Do you know what Product Hunt is?
If you’re reading this, I’ll assume you don’t, because you’re probably a Windows user, and Product Hunt is completely dominated by Mac users and developers.
Basically: it’s a social link voting site where the only types of submissions are new or updated products. It’s like Reddit, except just for product launches. It’s the way to launch your app or website, since it has a great community of early adopters — it can drive thousands of visitors or downloads to your project.
But even though the Mac desktop market share is 6% (and Windows is at least 85%), Mac stuff is massively overrepresented on Product Hunt:
The Mac category: 47,000 followers. The section dedicated exclusively to the Mac Touch Bar: 16,000 followers. Windows: a rounding error at just 2,558 lonely souls.
Windows users on Product Hunt deserve to see polished Store apps just as much as their Mac audience deserves to see yet another Mac menu bar app. (Yes, they have a category just for stuff that lives in their systray, and yes, it’s way bigger than the entire Windows section.)
We want all top Microsoft Store developers to submit their work to Product Hunt whenever they release or update an app. The benefits go beyond the launch window, as great apps get added to collections by the community and become an evergreen source of new users.
You need to put in some legwork to make a submission: your account needs to meet certain requirements, you need to make a really beautiful icon, and you need some very fresh high-res screenshots. And like other social link sharing sites, just submitting doesn’t guarantee that anyone will actually see your product. But that shouldn’t stop you.
We submitted our app Spirality to kick things off today. Then, for the next two weeks, we’re going to submit one of our favorite Microsoft Store apps to Product Hunt each day and credit its developers as ‘Makers’, to allow them to submit again in the future. This doesn’t just help Windows app makers — it helps the Product Hunt community discover some great apps they’re not currently seeing.
How you can help
- Create your Product Hunt account and follow me there for notifications when I submit a Store app. (We’ll tweet the submissions as well.)
- Follow the Product Hunt Microsoft Store apps collection. I’ll add all each submission to this collection.
Want more info on submitting on your own? Check out the official guide. It dispels lots of oft-repeated myths about the submission process:
Enjoy the traffic and feedback—it’s not just for the Apple fandom anymore.
User Camp is the place for Microsoft Store developers. You should follow us on Twitter.
