Introducing Siftery’s Trending Products feed
At Siftery we believe that while software is eating the world and empowering people to do more that can only happen if the products built by entrepreneurs get into the right hands at the right organizations.
With thousands of options in major categories (we’re already tracking over 12,000 products!), we’re motivated to help business users cut through the noise and find the best software for them. All of us at Siftery have experienced how finding the right tool can be a true 10x productivity booster.
Unsurprisingly, one of the questions that we get most often is how Siftery can be used to identify the most recommended products in each category. Venture capital investors, journalists, and especially business software users in the Siftery community have asked for a quick view of what’s “hot” and they should check out first.
In response, we built Trending Products.
Siftery Trending Products is a real-time feed of the hottest business software. Products are ranked based on the number of users who have recommended the product in the past month.
Recommendations can only come from verified users with a company e-mail at one of the ~250k companies with Siftery profiles. As a result, the recommendations come from real people who are actually using the product.
How’s this unique?
Sure — we know there are other lists of top business products out there, but none quite like this before. Here’s the combination of advantages that make Trending Products so unique:
- Based on a true signal — Only verified Siftery users with a company e-mail are making recommendations — we want the list of products to be one our community can trust and based on the preferences of people like them
- View by role — Work in Marketing? Devops? The list can be quickly filtered by role, so you see only the products most relevant to you
- Real-time — The list updates instantly as new recommendations come in; we use a 30-day rolling window to strike a balance reliability with short-term popularity, allowing new products with momentum to rise up quickly
- Wildcards — In some cases, we’ll temporarily push up recently launched and updated products with a special callout, as well as links to recent product news or interviews
Where are we going with this?
Our initial goal with Trending Products is for this to be a dynamic and authoritative list of the best products for each role. Here are some ideas we’re already working on to make it even better:
- Product creator stories — Through our published “Creator Stories”, we’re giving product creators an outlet to share their product’s unique story and benefits. These stories are linked to from the product’s card on the Trending Products feed.
- View by group — What do employees at Unicorns, YC/500 alums, or Fortune 500 companies recommend? Are the most recommended products different in the USA, India, or Germany? We can create views to answer these questions.
- Snapshots and historical trends — At the end of each month we‘’ll create a “snapshot in time” and we’ll also be able to use this to show historical trends.
- Improving our recommendation engine — Siftery’s machine-learning algorithm automatically recommends products based on a company’s profile, adoption trends, and fit with stack; as we learn more about which products companies like, this feeds into and improves our recommendation engine.
What’s in it for product creators?
Through connecting software users to the best tools for their needs, we’re also helping entrepreneurs and product creators be found by the right customers. This includes helping accelerate the visibility and adoption of new products that are getting a lot of love from their users.
Many companies are already linking to their Siftery product profiles as a way to showcase their best customers. We’ve also created this guide for product creators who want to make the most
Have any other ideas? Let us know!
