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In short: spam (AirBnb), cheat (fake Reddit users), and/or gamify your process to addict your users like a casino would (Foursquare). This is usually seen as un
by probably_wrong 9y ago
In short: spam (AirBnb), cheat (fake Reddit users), and/or gamify your process to addict your users like a casino would (Foursquare). This is usually seen as unethical, but if you make a lot of money then it's all right in the end.
I'm going to take these examples whenever someone asks "what's wrong with marketing? "
- amelius 9y agoFacebook: force the users onto your platform by subscribing them yourself.
- dyarosla 9y agoLinkedIn: fake that a user that you can connect with is already on the platform.
- elorant 9y agoThat's a pattern many dating sites used to do. They crawled competitors' sites and uploaded pics taken from profiles, preferably of good looking women. It's downhill from there.
- joering2 9y agoVery interesting - was unable to find anything on subject. Could you point me to some examples (who stole from whom?)
- elorant 9y agoI can't name names but it used to be a known practice a few years ago (say 5+). It might still be although the dating space has changed dramatically since the prevalence of social media platforms.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bahmboo 9y agoI find none of this unethical and actually pretty typical web marketing stuff - tame even. Not exactly sure who was harmed and in the end the consumer really wanted what was offered.
- snomad 9y agoI worry that tech's gamification - gone too far for addiction - will be this generation's big tobacco settlement.
- brogrammernot 9y agoThat's quite a hyperbole.
- yomly 9y agoI mean, social media preys on people's insecurities and need for validation and is allowed for anyone over 13. Pay to win mobile games are designed to be addictive and upsell you to continue playing. At least in a casino you have a chance of winning money. The most terrifying thing is that with tech, the data harvesting is immediate and far reaching - people's entire jobs in UX are basically to make games more engaging (aka addictive). Currently the addictiveness of tech is evolving faster than human wisdom and regulation can keep up so while hyperbolic, there is some sense to the doomsaying.
- omginternets 9y agoI don't think he's saying that its as deadly as tobacco. Rather, I think his point is that the magnitude of its nefarious effects will surprise the general populace.
- mintplant 9y agoI have a feeling the AirBnB story runs afoul of anti-spam laws. Perhaps even some sort of fraud, as they used an array of fake names with the intent to deceive as to the source of the emails.
- 9y ago
- adventured 9y ago> cheat (fake Reddit users) There's nothing about fake users in the Reddit start-up story that equates to cheating (cheating what or whom exactly?). Cheating requires that there's a framework of defined fairness in place such that you're violating it. No such framework exists in the context in question (eg: other human users were not promised there were no fake users). Your premise is wrong accordingly. You might as well claim that when someone at an old-school software conference showed off their product in person, it was cheating (after all, they hadn't even purchased the product and they weren't an organic user). Or that to demonstrate a product on QVC is cheating, because the people doing the demonstrating aren't likely real customers and didn't come to discover the product in a strictly organic manner. If you have to create fake users to demonstrate how an entire system works to the first real users, the last thing that qualifies as is cheating. As in the QVC example, showing off how a product works through simulation, is among the most important things you can do with a new product or service.
- WalterSear 9y agoSock puppetry is disingenuous, whether or not you allow it in your terms of service.
- tomrod 9y agoIf Reddit used inflated figures anywhere when convincing advertisers to use their platform (especially in growth rates), then they "cheated"--or more precisely, lied.
- ben_jones 9y agoIsn't the technical definition "fraud"?
- tomrod 9y agoYes.
- manigandham 9y agoThat's not what's being discussed here.
- epmaybe 9y agoI'm not sure I understand the Foursquare argument. Is gamifying unethical? They aren't really making users "gamble" so the casino analogy doesn't really work for me.
- frostirosti 9y agoReddit is at least very transparent about this. You can't plow a field and just expect wheat to grow, you have to plant the seeds.
- saghm 9y agoBut apparently you can plant fake seeds and start plowing, and then people will come and plant real seeds there, and then you can harvest that wheat
- nindalf 9y agoThe purpose of the initial seeding was to create the appearance of users, and also to encourage the type of content the founders wanted to see themselves. I'd be delighted to hear how you would have accomplished this.
- manigandham 9y ago...so? You can also create multiple accounts today and post whatever you want. What exactly is wrong with their process when the users themselves decided there was enough value to stay?
- saghm 9y agoI don't think I said whether or not I thought that their process is wrong, I just extended GP's analogy
- wheelerwj 9y agosomething else interesting is that these companies all have zero or minimal product costs, so these egregious growth spurts aren't really anything but signups. No retail company can really utilize the same techniques. Imagine a hardware company or physical product company that got a 75,0000 customers over night. The only thing happening the next day would be customer support emailing order cancellation notices. I don't know why this strikes me as relevant at the moment but it does.
- sebleon 9y ago> I'm going to take these examples whenever someone asks "what's wrong with marketing? " Doesn't this reflect more on society? I personally don't find the above examples to be evil, but it's interesting that these are the tactics needed to win in this world.
- rahimnathwani 9y ago"gamify your process to addict your users like a casino would (Foursquare)" How did Foursquare use gamification to acquire users?
- Iv 9y ago> what's wrong with marketing? My summary is usually that it is a zero-sum game, even a negative-sum game but it works for the winner. It is prisoner's dilemma at its finest: we would be fine if no one did it but if a single players start to use marketing techniques, they get an immense advantage. We need marketing deescalation policies similar to disarmament commissions. But I am not holding my breath, I doubt I will see that within my lifetime.
- manigandham 9y agoNone of that is spamming or cheating... and how is gamification a problem at all, especially in user acquisition (vs retention)? What exactly were these companies supposed to do then? Sit around until people found them on their own? This really just comes off as pretentious complaining rather than any serious criticism.
- mrhektor 9y agoI think that while these tactics are grey area for sure (specially in the case of Airbnb), I firmly believe that this would fall in the, for lack of a better word, "hustle" category. I would guess that most of the companies listed here tried multiple tactics, and these are the ones that worked. From my own experience as an entrepreneur, you just have to keep experimenting with various channels until one sticks, without getting too bogged down with the wider implications.
- GuiA 9y ago"Hustling" is a dangerous word that people love to bend to justify their potentially slimy actions. Cold calling potential clients is hustling. Selling features you don't have is hustling. Faking activity and demand on your website (e.g. listing properties that don't exist on a real estate site) is hustling. Undercutting your competitors by flooding their service with fake requests is hustling. Etc. Some of those are just work needed to succeed; others are downright unethical.