What other gamifications would you like to see in this platform?
Today, @gabe and the Product Hunt team launched Randomised Leaderboard Day.
I need to say that I enjoy every gamification aspect which this platform offers.
PH Streaks
PH Kitty points Leaderboard
Todays Randomised Leaderboard
(Partially) Orbit Awards
It makes me stick to this platform for longer and enjoy participating.
I can bet this community has many ideas for similar "sub-projects" that could improve the experience in the form of games.
Do you have in your mind other gamification activities that could be implemented here? (If you were inspired by something in the past, feel free to leave it here too – it can be like a brainstorming session).
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Bringing back animated logos
Increasing gamification with Kitty points, more upvote power, posting rights, and improved post visibility. Technically, it will cost you Kitty points to post, but if your post performs well, you'll earn even more Kitty points.
Adding separate categories, especially for big companies that launch frequently. It bothers me to see Claude taking the top 3 spots five times in the last six days. Even as a Claude user who has discovered new features through these launches.
FuseBase
@bengeekly yeah, feel the same with large companies, they win even without efforts, while small teams prepare during several months, don’t sleep for 24 hours during the launch and still it’s hard to compete
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@bengeekly Interesting – so Kitty points would be like tokens burnt when you are posting?
@busmark_w_nika What do you think about that ?
I believe that having comment, or upvote will always make you get more Kitty points, that what you used to post.
But it also shows somehow, that posting bad content is negative.
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@bengeekly but how to give "price" for each token? If you post long-form, you lose more tokens. Or do you want to motivate them to post long-form so they will lose fewer tokens... I think that they can play with the motivation in both ways.
@busmark_w_nika I didn't over think it but a post can cost 50 tokens, then in your case it will probably bring more tokens back for the interactions you get.
Thoughts on randomization:
Today, I echo the sentiment that randomization is exciting, but I am not sure it should happen every day.
By the end of today, I realized many teams actively mobilize their networks for support on launch day, and they deserve a clear incentive to reach the top of the leaderboard.
If we randomized rankings daily, we might unintentionally discount the effort that goes into distributing a launch and sharing the joy of that day with a community, newsletter, or broader network.
Example, when you launched Nika, your followers were notified (I got the notification) because you built that following. Imagine someone who just signed up to PH yesterday is on the random leaderboard shuffled majority of the launch day alongside you, totally discounting on the visibility that the support of your followers would have brought to you if you were ranking in top 5 due to their support.
I feel the traffic is getting distributed across products instead of being tiered (top 5, top 10 and the rest). This will be good for days where there are less products on the leaderboard. If there are 30+ then it's actually taking away traffic from products that are genuinely distributing their launch and bringing their traffic to Product Hunt.
That said, when a product is not doing any distribution yet still benefits from community and algorithmic support, randomization can help surface it, which is positive, but it also feels unfair to those who are putting in the work, so the impact is mixed.
One alternative could be to keep the first four or more hours of the day random as usual and the rest of the day fully merit-based, and then introduce randomization on a designated “random launch” day (say every weekend or thursday) so smaller teams or spontaneous launches can benefit from extra visibility.
Followup on YC day: The YC leaderboard was a fun experiment, but we never learned who actually got YC interviews, so a follow-up post on it would be helpful.
New idea: We could introduce a dedicated hackathon day. The PH team announces a theme or core idea, everyone ships something within 24 hours based on that foundation, and those submissions get their own leaderboard.
Finally, it would be amazing to see the team bring back real life events or allow us to host meetups in our own cities, as well as the blogs and stories, to learn behind-the-scene stories about makers, products and their launches. Maybe guest post submissions could be opened.
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@rohanrecommends I agree with Followup YC day – I almost forgot that it happened, because it happened once (understandably, it is difficult to negotiate something like this), but showing the outcome would be a strong signal for the community that it is worth participating here and similar "competitions".
The randomized leaderboard is a smart move. The regular one can feel like it only rewards people who already have a big following.
One thing I'd want to see is a "builder streak" - not for commenting, but for shipping updates after launch. There's a lot of incentive around launch day but almost nothing that rewards what happens after. And that's where the real work is.
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@abdullah_mohamed14 What if they could build a builder strike around the whole launch from 3 phases: pre-launch, during-launch, post-launch?
@busmark_w_nika
that actually makes a lot of sense. pre-launch activity is where most of the community building happens anyway - the people who show up on launch day didn't just appear out of nowhere.
the tricky part is defining what "counts" in each phase. shipping updates post-launch is measurable. pre-launch is harder - commenting? followers gained? PH doesn't always surface that clearly.
but the concept is solid. right now it's all or nothing around launch day.
I’m actually a big fan of all the little gamification bits on PH, it’s one of the reasons I keep coming back!
Streaks, Kitty points, leaderboards... it makes the whole thing feel a bit more alive instead of just another platform you scroll through.
The randomised leaderboard today was a nice touch too, much less predictable and gives all launches a chance of success!
It would definitely be cool to see even more small game-like ideas layered in over time. Nothing too heavy, just stuff that nudges people to explore or interact more. Perhaps something like Duolingo style daily quests?
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@dan_johnson7 but what would be the quest? Like comment at least 3 product launches? Leave at least 2 product reviews. etc?
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@dan_johnson7 I think they could work with the concept like this.
Streaks are already a favourite for me, 2 days in and I'm already checking what I can do to keep it going, which says a lot about how well that mechanic works.
One thing I'd love to see is a "First Supporter" badge for people who upvote a product before it hits 10 votes. It would reward early community members who take a chance on new launches rather than just piling on after something is already trending. Could be a nice way to surface more genuine early adopters.
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@oshylabs Which streaks do you like more? For activity or for being on this platform (days)
@busmark_w_nika Both honestly but if I had to pick one, activity streaks. Days on platform feels more passive whereas activity streaks push you to actually engage, upvote, comment, discover new. Rather than just a leaderboard of early joiners
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@oshylabs yeah, anybody can log in the platform (but you still need to remember that) :D anyway you are right, activity is way more effort
I feel there should be a better way to shine a light on lower-ranked products. I’ve often found hidden gems just by scrolling all the way to the bottom of a launch page.
A randomized leaderboard could be one solution. Like others have suggested, I think it would be interesting to introduce incentives for discovering and engaging with products below a certain rank to give them more visibility.
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@lazverry but as far as I know, Product Hunt has a more strict process of selecting/evaluating – so only specific ones can be on top. (featured)