New haircut, Product Hunt?

What started as an email newsletter just over two years ago has evolved into the place to share, discover and discuss your favorite products, games, books, and podcasts. It’s like a virtual watercooler of makers and enthusiasts celebrating awesome, new things.

Since then, we’ve seen over 3 million upvotes and 50 thousand things posted, illustrating the explosion of creation we’re seeing across many industries and crafts. People are self-publishing books through Amazon, a growing number of artisans are selling their handmade goods on Etsy, and more podcasts are recorded than one could listen to in a year.

There is a lot of great stuff out there, and it’s our mission to help surface things you’ll love and give makers a place to showcase their creations.

As we’ve expanded beyond tech, two things have become clear:

1. More and more people are creating more and more things, making it increasingly difficult to find the “best of X” or hidden gems for your metaphorical homescreen.
2. “Best” is subjective. People have different interests. A change was needed to make Product Hunt more relevant to each individual and an even broader audience.

Product Hunt is community, shaped by submissions and upvotes from people across the world. This has created a “town hall effect”, inspiring conversation from San Francisco to Berlin. But like the watercooler IRL, the way you discover new things on Product Hunt should also be shaped by your friends.

Let’s get personal

Today, we’re introducing a more personalized Product Hunt where friends and those you follow shape the experience. Here’s a screenshot of my Product Hunt:

Login and you’ll see things submitted and upvoted by the community, but also from people you follow.

You will also notice a few other changes — we are moving away from the horizontal scroll. We tried it, but the feedback from the community was clear, so we’re bringing back the vertical feed so you can scroll for-ev-er. More importantly, this change gives us even greater flexibility for category and topic expansion.

Additionally, we’ve added a sidebar of goodies to surface more things you’ll love. You’ll see upcoming LIVE Chats, popular collections, and soon, friend activity.

Next up…

The new Product Hunt gives us a strong foundation to create the place to discover your next favorite thing.

Soon we’ll introduce more of your friends’ activity, an easier way to find all the awesome things you’ve upvoted, and a big change to the way things are categorized and discovered.

BIG thanks to everyone that provided feedback during the beta period (and for keeping it a secret). As always, please send us your thoughts and ideas via email (hello@producthunt.com), Twitter (@ProductHunt), Snapchat (ProductHuntTeam), or snail mail (10 Mint Plaza) if you’re old school. 😊

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