How to export Twitter usernames of people who upvoted on ProductHunt without writing code



Startups launching new products live or die by the enthusiasm and retention of their early adopters (don't I know it!). So naturally, when my startup was featured on ProductHunt, I wanted to make sure that I stay in touch with everyone who likes our product.

Unfortunately, getting a list of the people who upvoted your product isn't easy and the official word is that you have to use the ProductHunt API. I'm all for the API, but I needed something in a pinch for a campaign we were working on so I came up with a hack that uses screen scraping techniques until someone finds the time to write a proper tool.

Here are the steps demoed in the above video:

  1. Go to your ProductHunt page like http://www.producthunt.com/tech/freebusy
  2. Ensure that upvotes data is loaded into your browser by using the scroll arrows for the upvotes list to scroll through the entire list
  3. If you're using Firefox bring up Firebug, if you're using Chrome or Internet Explorer bring up Developer Tools (F12 key works as a shortcut on Windows)
  4. Use the element selector to hover over the list of upvotes
  5. Copy the HTML of the upvotes list elements
  6. Paste into text editor (Sublime Text, Notepad++, or any other that supports find by regex)
  7. Use Find all with this regular expression:
    href="/@\w+"
  8. Copy find results into new file
  9. Use Find and Replace to strip the leading
    href="/
    and the trailing
    "
  10. You now have Twitter usernames for the people who upvoted your product