[skewart]

It's always interesting to see what tools people are using, but to be honest I was a little disappointed that everything on the list is a well-established, already popular app. I was hoping to see more in the way of new and up-and-coming stuff. In other words, I don't gain anything if a website tells me GitHub, Slack, and Sketch are popular.

That said, I think the overall problem of productivity/business software discovery is one that will grow in the coming years as we see a shift away from traditional enterprise dev and sales and towards a more consumer-like model. And Siftery is smart to try to build buyer trust and own the buyer side of the equation. We may well see a lead gen industry emerge in b2b software that looks a lot like the lead gen industry for consumer products like, say credit cards.

[ggiaco]

Interesting thoughts! We're definitely trying to strike a balance between reliability and short-term popularity. One of the ways we're trying to solve is by every day pushing up "wildcard" products that are getting traction.

Another of our bets is that since a user can only recommend a product once, over time the more obvious products should find it relatively more difficult to get new recommendations and newer products will surface.

This effect might become more noticeable with some filters (e.g. recommendations only from YC companies).

[someotheruser1]

IMO you need two lists: "Popular Lately" which is what this list is now, and ALSO "Trending" which is sorted by some measure of recent growth.

That way up and coming stuff doesn't have to dethrone github/slack/etc in order to get seen.

[ggiaco]

Separately, one thing I'd be excited about is filtering by users at companies in a certain grouping (e.g. by Geo, industry, or some other affiliation like YC or 500 Startups alums). Siftery can do this since users have verified business e-mails.

Does this sound interesting?

[skewart]

Slicing and dicing in that way by geo, industry and whatnot, would be very interesting as someone looking to build and sell software. It's always really helpful to know what different kinds of prospective buyers are currently using - and if they're excited about it or not.

As a prospective software buyer, however, it doesn't necessarily sound all that interesting. I mean, so what if a lot of companies that are in a similar location and industry to mine use Bitbucket. That doesn't tell me if it's actually great or if they just don't know any better. And if fin-tech companies that went through YC love using Aha for product roadmapping, it's kind of the same thing - what does that really mean?

That said, I can see some situations where it would be interesting. If I'm looking for software that has intense compliance or performance requirements, then know what other people in my industry use would be helpful - so I would know that I'm making a reasonable decision.

Also, what would be super interesting would be knowing what software transitions/replacements people have made. For example, if I'm using JIRA and not really loving it it would be really cool to know what people who have left JIRA have used to replace it. A lot of times I've found myself not entirely satisfied with some work/productivity app and wondered if there's a better option out there, but then found it can take a lot of research and experimentation to answer that question so I just go back to the status quo. Seeing that a lot of people have happily made a transition I'm considering - or maybe a slightly different one - would be cool. Of course, you may well not have that kind of information for a long time.

[ggiaco]

Yeah, that makes sense.

Adding additional filters is fairly easy, but I think we decided against it thinking that "no one" would find them or be interested.

Maybe we're wrong about that (there seems to be demand here, and HN seems to be doing just fine with multiple feeds/filters).