Product Hunt Radio: Online communities and the dark side of the web

@rrhoover / 6:00 am PDT • September 19, 2018

Ryan Hoover Contributor

Ryan Hoover is the founder of Product Hunt and host of Product Hunt Radio.

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In the second episode of the new Product Hunt Radio, I’m joined by two amazing community-builders based in New York, Anil Dash and Allison Esposito.

Anil is the CEO of Glitch, a friendly community where developers build the app of their dreams. You’ll find everything from AI-powered musical spinners to a multiplayer drawing game created on the platform. He’s also an adviser to Medium, DonorsChoose, Project Include and Stack Overflow.

Allison is formerly of Oyster, the Netflix for books, which was acquired by Google in 2015. Afterward she founded Tech Ladies, a community that connects women with the best jobs in tech.

In this episode we talk about:

The good ol’ days of IRC, Friendster, AIM and MySpace. A lot has changed since then, yet they continue to exhibit some of the same dynamics and challenges of today’s massive social networks.
The challenges of building a healthy community on the internet in a time when careers and reputations can be destroyed in an instant.
How online communities mirror offline interactions. Opening up an app has many parallels to walking into a social gathering in real life.
Some of the common misconceptions people have about creating communities online and what a founder’s goal should really be in starting a community.

Of course, we also cover some of our favorite products that you might not know about.

We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.