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It's dishonest to tell visitors the queue is due to high demand (what message do they see if demand is low?) and fail to disclose that the service does not exis

It's dishonest to tell visitors the queue is due to high demand (what message do they see if demand is low?) and fail to disclose that the service does not exist and may not even be feasible at the offered price point. This kind of chaff cast into the marketplace makes it harder for customers and legitimate service providers to find each other. Market research is fine (with consent) but it's not a license to deceive the public about what you're doing.

statictype 14y ago
I'm curious as to what others think of this. I've been using the same technique to test a market and have been struggling to figure out how shady this is. One on hand, it does feel like we're deceiving people, on the other hand, what we're doing is actually benficial to consumers. If they signed up, that means they want what it is that you're trying to build and they're letting you know it.
- keesj 14y ago
  Why not just state the product isn't ready yet, but you'll contact them as soon as it is?
  - hayksaakian 14y ago
    You'll lose people that are mildly interested and clicked "buy" out of impulse.
    - ljf 14y ago
      I've heard it put before as the difference between telling a friend / stranger about a business idea and saying "would you buy it" which will often result in a non-committal "yeah" to, "great I have a load of them in the car, £5 each, how many would you like?" Only the second is a real test of if the idea is valuable and viable. This way you end with with a 'hot' mailing list. You also can't worry about losing these early potential clients, if your client pool is really that small then this is not the way to test. There is a great section on this in the book 4 Hour Work Week.
icelancer 14y ago
I absolutely hate this trend of creating landing pages for bullshit and nonexistent products. Turning the public into sheep and testing ideas with no plan to execute on them is unethical, yet I hear it all the time from garbage theories that generally have the word "lean" in them. It's crap.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  Is it better for someone to spend months coding something only to discover that nobody wants it? What do you really lose if you find out that a service you like isn't ready yet?
  - emoray13 14y ago
    Great point Stavros, I believe this is the biggest source of failure for startups.
emoray13 14y ago
Hi Prodigal, Although chrisacky flagged up some major issues in security above, there is more than one server/ domain running the system which they didn't discover. Once there is around 50 users on a server / domain I've created a new one.So thankfully chrisacky only managed to discover a small amount of users active on the service currently.

statictype 14y ago

I'm curious as to what others think of this. I've been using the same technique to test a market and have been struggling to figure out how shady this is. One on hand, it does feel like we're deceiving people, on the other hand, what we're doing is actually benficial to consumers. If they signed up, that means they want what it is that you're trying to build and they're letting you know it.

keesj 14y ago
Why not just state the product isn't ready yet, but you'll contact them as soon as it is?
- hayksaakian 14y ago
  You'll lose people that are mildly interested and clicked "buy" out of impulse.
  - ljf 14y ago
    I've heard it put before as the difference between telling a friend / stranger about a business idea and saying "would you buy it" which will often result in a non-committal "yeah" to, "great I have a load of them in the car, £5 each, how many would you like?" Only the second is a real test of if the idea is valuable and viable. This way you end with with a 'hot' mailing list. You also can't worry about losing these early potential clients, if your client pool is really that small then this is not the way to test. There is a great section on this in the book 4 Hour Work Week.

icelancer 14y ago

I absolutely hate this trend of creating landing pages for bullshit and nonexistent products. Turning the public into sheep and testing ideas with no plan to execute on them is unethical, yet I hear it all the time from garbage theories that generally have the word "lean" in them. It's crap.

StavrosK 14y ago
Is it better for someone to spend months coding something only to discover that nobody wants it? What do you really lose if you find out that a service you like isn't ready yet?
- emoray13 14y ago
  Great point Stavros, I believe this is the biggest source of failure for startups.

emoray13 14y ago

Hi Prodigal, Although chrisacky flagged up some major issues in security above, there is more than one server/ domain running the system which they didn't discover. Once there is around 50 users on a server / domain I've created a new one.So thankfully chrisacky only managed to discover a small amount of users active on the service currently.