7 ms·

Show HN: Contacts finds email addresses

47 points by wsieroci 13y ago

ShaneCurran_ 13y ago
Looks awesome - good luck :)
- wsieroci 13y ago
  thank you :)
joiguru 13y ago
Very nice concept indeed. The How it Works section is a kind of a bummer. No real info on how the selection of blogs is done or how they results are ranked. Also I find the color scheme makes text very hard to read.
abcd_f 13y ago
This is presumably to be used during PR stints and, given the $20 price point, this isn't aimed at PR agencies, but smaller companies. As such, a one-time fee would be a far more sensible option. I realize that you have bought into the service hype and now probably dreaming of recurrent revenue and lingering subscriptions, but in your case it's really trying to fit a square peg in round hole.
- dyscrete 13y ago
  Can you explain your reasoning behind this?
- twanlass 13y ago
  I think you're pretty spot on. A PR agency might pay 10x times this, but for a one off use by a startup or SMB a monthly charge doesn't make sense. Maybe offer pre-paid credits as well?
ZirconCode 13y ago
I don't understand your plan selection. "analyzing max. 600 phrases/mo" What does this mean? I get to query your database 600 times? I get 600 phrases which weren't in your database? I get analytic s/statistics on them? If these e-mails aren't guaranteed to be "100%" useful, and seem not to be hand-selected or have any human element involved, this just seems to be payment for a mail crawler. It looks a bit too much for me like a spam enabler. And as abcd_f already mentioned, the recurring payment may be a mistake. As a start-up, I wouldn't subscribe for more than my "launch" month (s). Hope it helps, best of luck!
- wsieroci 13y ago
  Ok, thanks for comment. I will think about that.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
wvh 13y ago
The concept is technically interesting, but I don't want my e-mail address to be harvested by third parties and sold for marketing purposes. I am not a lawyer, but in the EU (which is where I assume you are located) data privacy regulations require the user to consent to the use of their private data. The sites you collect the information from supposedly have permission to process private information by means of their privacy policy and relationship with the user; which as a third party, you don't have. One could argue the data is already public; but since the user can not consent – you have no relation to the user – you are going to find yourself in muddy legal waters, especially trying to base a business on that data.
agwa 13y ago
Is this actually email address scraping as a service? This is going to be used to enable spam. Any email sent to an address acquired from this service will be, by definition, unsolicited. Thus, if the email is in any way bulk (and honestly, what will the addresses returned from your service be used for, if not for sending substantively identical content to multiple people?), then the email fits the commonly-accepted definition of spam[1]. This is not OK, and will only make things more difficult for people who do legitimate, consent-based, email marketing. I'm glad you're respecting robots.txt, but please say what your bot's user agent string is, so site administrators can block specifically your bot. I'm loathe to be so negative on a "Show HN" post, but I strongly believe that this business is disreputable and that businesses of this type cause harm to the Internet. There may be value in finding blogs/bloggers matching specific queries; perhaps take email addresses out of the equation? [1] http://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/ http://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/ Edited to add: just yesterday I received an email from someone I don't know asking me to try out his "weather API." The same email was clearly sent to a lot of different people, and it was sent to an address I have posted on websites, so it must have been scraped. I suspect the sender didn't think his email was spam, since he didn't try to hide his identity or use a bot net to send it. But being unsolicited and bulk, it was spam. It was sent via Mandrill so I reported it to Mandrill's abuse team; most people would probably just mark it as spam, harming the reputation of Mandrill's mail servers, thus making it more difficult for Mandrill to be used for legitimate email sending. I have a feeling "blogger outreach" would follow a similar pattern as this.
- monkeyspaw 13y ago
  Would you consider it spam if someone manually went to a site, found their contact information, and sent them an email by hand? It appears to fit the same definition as "unsolicited", and yet, that is one of the purposes of a business placing their email address on their website. I work in b2b software, where it's common for sales and marketing people to use publicly posted contact information for outreach (both buying and selling products). IMO, the formal definition of spam as "unsolicited commercial email" is somewhat broken in b2b spheres -- it feels a lot like "it's spam if I publish my information and you send me something that I don't want." The problem is the "something I don't want" is only determined after the fact.
pastaking 13y ago
Hey this is pretty cool! I'll find this useful soon.
aroman 13y ago
How can I, as an individual (or perhaps a company) opt out? I'm sure some people would benefit from this service, but as others pointed out, I do not want my emails being harvested.
kamilrextin 13y ago
Give me a free trial and I dont get how it works from the how it works section. Just figured it's a scrapper of some sort.. looks cool.
mkessy 13y ago
This looks really cool. Could you go into some details on the stack used? Also what does your API look like right now?
tazzy531 13y ago
"For every e-mail we show you where we have found it - this way you can check if this is good contact or not." Adding a comma after "For every e-mail" will make this sentence much more clear.
AznHisoka 13y ago
I don't find this useful at all. I can easily get similar results searching for emails in Google. In fact, this service is probably best for people who don't know how to use Google at all. If I wanted to find emails of Paleo bloggers, I'd just search for: paleo blogger "@gmail.com" Also, good luck scraping Google if that's what you're doing. Even a few hundred proxies won't be enough after awhile as they're doing a very good job blocking scrapers.

47 points by wsieroci 13y ago

ShaneCurran_ 13y ago

Looks awesome - good luck :)

wsieroci 13y ago
thank you :)

joiguru 13y ago

Very nice concept indeed. The How it Works section is a kind of a bummer. No real info on how the selection of blogs is done or how they results are ranked. Also I find the color scheme makes text very hard to read.

abcd_f 13y ago

This is presumably to be used during PR stints and, given the $20 price point, this isn't aimed at PR agencies, but smaller companies. As such, a one-time fee would be a far more sensible option. I realize that you have bought into the service hype and now probably dreaming of recurrent revenue and lingering subscriptions, but in your case it's really trying to fit a square peg in round hole.

dyscrete 13y ago
Can you explain your reasoning behind this?
twanlass 13y ago
I think you're pretty spot on. A PR agency might pay 10x times this, but for a one off use by a startup or SMB a monthly charge doesn't make sense. Maybe offer pre-paid credits as well?

ZirconCode 13y ago

I don't understand your plan selection. "analyzing max. 600 phrases/mo" What does this mean? I get to query your database 600 times? I get 600 phrases which weren't in your database? I get analytic s/statistics on them? If these e-mails aren't guaranteed to be "100%" useful, and seem not to be hand-selected or have any human element involved, this just seems to be payment for a mail crawler. It looks a bit too much for me like a spam enabler. And as abcd_f already mentioned, the recurring payment may be a mistake. As a start-up, I wouldn't subscribe for more than my "launch" month (s). Hope it helps, best of luck!

wsieroci 13y ago
Ok, thanks for comment. I will think about that.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

wvh 13y ago

The concept is technically interesting, but I don't want my e-mail address to be harvested by third parties and sold for marketing purposes. I am not a lawyer, but in the EU (which is where I assume you are located) data privacy regulations require the user to consent to the use of their private data. The sites you collect the information from supposedly have permission to process private information by means of their privacy policy and relationship with the user; which as a third party, you don't have. One could argue the data is already public; but since the user can not consent – you have no relation to the user – you are going to find yourself in muddy legal waters, especially trying to base a business on that data.

agwa 13y ago

Is this actually email address scraping as a service? This is going to be used to enable spam. Any email sent to an address acquired from this service will be, by definition, unsolicited. Thus, if the email is in any way bulk (and honestly, what will the addresses returned from your service be used for, if not for sending substantively identical content to multiple people?), then the email fits the commonly-accepted definition of spam[1]. This is not OK, and will only make things more difficult for people who do legitimate, consent-based, email marketing. I'm glad you're respecting robots.txt, but please say what your bot's user agent string is, so site administrators can block specifically your bot. I'm loathe to be so negative on a "Show HN" post, but I strongly believe that this business is disreputable and that businesses of this type cause harm to the Internet. There may be value in finding blogs/bloggers matching specific queries; perhaps take email addresses out of the equation? [1] http://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/ http://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/ Edited to add: just yesterday I received an email from someone I don't know asking me to try out his "weather API." The same email was clearly sent to a lot of different people, and it was sent to an address I have posted on websites, so it must have been scraped. I suspect the sender didn't think his email was spam, since he didn't try to hide his identity or use a bot net to send it. But being unsolicited and bulk, it was spam. It was sent via Mandrill so I reported it to Mandrill's abuse team; most people would probably just mark it as spam, harming the reputation of Mandrill's mail servers, thus making it more difficult for Mandrill to be used for legitimate email sending. I have a feeling "blogger outreach" would follow a similar pattern as this.

monkeyspaw 13y ago
Would you consider it spam if someone manually went to a site, found their contact information, and sent them an email by hand? It appears to fit the same definition as "unsolicited", and yet, that is one of the purposes of a business placing their email address on their website. I work in b2b software, where it's common for sales and marketing people to use publicly posted contact information for outreach (both buying and selling products). IMO, the formal definition of spam as "unsolicited commercial email" is somewhat broken in b2b spheres -- it feels a lot like "it's spam if I publish my information and you send me something that I don't want." The problem is the "something I don't want" is only determined after the fact.

pastaking 13y ago

Hey this is pretty cool! I'll find this useful soon.

aroman 13y ago

How can I, as an individual (or perhaps a company) opt out? I'm sure some people would benefit from this service, but as others pointed out, I do not want my emails being harvested.

kamilrextin 13y ago

Give me a free trial and I dont get how it works from the how it works section. Just figured it's a scrapper of some sort.. looks cool.

mkessy 13y ago

This looks really cool. Could you go into some details on the stack used? Also what does your API look like right now?

tazzy531 13y ago

"For every e-mail we show you where we have found it - this way you can check if this is good contact or not." Adding a comma after "For every e-mail" will make this sentence much more clear.

AznHisoka 13y ago

I don't find this useful at all. I can easily get similar results searching for emails in Google. In fact, this service is probably best for people who don't know how to use Google at all. If I wanted to find emails of Paleo bloggers, I'd just search for: paleo blogger "@gmail.com" Also, good luck scraping Google if that's what you're doing. Even a few hundred proxies won't be enough after awhile as they're doing a very good job blocking scrapers.