I’ve used Product Hunt for years and always believed it was a place where real community support mattered. But our recent launch made me question whether the platform still reflects genuine engagement.
We brought more than 4,000 real users, received over 150 thoughtful comments, and added hundreds of new followers. Yet only a small fraction of that showed up in the final score. Many of our users told us their comments or reviews never appeared publicly, even though they could see their posts when logged in. That was discouraging for people who took the time to register and give real feedback.
It increasingly feels like Product Hunt heavily weights long-time PH accounts while discounting thousands of real supporters who join for the first time. The result is that a smaller group of insiders can outweigh a much larger external community. That doesn’t feel like discovery anymore.
Support responses were generic and didn’t explain what actually happened. I even tried raising this in the forum, but the post never passed review despite being factual and non-abusive.
I still believe Product Hunt could be an important platform for makers, but it needs far more transparency about how votes, comments, and trust weighting work. Real users shouldn’t feel invisible. And founders shouldn’t leave launch day feeling confused about why genuine engagement doesn’t count.
Right now, it’s hard to tell whether Product Hunt is still serving makers — or slowly drifting away from what made it valuable.
Product Hunt
This update to Kitty Points comes with two big updates, one visible and one more backend.
The visible update is a brand new leaderboard! And it's not just an all time leaderboard. If you just discovered Product Hunt in the last year, month, or even week it could be a bit daunting to see some of the Kitty Point totals that long time members have accrued. At the same time, we want to give a huge shoutout to our community members who have been around and consistent for years and have contributed a ton of phenomenal content to the site. The answer to this is a leaderboard that shows the top users by Kitty Points per week, month, year, and all time. This means every week you have a new chance to climb the leaderboards and get higher visibility on your profile and what you're building or posting.
The less visible, but still exciting, part of this update is that we've re-worked how Kitty Points are calculated on the back-end. I'll say, this part of the project was the closest I've ever come to feeling like a game designer! We also want to be more upfront about what you can do to earn Kitty Points. You can't play the game if you don't know the rules! So, here are the all of the contributions that will earn you Kitty Points:
Being the Maker of a launch
Being the Hunter of a launch
Posting detailed reviews
Creating discussion threads
Leaving meaningful comments
For all of those, content and impact matter. Being the Maker of a featured product at the top of the leaderboard will obviously gain you a lot of Kitty Points. As Matt mentions in his comment, Product Hunt is launch forward, but there are a lot of other ways to contribute to the community as well. A large part of the backend changes we've made open the door for other types of contributions to gain you more Kitty Points than in the past. So even if you're not a Maker, you still have the chance to contribute to the community and climb the leaderboards. And if you're curious, you can check out our help center for more information around what kind of content aligns with Product Hunt's guidelines.
We've built this to elevate and show off the members of our community who are helping us create an incredible space to discover, evaluate, and discuss incredible products being created by excellent people in tech. I'm very excited to see who shows up on the leaderboards every week!
I also want to give a massive shoutout to @catt_marroll who did a tremendous amount of work taking the new Kitty Points formula and making it work on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis (something we've never had before!) and building a really awesome and fun leaderboard page around it.
@catt_marroll @jakecrump Hey, congratulations on the new leaderboard! I find it a really interesting idea! It definitely creates an incentive for both long-time and new users.
I’d really appreciate it if you could also share the formula used to award points. Judging by the results, it’s obviosly that being the maker of a featured product is about 10x more valuable than other activities, but having a bit more detail about the formula would be great.
FuseBase
@catt_marroll @jakecrump I feel motivated to be more active here, thanks for making the leaderboard more clear and motivating!
Flowtica Scribe
@catt_marroll @jakecrump One detail I really like: clicking the Kitty Coins for a specific attribute on the leaderboard links directly to that user's activity tab (Maker History, Hunted, Forums, etc.).
Such a practical solution for driving internal engagement. @catt_marroll and team clearly put a lot of thoughtful design into this build!
My Financé
Product Hunt is launch forward (we do not plan to change that!), but this isn't the only way to participate in our community. Leaving reviews, providing thoughtful comments, and building vibrant forum discourse also help boost the ecosystem. We want kitty points to reflect the different ways users "play the game" here on Product Hunt.
Additionally, like many online spaces, there is a value in being able to qualify who you are talking too here! Advice from Paul Graham is likely worth more than a remark from a sock puppet account created a few minutes ago. We hope to use this new leaderboard as a way to incentivize authentic participation, and qualify content around the site.
@catt_marroll @jakecrump and team, many congratulations on the latest update! :)
I love the design and how it clearly shows which spaces the Kitty Coins were earned from (Maker, Forums, Reviews, etc.). Been waiting for this since I first spotted it, great to see it officially launched.
Now it's not just streaks but actual contributions getting recognized on Product Hunt. Someone's an OG not for joining early, but for staying consistent with real value over time.
Streaks rewarded visit consistency; Kitty Coins + the leaderboard reward contribution consistency. That's a step toward making Product Hunt more meritocratic.
The leaderboard surfaces who's truly shaping the community, beyond just showing up. Time-based leaderboards (weekly, monthly, yearly, all time) keep it dynamic and merit-driven. Also, showing ranks on profiles will actually help identify how active a community member is. This will help community members shift focus from "staying active" to "adding meaningful value" every time.
I was fairly active member, but never bothered to check kitty coins. I was shocked to see myself hit #10 all-time and #1 weekly on leaderboard. 😄
Quick question: Other than recognition, what's the use case for Kitty Coins? Do high earners get more weight in engagements, mod approvals for forums/leaderboards/comments, etc.?
Feature suggestion: Add shareable leaderboard stat cards for social media so community members can quickly share their leaderboard rankings to their social feeds. Although they can even screenshot and share it now.
Thank you for making this space more meaningful, enjoyable and community-driven. ❤️
MindPal
Wow, I am at #44 all time. I also just launched @MindPal again today, so I guess that would earn me even more points 😎 Hope I will make it to top 10 this year. Question though: does earning a Maker of the Year award contribute to our Kitty Points?
Jo
Do KP's degrade over time or are cumulative? I'm seeing something strange - I seem to have more KP's last year than I do All time. Would love to understand how that works @jakecrump @catt_marroll
minimalist phone: creating folders
I really like the idea around that, it wouldn't come to my mind that KittyPoints can have this use-case and we couldn't find out what they are for. Now, one of the top secrets of this platform is already unveiled!
Good job!
FuseBase
@busmark_w_nika you are a true champ! congrats! and keep it up - I love your threads and comments, so meaningful and insightful
@busmark_w_nika - Congrats on your last year's score - really impressive!
Oh, @catt_marroll, I think there might be a bug with how 'All Time' is calculated. My profile shows 1 KP for 'Last Week' but 0 for 'All Time', and Nika's has 28,750 for 'Last Year' but only 25,552 for 'All Time'. In both cases, I guess, 'All Time' should be the higher number. Just flagging it!