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<rant> It's not the first time I will rant about this, but why use the word 'hacking' here? YayView sort of exploited the system by automatically creating use

by trymas 11y ago

<rant> It's not the first time I will rant about this, but why use the word 'hacking' here? YayView sort of exploited the system by automatically creating users from freely available data on the social networks, but is it 'hacking' per se? I think that YayView is not a hacker company, and just a startup using very unethical business tactics. IMHO, term `hacking` is used everywhere to raise `click-bait-itness`, no matter it fits there or not. </rant>

zazpowered 11y ago
Growth hacker and hacker are very different things
- bottled_poe 11y ago
  These roles look suspiciously like more traditional "business development manager" and "software developer" but I guess those titles weren't trendy enough so we hacked role titles and now everyone gets to be a "hacker".
  - qubex 11y ago
    ”Growth hacker” is a term a marketer came up with to market marketers.
  - trymas 11y ago
    +1 exactly. There is business development, though if there is a article which title has 'developer' in it, it does mean `a software developer` mostly, unless you read a particular business development article. Though `growth hacking`, personally, I think is made up buzzword, for some managers to feel good and cool, that they are like the hacker from 90s. Startup growth falls under `business development and management` in my head, not under `(growth) hacking`.
digbyloftus 11y ago
Hacker in this context means someone who quickly and cheaply creates new things, as in "it's hacked together". Like how we're on Hacker News, it's not a security website, it's a website for people interested in startup news. Growth hacking basically means any form of growth that doesn't come from a fat marketing budget or traditional brand growing methods. I definitely think their method counts.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I disagree. "Growth hacking" refers to "hacking" as in "the thing programmers do that make them oh so important in the XXI century". It's marketers doing collective "me too", they want to bask in the same glory, capture some of that positive halo that was created by IT companies that diluted the meaning of word "hacker". The word that itself doesn't mean much anymore within the commercial world.
  - Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
    Not really. The programming part of "growth hacking" is, well, a part of it, but the general definition of the term is much closer to "using creativity and analytical thinking/practices to market a product/service." It's kind of glorified word of mouth marketing, but with landing pages and A/B tests. [All that said, as a startup growth guy, I pretty much detest the term.]
  - digbyloftus 11y ago
    Plenty of what programmers are doing isn't hacking. A team of top cs men making some process in google 0.1% more efficient doesn't seem very hacky even if it results in oodles of profit. What's more is this type of marketing is very much the result of hacker programming. Scraping social media profiles and then automatically email spamming the recipients is a system that was programmed, they aren't manually doing it (I hope!).
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Of course! Most programming, and especially most professional programming, has nothing to do with hacking. It's a different culture. But it's also totally different culture to what "growth hacking" is doing to marketing. Astroturfing the hell out of your service doesn't make you a hacker. It makes you an unsophisticated asshole.
      - digbyloftus 11y ago
        I mean, if all you do for a living is email spam then I wouldn't call that hacking, but seeing as this is a programming based startup and the marketing attempt required programming skill, I'm imagining this was put together by the same guy/guys that are on other days making new product features. If slapping together a marketing scheme that quickly lets you reach a lot of people without you needing to spend a lot of time optimising or upkeeping it isn't hacking then I just straight up don't understand how the day setting up a new feature and a day setting up the new spam bot are different conceptually. I don't think being an unsophisticated asshole and a hacker are mutually exclusive. Plenty of hacking is unsophisticated and most people are assholes, hacker or otherwise.
forgotmypassw 11y ago
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Hacker https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Hacker
rplnt 11y ago
Plus it's pretty common and has been over the years. Spamming student accounts, creating fake profiles from harvested data, etc... There is nothing newsworthy about this app. Just report them to appropriate places (school's tech whatever to block their spam, facebook for violating TOS, ... something else?) and move on.

by trymas 11y ago

zazpowered 11y ago

Growth hacker and hacker are very different things

bottled_poe 11y ago
These roles look suspiciously like more traditional "business development manager" and "software developer" but I guess those titles weren't trendy enough so we hacked role titles and now everyone gets to be a "hacker".
- qubex 11y ago
  ”Growth hacker” is a term a marketer came up with to market marketers.
- trymas 11y ago
  +1 exactly. There is business development, though if there is a article which title has 'developer' in it, it does mean `a software developer` mostly, unless you read a particular business development article. Though `growth hacking`, personally, I think is made up buzzword, for some managers to feel good and cool, that they are like the hacker from 90s. Startup growth falls under `business development and management` in my head, not under `(growth) hacking`.

digbyloftus 11y ago

Hacker in this context means someone who quickly and cheaply creates new things, as in "it's hacked together". Like how we're on Hacker News, it's not a security website, it's a website for people interested in startup news. Growth hacking basically means any form of growth that doesn't come from a fat marketing budget or traditional brand growing methods. I definitely think their method counts.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
I disagree. "Growth hacking" refers to "hacking" as in "the thing programmers do that make them oh so important in the XXI century". It's marketers doing collective "me too", they want to bask in the same glory, capture some of that positive halo that was created by IT companies that diluted the meaning of word "hacker". The word that itself doesn't mean much anymore within the commercial world.
- Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
  Not really. The programming part of "growth hacking" is, well, a part of it, but the general definition of the term is much closer to "using creativity and analytical thinking/practices to market a product/service." It's kind of glorified word of mouth marketing, but with landing pages and A/B tests. [All that said, as a startup growth guy, I pretty much detest the term.]
- digbyloftus 11y ago
  Plenty of what programmers are doing isn't hacking. A team of top cs men making some process in google 0.1% more efficient doesn't seem very hacky even if it results in oodles of profit. What's more is this type of marketing is very much the result of hacker programming. Scraping social media profiles and then automatically email spamming the recipients is a system that was programmed, they aren't manually doing it (I hope!).
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Of course! Most programming, and especially most professional programming, has nothing to do with hacking. It's a different culture. But it's also totally different culture to what "growth hacking" is doing to marketing. Astroturfing the hell out of your service doesn't make you a hacker. It makes you an unsophisticated asshole.
    - digbyloftus 11y ago
      I mean, if all you do for a living is email spam then I wouldn't call that hacking, but seeing as this is a programming based startup and the marketing attempt required programming skill, I'm imagining this was put together by the same guy/guys that are on other days making new product features. If slapping together a marketing scheme that quickly lets you reach a lot of people without you needing to spend a lot of time optimising or upkeeping it isn't hacking then I just straight up don't understand how the day setting up a new feature and a day setting up the new spam bot are different conceptually. I don't think being an unsophisticated asshole and a hacker are mutually exclusive. Plenty of hacking is unsophisticated and most people are assholes, hacker or otherwise.

forgotmypassw 11y ago

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Hacker https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Hacker

rplnt 11y ago

Plus it's pretty common and has been over the years. Spamming student accounts, creating fake profiles from harvested data, etc... There is nothing newsworthy about this app. Just report them to appropriate places (school's tech whatever to block their spam, facebook for violating TOS, ... something else?) and move on.