(Bloomberg Business) -- They came by the hundreds, spilling outof Ubers and Lyfts to wait in a line snaking for two blocks fromthe front door of Jones, a bar in San Francisco’s Tenderloindistrict. A passerby asked if a band was playing.

No, the draws were free beer, Ryan Hoover and Product Hunt, thehot arbiter of the coolness of the hundreds of apps, services andgadgets released in any given month. More than 3,700 people RSVP’dto an invitation Hoover posted on Facebook for his website’sfirst-anniversary party, a sidewalk-jamming testament to tech’sreign and Hoover’s particular brand of celebrity. Hip-hop artistNas and New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony, both startupinvestors, are regular Product Hunt readers.

“I haven’t seen anything that captures the magic of the times welive in the way Product Hunt does,” says Groupon Inc. co-founderAndrew Mason, whose new company, the travel guide service Detour,scored a Product Hunt shout-out last year. “It just captures on onepage the breadth and depth of entrepreneur innovation that ishappening right now.”