A new experimental app from Product Hunt

Ryan Hoover
Product Hunt
Published in
3 min readFeb 22, 2018

--

Today we launched Sip, an app that delivers daily tappable tech news and stories to your iOS or Android device.

We polled the Product Hunt community and asked a simple question:

“Why do you use Product Hunt?”

Many visit the site to get inspiration for their own projects. Some join the conversation to connect with other people in tech. Others use it to discover products and apps that can improve their life (this app has saved me a ton of money over the years).

Many also use Product Hunt to stay up-to-date on what’s happening in tech, to follow trends and better understand what’s happening in this rapidly changing industry. This desire to learn and stay informed is represented by the questions people ask makers in the comments. It’s also demonstrated in the data. Breaking product launches and newsworthy stories drive the most interest and engagement.

(Fun/embarrassing fact: We’ve DDoS’d the Product Hunt site after delivering browser notifications for breaking product news. Fortunately our infrastructure is far more scaleable now. 😅)

Daily tappable tech stories

With these observations, we wanted to create a new app dedicated to delivering the most important news of the day in a format designed for storytelling.

Every weekday Sip delivers the most interesting and important tech stories of the day, from major product announcements (e.g. Magic Leap reveals its first product after years in stealth and $1.9B in funding) to #throwbackthursday stories about products from yesteryear (e.g. RIP AIM. What went wrong?).

But unlike most apps, Sip delivers stories once a day at five o’clock so you can stay focused on being productive throughout the day. We all have enough apps trying to distract us throughout the day and most news can wait.

Building in public

We’ve been building Sip with the Product Hunt community, using Ship to capture interest, start a conversation, and survey the community to better understand what they want.

Thanks to everyone that contributed. If you’re interested in helping build Sip along with us, join here. We’re eager to continue building and improving Sip based on your feedback. After all, launching isn’t a one time thing.

Sip is available for both iOS and Android. Happy sipping. 😊

P.S. We’re also releasing a huge update to the Product Hunt mobile app, soon available on iOS and Android. If you’d like early access, subscribe here.

P.P.S. We currently send the daily roundup of stories at 5pm Pacific Time although this may be localized for our global community in the future.

--

--

Founder of Product Hunt. Weekend Fund investor. Follow at @rrhoover.