How Momentum works

Most launch boards crown a winner at midnight and forget it by morning. The Nest ranks each launch on its launch day, then keeps tracking it every day after with a Momentum score, for as long as it's on the Nest, so you can see which products are still gaining traction weeks and months later. Here is exactly how both numbers are calculated.

Paid boosts are always labeled

Launching is free, and no badge on your site is ever required to be listed. Launch-day rank comes only from votes and follows. Makers can pay for a boost to their Momentum, and when they do, you'll always see it: the product is labeled Boosted and the boosted days are shaded on its chart.

Launch day

Each launch day runs midnight to midnight Pacific. The Today board ranks that day's launches by:

Votes from accounts less than 3 days old count as a quarter of a vote, and votes we find to be part of a vote ring or other manipulation don't count at all. Visits to a product's website don't count toward launch-day rank, because they don't need an account and are the easiest thing to fake.

Voting doesn't close at midnight. You can upvote a product any day, for as long as it's on the Nest, and each vote feeds its Momentum on the day you cast it.

Momentum, every day

Momentum doesn't end. Each night we add up what happened that day for every product that has launched:

That day's activity is the square root of the weighted total. The square root keeps a huge launch day from drowning out everything after it.

Momentum then carries forward with a 7-day half-life: each day, yesterday's Momentum shrinks by about 9.4% and today's activity is added on top.

Because every day's activity fades by half each week, a product that goes quiet drifts back toward zero by itself, and one that keeps shipping and getting noticed keeps its line up, whether it launched last week or last year. On the board, Launched this month shows products from the last 30 days, and All products shows every product that's still active. Sparklines show the last 30 days.

So a product has to keep earning attention to hold its line up. One big day fades within a couple of weeks, while steady follows, visits and shipped updates keep it climbing. Here are two made-up launches over their first three weeks, run through exactly this formula:

Both lines are drawn to their own scale, as on the board. The numbers are what compare them: the steady launch ends three weeks later with far more Momentum.

Paid boosts

A product's maker can buy a boost for 3, 7, 14 or 30 days. Each boosted day adds a fixed 6 points to that day's activity, after the square root, so it's worth the same to every product whatever its size. Like all activity, those points then fade with the 7-day half-life. For scale, on a day with no other activity, 6 points is what 36 votes adds.

• A boost counts toward Momentum, so it can move a product on the Momentum and Rising tabs. It never changes launch-day rank, which comes only from votes and follows.
• A boosted product is labeled Boosted on the board and on its page while the boost runs and for 14 days after, while its points fade.
• On the product's page, boosted days are shaded on the chart, and each day's breakdown shows the boost apart from votes, follows and visits, so you can always tell paid Momentum from earned.
• Only the product's own maker can buy a boost, one at a time, and only for a launch that's live.
• After a boost, a cooldown. Once a boost ends, the product has to rest for as long as the boost ran (7 days after a 7-day boost, and so on) before it can be boosted again. A boost is a burst: Momentum climbs while it runs, then settles back to what people are actually doing. Nobody can pay to stay on top.

The 7-day change

The ▲ / ▼ figure compares today's Momentum with the Momentum from 7 days earlier. Products with less than 8 days of history show New instead, and so do products whose score a week ago was too small for a percentage to mean anything. The Rising tab ranks products by this change.

Reading the charts

Here's how a launch looks on the Momentum board. This one is made up, drawn from the "steady attention" example above:

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  Example product

  A made-up launch, drawn with the real formula

  Developer tools

• Hollow dot: launch day, the start of the line
• The line: Momentum each day since launch
• Filled dot: today's Momentum
• Change in Momentum over the last 7 days
• Current Momentum score, which the Momentum tab ranks by

• Each line is one product's Momentum, one point per day. Sparklines on the board are scaled to each product's own range, so they show its shape; use the Momentum score and 7-day change to compare products.
• A hollow dot marks launch day and a filled dot marks the latest day. On a product's page, diamonds mark days the maker posted an update.
• On a product's page, a shaded band behind the line marks days with a paid boost.
• A solid line means every signal was measured by the Nest itself. A dashed line means the day includes self-reported data. Today every signal is measured on the Nest, so every line is solid.

Product profiles and weaknesses

When a maker submits a product, Fill with AI reads the product's own website and drafts its profile: name, tagline, description, features, strengths, weaknesses, tags and category. The maker can edit all of it except the weaknesses.

• Weaknesses are locked. They're the AI's honest read of the limitations or open questions a careful buyer would want to know, based on what the site says and doesn't say (for example, "No pricing shown on the site"). The maker can't edit or delete them, and re-running the AI on the same page returns the same analysis.
• Makers can appeal. If a weakness is wrong, the maker can appeal it from the product page. A person reviews every appeal and either removes the weakness, corrects it, or keeps it.
• If a maker skips the AI, we run it when we review the launch, so every product on the board gets the same treatment.
• Strengths and weaknesses don't affect rank or Momentum. They're there to help you decide.

Keeping it fair

One account per person. Buying, trading or organizing votes, and using bots or multiple accounts, gets votes excluded and can get a launch removed. See the Nest's terms. We may improve this method over time, and when we do, this page changes with it.