Its basically one of those scene pumping deals. Its seems more common in the art and music world than tech as far as I can tell. Get together with a group of people trying to do similar things and then make it look like you are more popular than you are by acting in concert with each other. For example liking each others posts, promoting each others projects on social media and in person. Essentially you give each other a fake buzz to get new things off the ground, like a head start. Then others from the outside looking in think that you have created that buzz organically and come to check out what all the excitement is about.
hah, that is a super-negative interpretation of it. It is also a really one-sided view (only looking at it from the perspective of people who submit links). The bulk of their users will never submit anything, they just enjoy reading the posts, trying out the products and giving feedback. I'm not sure what you see as "fake" about the "buzz"? It isn't like they are bots. They are actual human beings who might even purchase the service or product.
Another view (a far more accurate view) is that it is a spin-off from Hacker News with a more focused topic. I quite enjoy the site, and I've never posted anything on it. Non-technical people and product focused people can find a lot of the stuff on HN outside of their interests where product hunt hits much closer to the bullseye, more consistently.
I'm not saying it to be negative. Its the standard way to get any type of endevour that needs a network effect(hype) to get off the ground. When starting a band its really hard to get people to come to your shows and listen to your music. But if you get together with a group of other like minded bands and start pumping each other up, it looks like you are already popular and attracts attention. Standard scene building stuff.
I just wanted to clarify that Product Hunt does not appear to be an organically created phenomenon, but a very engineered process that from the looks of things was very well executed.
