Today Product Hunt is launching Collections, letting all users bookmark and share their favorite products. In addition to showing up on their profiles, users who create their own collections may find their lists featured on the homepage between each day’s top products.
The Collections featured previously on the site were put together by editors of the site or guest curators like Nas. They typically focused on a specific theme, like the best tools for design or top iOS keyboards.
Now users can create lists focusing on whatever they want. I tried out the feature by putting together a collection of the best games in 2014, featuring a snazzy wide image of Mario at the top or when you see it on my Product Hunt profile:
Product Hunt CEO Ryan Hoover told TechCrunch that one of the key metrics the company uses to track its growth is outbound traffic to products. User-curated Collections bolster this metric through their propensity to be shared: you’re more likely to link to a collection you made or a useful collection you stumble upon than a single post on the site.
They also make the site more “sticky” for the site’s biggest fans. Those who show up every day to upvote and comment on new apps can now easily organize the ones they like without using a different service or creating another bookmarks folder in their browser. And for users too shy to put out individual links (coming up with a clever tagline is hard), people are more likely to care about the value of a collection than the specific wording of any one post.