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The Leaderboard
May 20th, 2024
Backed by Sam Altman
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TOP NEWS

Happy Monday! Another week to smash those goals. In todayā€™s digest, Iā€™m covering a new social app thatā€™s backed by Sam Altman, but firstā€¦

The headlines:Ā 

šŸ‡¬šŸ‡§ The UK has opened an office in SF to tackle AI risk.Ā 

šŸŽ Apple and OpenAI might announce something big at WWDC.

šŸ¤– OpenAI has pulled the ChatGPT ā€˜Scarlett Johanssonā€™ voice.

PRODUCT HIGHLIGHT
A new social app backed by Sam Altman wants to change the game

Social media has taken a lot of flak since its heyday as the great global connector. Studies show that despite its benefits, social media can be addictive and fuel issues like depression and anxiety.

Several alternatives are trying to address these problems. One new platform, Maven, removes common, addictive, vanity metrics like followers and likes, instead using an algorithm designed to provide more value.

Backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, Maven is built around 'open-endedness'ā€”a concept by co-founder Kenneth Stanley. Instead of training an AI for specific goals, Stanley trains it to evolve on its own, hoping it can discover unique solutions.

How does this benefit social media? Stanley argues that traditional platforms incentivize actions like likes and retweets, leading to inauthentic engagement. On Maven, there are no followers; you post about your interests, and the evolving algorithm surfaces your content to the right people.

Instead of following people, you follow interests like cooking, music, coding, and design. The algorithm tags your posts with appropriate interests, populating your feed with content that matches your preferences, fostering more serendipitous discoveries.

Maven is available on both iOS and Android for free and itā€™s available now to try out. Who knows, it could be the app to really challenge X (Twitter).

CAT NIPS

OUR PICKSĀ 

VLLO is a video-editing app built to get beginners up to speed quickly.Ā 

Beeble is a platform built for the safe exchange of both emails and files.Ā 

OmniJobs helps you speed up your job search by intelligently finding roles that suit you.

MAKERā€™S CORNERĀ 

Features.Vote helps you build high-quality features with user feedback.

NocoBase is a scalable no-code platform for building your projects.

Smartli is an AI-powered marketing tool built for e-commerce.Ā 

LEADERBOARD LIFTOFF

Insighto, a tool to gauge user feedback for your features, clinched first place over the weekend. It was built by the 2023 Maker of the Year, Marc Lou šŸš€

SHOUTOUTS

Itā€™s a new week which means new launches. Got one coming up? Boilerplates have existed for years to help devs go from idea to product faster. ShipFast is a popular option offered by Maker of the Year, Marc Lou and itā€™s no stranger to shoutouts on Product Hunt.

ā€œShipFast [NextJS boilerplate] helped me launch the first version of Curiosity Quench back when I was a noob coder and helped me get my first customers. I wouldn't be here without it,ā€ said the maker of Curiosity Quence

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