Dive Brief:

• Amazon is pairing with Product Hunt, an online leaderboard for technology products, to leverage Product Hunt popularity rankings for products featured on Amazon's LaunchPad startup showcase, with the aim of boosting sales for LaunchPad offerings. 

• Amazon will create a "Featured on Product Hunt" section highlighting products on LaunchPad that also have trended on Product Hunt’s website for the technology enthusiast community. When LaunchPad products are posted on Product Hunt, they will also link to the Amazon section.

• Product Hunt is a three-year-old community site whose leaderboard features products such as gadgets, games, books and podcasts that are suggested by its users, along with community polling  and user comment that determines a product popularity.

Dive Insight:

Amazon recently forged a similar partnership with Kickstarter to highlight products successfully developed through the Kickstarter process on LaunchPad. Both partnerships feature technology-oriented user communities that allow customers to post their opinions about the products.

Such an engaged customer base can be a retailer's best friend, and these are the kind of partnerships that the e-commerce retail giant can find extremely useful as it continues to build a marketplace for startup and small business products. 

Product Hunt is a logical choice for Amazon. Its rankings and daily lists align pretty well the curated content approach it has used on LaunchPad. Its "expert articles" could also be used to leverage content and drive more marketing energy around the products on its site.

The word on Product Hunt, meanwhile, is that it is looking for ways to monetize its growing user community, and part of its deal with Amazon includes an affiliate fee earned on sales of Amazon LaunchPad products through its site.

Like many small companies partnering with industry giants, Product Hunt will have to be careful that Amazon doesn't creep too far into its own business territory. But for now, it can enjoy a little slice of the Amazon revenue pie, while providing Amazon a young, tech-focused facade that will heighten credibility among technology enthusiasts who might have otherwise assumed Amazon is too broad to deliver entrepreneurial products.