That said, I think the overall problem of productivity/business software discovery is one that will grow in the coming years as we see a shift away from traditional enterprise dev and sales and towards a more consumer-like model. And Siftery is smart to try to build buyer trust and own the buyer side of the equation. We may well see a lead gen industry emerge in b2b software that looks a lot like the lead gen industry for consumer products like, say credit cards.
Another of our bets is that since a user can only recommend a product once, over time the more obvious products should find it relatively more difficult to get new recommendations and newer products will surface.
This effect might become more noticeable with some filters (e.g. recommendations only from YC companies).
That way up and coming stuff doesn't have to dethrone github/slack/etc in order to get seen.
> How do products trend? What causes a product to trend? Products are ranked based on the number of users who have recommended the product in the past month (we’re using a rolling 30 days).
Ok so this isn't trending, it's popularity. Typically you want to normalize such that items with evergreen popularity get sifted out and you're left with items growing in popularity.
A marginally better approach might be to look at % of like growth month over month, with some floor of likes so that going from 1 to 100 likes doesn't dominate. This isn't perfect but it should kick google drive, Dropbox, and git out of the list.
I mentioned in another comment that one of our bets is that since a user can only recommend a product once, over time the more obvious products should find it relatively more difficult to get new recommendations and newer products will surface.
e.g., if we did a filter of recommendations by YC companies (or more extreme - YC founders), then something like Slack would be popular the first month, but then have few remaining votes. Thoughts?
I'd also consider a third list - highlighted. Have your team internally pick something new and interesting once a month. Finding novel and interesting things is something humans are really good at.
[0] - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/787496/what-is-the-best-w...
The problem in this space (usually encountered when typing "Quickbooks Reviews" or "Quickbooks vs Xero") is the results do not feel trustworthy, mainly because there is no provenance of the reviewer. It feels like the reviews can be bought.
If you can build a high quality review and dataset, that answers detailed questions about the product in an objective fashion, that would be very useful.
> It feels like the reviews can be bought.
I assume Siftery's business model depends on getting paid by software companies when a prospective buyer makes a purchase after visiting Siftery. Maybe it's more advertising-based though? (Siftery folks, please correct me if I'm wrong).
Like all affiliate marketing, there's a fundamental tension between maintaining customer trust by actually making good, honest recommendations and maximizing profits by directing consumers to products whose makers are willing to pay more. A lot of affiliate marketers start out very consumer-focused in order to build a strong brand that consumers trust. They later find it very hard to resist the temptation to maximize revenue by making bad but profitable recommendations later on. Of course that will catch up with them eventually, but they can exploit the inertia of a trustworthy brand for a while.
All of that said, hopefully Siftery will be able to provide good, consumer-focused information. There is real pain point around learning about this kind of software.
spot on! this is one of the reasons why we want to entirely avoid any sort of lead-gen or affiliate business models that depend on revenues from sellers of software or services. we're planning to make money from buyers with higher value tools that help them after the discovery phase -- for example, providing insights into pricing, helping automate the RFP process and potentially helping them manage billing etc. early days though!
Ultimately, the are different products at the top of each feed, as would be expected from their different use cases and different (if to some degree overlapping) audiences.
We think Siftery Trending is a place where b2b products can go after launching and "graduating" from a community like Product Hunt. One way we're thinking about it is that Product Hunt is to high school what Siftery Trending is to college. There's a time and place for both!
That's my take, but additional thoughts/feedback appreciated.
One thing I would find of value is a means for differentiating all of the different services being reviewed. I think everyone knows that slack is the foremost business chat app, etc. But what are the specific things that make the app at #2 different that I might be looking for that would make me chose it over what's in the #1 spot.
