Web as the "Netflix for Mac apps" and upvoted by more than 1,000 people on Product Hunt, Setapp unlocks access to 100+ Mac apps for any task with a single $69.99 subscription for the entire year. Normally these apps would cost $2,850 if bought individually and includes:
🖌 Sip – Gorgeous color picker for designers
📸 Flume – Slick desktop app for Instagram
✏️ Ulysses – Writing app for pros with Medium integration
🖥 CleanMyMac – Frees up space on your Mac
🖼 Photolemur – AI-powered photo enhancer
To unlock this deal visit Product Hunt Deals. This offer expires in less than 7 days. 😊
• Sunrise
• Acompli
• Wunderlist (not dead)
We were prepared for Acompli's untimely demise. Mailbox suffered a similar fate and we had an excellent list of alternatives.
Sunrise shutting down was harder to take. A collection of well intended Sunrise alternatives was prepared, but it became clear that Sunrise would never be forgotten or replaced.
Then there was Wunderlist. The cloud-based task management app was the pride of Berlin tech. It was beautifully designed and loved by its fans. In April, it was announced that Wunderlist would be shutting down in favor of Microsoft To-Do, a new app by the Wunderlist team. We were optimistic, but had a list of 68 Wunderlist Alternatives ready.
Today, six months later, and Wunderlist is still here, alive and well! We dug deep into the interwebs and found a response from a Wunderlist customer support representative:
"We don’t have a date for closing Wunderlist’s service yet, so you can continue to use it for now, even though we recommend everyone to also check out Microsoft To-Do." – Marcel, 9/11/2017
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You are welcome to try one of the 68 Wunderlist alternatives, but we believe that Wunderlist is an internet treasure – an app too important to shut down or be deserted. And so, it's time to add to your to-do list the simple task of re-installing Wunderlist today.
Predictions: Who will be the breakout companies of 2018? 🤔
Ben predicts it will be Coda, saying: "3 years in stealth and $60M raised, Coda is taking on Excel ☠️" and has 4 more recommendations.
Sam says HQ Trivia... (no explanation needed).
Andrey says Lemonade is the one to watch: "Amazing customer experience, clear pricing structure. A true disruption for the home insurance industry."
Philip says keep an eye on Grail, a company working on early cancer detection via blood screening, and Virta Health, which is reversing type 2 diabetes without medications or surgery.
View the community's responses and add your predictions here.
P.S. add a 1-2 sentence description for a chance to be quoted in the Breakout Companies of 2018 report by AngelList. ✌️
Enter for a chance to win the Dream Tech Lover's Package, including:
💻 Macbook Air by Apple ($999 value)
🎧 BEATS Solo Wireless Headphones ($249 value)
😎 VR Headset ($199 value)
📺 Smart TV ($599 value)
🏃 Fitness Tracker ($149 value)
⌚️ Smart Watch ($299 value)
The winner will also receive more Product Hunt kitty stickers and shirts than they'll know what to do with. 👕🎁😻
