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The problem is that morality comes into competition with money in this situation. The more legitimate and official and connected to the company Get Satisfactio

by mdasen 18y ago

The problem is that morality comes into competition with money in this situation. The more legitimate and official and connected to the company Get Satisfaction makes their pages look, the more customers are going to use them as a way to try to get official-ish support. The more users use them as a way to get support, the more pressure there is on the company to use it as a support mechanism - whether they want to or not. Even beyond that, Get Satisfaction is essentially operating an unofficial forum that a company can pay to co-opt. Their paid plans specifically say that you get to shape the conversation. How Orwellian! So, you'll let users post bad things about my company on your service unless I start paying you in which case I get to decide what gets posted? That's just gross on both sides. And, of course, the more official it looks, the more it matters when people are posting bad things. Plus, once a company starts endorsing it, more customers will use it meaning that they can never stop paying. There's a huge moral hazard there. If their business plan were to offer an unofficial support system for all companies, that would be great. If their business plan were to offer a product companies could sign up for to outsource their support IT infrastructure, that would be great. But their business plan is to offer the first in the hopes that companies will feel pressure to do the second. EDIT: I want to clarify that I don't think Get Satisfaction is maliciously plotting in this way. I'm guessing that their plotting is to give customers the best support channels possible - in cases that they can be official, that means being official, but in other cases, it means giving customers the chance to unofficially talk about the company/products. However, it also means that their profits become tied to whether companies feel pressure to make Get Satisfaction an official support mechanism and the more people that use it because it looks official-ish, the more their profits are likely to be.

batasrki 18y ago
As I said in a comment just posted, the user who wanted satisfaction, no pun intended, created that page on GetSatisfaction forums. If anything, the failure was technical, since GS did not notify 37Signals that a page has been created for their company. Matter of fact, same can be said for any third-party service that lets users create pages/forums for companies they have beef with.
- mdasen 18y ago
  See, but most third-party services aren't also trying to sell themselves as a legitimate, official thing too. Sure, I can post links to Amazon releases here, but HN isn't trying to offer itself to Amazon as "pay $X and you'll have your press releases up here" at the same time. The difference is that anyone can post things on here and there's nothing any company can do about it. I could post, "Amazon's new MapReduce is a plot to steal my data" and people could vote it up. Likewise, I could post that on GS, but it's different: GS then has this option for Amazon to stop comments/posts they don't like (for a fee). That's the difference. Most third party sites have this: "we'll let users post bad things about you". GS has this: "we'll let people post bad things about you. . .unless you pay us." That's morally hazardous.
  - batasrki 18y ago
    Yes, but had they not had their pages looking semi-official, there would be no reason to use GS, now would there? As I've said somewhere lower in the comments, two things would have made a world of difference here. 1. GS should have had an e-mail notification system in place. They should notify any company, much less 37Signals, that there's been a question posted on their forums. Same can be said for UserVoice and any other third-party site who wants to get into this game. Had they notified the support people at 37Signals, none of this would have come to bear. 2. Jason, no matter how angry he is/was, should have NOT used a public forum for dealing with this issue immediately. Had he talked to GS's admins/support through e-mail privately, there'd be no need for this hubbub. If the e-mail route did not work, then I agree with denouncing GS publicly. All I'm alluding to here is maturity. There are good ways of handling issues and then there are bad ones. Even if Jason has a good point about GS's business conduct, it's lost, not just on me, based solely on his approach to it.
    - tptacek 18y ago
      If the only way to make your product work is to co-opt the branding and identity of another company, you have a business model problem. Are you sure you're really advocating for GS here?
zacharypinter 18y ago
This situations reminds me a bit of yelp, where there are rumors of yelp accepting money to remove negative reviews. I think this will start to become a trend. Anonymous feedback can be overly hostile and ruin companies. However, feedback moderated by the company in question might as well be a sales page. In the middle there are companies who try to play both sides, giving the appearance of openness while also being willing to take money to moderate the feedback.
webwright 18y ago
I really don't think that's the motivation at all-- but, of course, the Internet mob loves a villain, so pour on the hyperbole. Jesus, did you just make a 1984 reference aimed at a site that's trying to encourage businesses to have public support conversations!? Do you REALLY think it's Orwellian for forum software to allow the admin to delete threads? It's not extortion to build a channel for discussion and have that channel get used enough that the company really oughta start paying attention. If it was, Twitter would be guilty. Let's bring our torches and pitchforks to all of the other forums out there that focus on technical issues with specific products. The officialness of non-sanctioned forums (<20% of their signups nowadays, apparently) is clearly a problem which they agreed to and are addressing-- and I honestly think they need to do more than they did (notably: they need to fix how they appear in search engines when they are non-sanctioned forums). I think you're taking a short view of profits. GS might be able to make a few bucks by faking people out on purpose and trying to extort companies. They stand to make a lot more if they do the right thing. And, if you actually take the time to read about the founders and the company, it seems like they are trying to do that.
- gruseom 18y ago
  There is a huge difference between people talking about company X on blogs, forums, or Twitter, and some other company seeking to own X's relationship with its customers. That relationship is a critical part of most businesses. If that's what GS are doing, then I hope they fail because I don't want anyone else to ever be in that position. Of course I don't know what GS's intentions really are. I'm more skeptical than you, though. If the deceptiveness of their website were truly unintentional, I would have expected a more unequivocal response from them in both words and actions. Or maybe tptacek is right and it's just crappy PR.
brlewis 18y ago
It may be possible to bring money and morality into line. I'm going to find out: https://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2009-04-01 https://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2009-04-01

by mdasen 18y ago

batasrki 18y ago

As I said in a comment just posted, the user who wanted satisfaction, no pun intended, created that page on GetSatisfaction forums. If anything, the failure was technical, since GS did not notify 37Signals that a page has been created for their company. Matter of fact, same can be said for any third-party service that lets users create pages/forums for companies they have beef with.

mdasen 18y ago
See, but most third-party services aren't also trying to sell themselves as a legitimate, official thing too. Sure, I can post links to Amazon releases here, but HN isn't trying to offer itself to Amazon as "pay $X and you'll have your press releases up here" at the same time. The difference is that anyone can post things on here and there's nothing any company can do about it. I could post, "Amazon's new MapReduce is a plot to steal my data" and people could vote it up. Likewise, I could post that on GS, but it's different: GS then has this option for Amazon to stop comments/posts they don't like (for a fee). That's the difference. Most third party sites have this: "we'll let users post bad things about you". GS has this: "we'll let people post bad things about you. . .unless you pay us." That's morally hazardous.
- batasrki 18y ago
  Yes, but had they not had their pages looking semi-official, there would be no reason to use GS, now would there? As I've said somewhere lower in the comments, two things would have made a world of difference here. 1. GS should have had an e-mail notification system in place. They should notify any company, much less 37Signals, that there's been a question posted on their forums. Same can be said for UserVoice and any other third-party site who wants to get into this game. Had they notified the support people at 37Signals, none of this would have come to bear. 2. Jason, no matter how angry he is/was, should have NOT used a public forum for dealing with this issue immediately. Had he talked to GS's admins/support through e-mail privately, there'd be no need for this hubbub. If the e-mail route did not work, then I agree with denouncing GS publicly. All I'm alluding to here is maturity. There are good ways of handling issues and then there are bad ones. Even if Jason has a good point about GS's business conduct, it's lost, not just on me, based solely on his approach to it.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    If the only way to make your product work is to co-opt the branding and identity of another company, you have a business model problem. Are you sure you're really advocating for GS here?

zacharypinter 18y ago

This situations reminds me a bit of yelp, where there are rumors of yelp accepting money to remove negative reviews. I think this will start to become a trend. Anonymous feedback can be overly hostile and ruin companies. However, feedback moderated by the company in question might as well be a sales page. In the middle there are companies who try to play both sides, giving the appearance of openness while also being willing to take money to moderate the feedback.

webwright 18y ago

I really don't think that's the motivation at all-- but, of course, the Internet mob loves a villain, so pour on the hyperbole. Jesus, did you just make a 1984 reference aimed at a site that's trying to encourage businesses to have public support conversations!? Do you REALLY think it's Orwellian for forum software to allow the admin to delete threads? It's not extortion to build a channel for discussion and have that channel get used enough that the company really oughta start paying attention. If it was, Twitter would be guilty. Let's bring our torches and pitchforks to all of the other forums out there that focus on technical issues with specific products. The officialness of non-sanctioned forums (<20% of their signups nowadays, apparently) is clearly a problem which they agreed to and are addressing-- and I honestly think they need to do more than they did (notably: they need to fix how they appear in search engines when they are non-sanctioned forums). I think you're taking a short view of profits. GS might be able to make a few bucks by faking people out on purpose and trying to extort companies. They stand to make a lot more if they do the right thing. And, if you actually take the time to read about the founders and the company, it seems like they are trying to do that.

gruseom 18y ago
There is a huge difference between people talking about company X on blogs, forums, or Twitter, and some other company seeking to own X's relationship with its customers. That relationship is a critical part of most businesses. If that's what GS are doing, then I hope they fail because I don't want anyone else to ever be in that position. Of course I don't know what GS's intentions really are. I'm more skeptical than you, though. If the deceptiveness of their website were truly unintentional, I would have expected a more unequivocal response from them in both words and actions. Or maybe tptacek is right and it's just crappy PR.

brlewis 18y ago

It may be possible to bring money and morality into line. I'm going to find out: https://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2009-04-01 https://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2009-04-01