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It’s an interesting product but Erik Torenburg (self-described "Product Hunt Hustler" according to his Twitter profile) is not just a little bit of a Twitter sp

It’s an interesting product but Erik Torenburg (self-described "Product Hunt Hustler" according to his Twitter profile) is not just a little bit of a Twitter spammer: https://twitter.com/ErikTorenberg/media https://twitter.com/ErikTorenberg/media He has posted hundreds of reply spam promoting Product Hunt on Twitter. He must be running some kind of script because he has posted so many replies many with product specific screenshots, I can’t imagine someone doing this manually so quickly (every few minutes). I understand “growth hacking” and sometimes promoting yourself can seem like spam to some, but this really is just spam, and it’s not the good kind. This is probably in violation of Twitter's TOS and not what people should have to be exposed to, especially if you're trying to build a brand. This makes me just want to never use the product, and I really like supporting YC companies and prefer to give the benefit of the doubt and assume good faith in the face of self-promotion. But this is just a little bit too much.

minimaxir 12y ago
Being in YC does not guarantee that the companies will use ethical marketing strategies, unfortunately. Remember the InstallMonetizer incident while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711
- cnaut 12y ago
  Or the rapgenius fiasco
- 27182818284 12y ago
  It does a better job than most, though. InstallMonetizer incident involved YC staff contacting the founders and looking into it. They also implemented this: http://blog.ycombinator.com/founder-ethics http://blog.ycombinator.com/founder-ethics http://www.ycombinator.com/ethics/ http://www.ycombinator.com/ethics/
- MCRed 12y ago
  AirBnB spammed craigslist, etc. I actually think it's something they teach them to do.
rrhoover 12y ago
The majority of the tweets you're referring to are notifications to founders when their product is on Product Hunt so they can answer questions that arise. This leads to (1) a more interesting conversation and (2) fewer bummed founders. We started doing this more actively after receiving emails and tweets from disappointed founders that didn't know their product was featured until days later. Also, we're not using an automated script to send these tweets.
- crazypyro 12y ago
  You might as well automate this. I believe it would not be a great undertaking. Also if your only concern was notifying the creator/owner, why would you not DM them on twitter? Or better yet, e-mail them with a bot that scrapes emails off the product site as an example? Clearly, you guys are also trying to benefit from the increased publicity from using a public message "board" platform instead of a more private form of communication. I believe that may be the origin of some of these concerns. You guys aren't addressing the fact that you are doing this on a public platform to promote your site. Instead, you are still trying to argue that you are doing this completely independent of the traffic benefits....
  - rrhoover 12y ago
    "why would you not DM them on twitter" Most people's twitter settings require that they follow you to DM them. "e-mail them with a bot that scrapes emails off the product site" Not a bad idea and we could make some educated guesses as to what the email address is (e.g. support@company.com). That said, we've found some founders aren't as quick to respond to email as they are on Twitter. I personally prefer the more ephemeral nature of Twitter for these type of notifications as my email inbox is already difficult enough to manage. "Clearly, you guys are also trying to benefit from the increased publicity from using a public message 'board' platform" We send direct @mentions to founders/startups on Twitter. These tweets will not surface in other's Twitter feed unless they're following both people.
  - sixQuarks 12y ago
    How else are they supposed to contact the product people? Twitter is probably the easiest way to do it.
jqueryin 12y ago
I understand that you want the startup to interact with the comments and I also understand you don't want them to miss an opportunity of receiving and answering feedback, but I'm wondering if it would make more sense to have these automated messages come from a Product Hunt twitter account that's not associated to a person. I believe this would solidify that it's an automated message. I get the feeling that you're trying to play the messages off as not being automated as they come from Erik, but people already know they're automated. The gig is up. You could simply create an account such as "ProductHuntNotifier" or equivalent and remove any ambiguity. I still think that the messages are both relevant and important. You're in a unique position where you can even manually add and promote new startups to Product Hunt yourselves followed by automating a tweet out to the founder(s) and growth hack user acquisition that way. This seems to be the approach you're taking. I do applaud the fact you go so far as to do the legwork of finding the twitter accounts associated with the startup; that task is by no means automated. Most people can't take this approach as they have nothing beneficial to offer the user they're tweeting to. Because there's some value add to what they're doing, I'm not sure I'd say it's a cut and dry case of calling it spam given it's not fully automated and the startups in question are getting promoted. It seems mutually beneficial in many ways.
- rrhoover 12y ago
  We should probably find a way to streamline this outreach but right now it's entirely manual. If we can't find the founder's Twitter handle, we send a message to the startup/product's Twitter account.
erikto 12y ago
no robot here - just a hustler working on product hunt and, yes, manually reaching out to founders to let them know that they just got free press. Many of them respond with a "Thanks". Not one person has said "Spam".
- btipling 12y ago
  Erik, you even posted this spam almost verbatim on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8032837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8032837 I hope you're not going to continue to do that. I get you're hustling, but this isn't the right way to do this. > Not one person has said "Spam". I marked the tweet as spam via the report the tweet feature, I don't know if people usually actually reply as "this is spam."
- crazypyro 12y ago
  Sounds like a missed opportunity for a bot then... It is not like you are really personalizing the message at all. The only human part of this would be deciding which photo to use to entice the developer. (Could this be optimized by a bot and A/B testing?) I agree with the other comments that this is a useful feature, but would be more well suited for a customized twitter account with a name explaining it better.
  - erikto 12y ago
    the idea of a bot is intriguing, but right now I'm manually finding founders contact info, reaching out, getting them in the system, asking them Q+A's on producthunt.com, cc'ing other relevant players in the convo, and following up with them to see how PH influenced their traffic and how we can help (which, again, founders respond gratefully for all the free traffic) If anyone has suggestions for ways to automate part of this, as it takes a long time, i'm open!
    - singer 12y ago
      Ever try emailing founders instead? I wonder if you'd get a better and/or faster response. Perhaps you could require your product submitters to insert the contact email for the products they are submitting. Then, you could auto email the founder as soon as their product is posted on Product Hunt.
logicallee 12y ago
Do you want to amend or respond to this comment in light of rrhoover's reply to you?
- btipling 12y ago
  Considering that if you look closely at the screenshots and see that it is Erik himself commenting on products, so as to have a reason to notify users, no, not really. http://www.producthunt.com/posts/instant-chemistry http://www.producthunt.com/posts/instant-chemistry http://www.producthunt.com/posts/jumpido http://www.producthunt.com/posts/jumpido http://www.producthunt.com/posts/customeed http://www.producthunt.com/posts/customeed Maybe if they made it something you could subscribe to, opt-in, I would think it wasn't spam, but as it stands now, getting a notification on all of my Twitter enabled devices about something I don't care about, that I didn't ask for nor subscribe to, is spam. That some are advocating actually "scraping emails" to automate email notifications because this is so useful just leaves me a little bit dumbfounded.
  - crazypyro 12y ago
    Is getting an email, albeit unsolicited, about a community having a discussion about your generally new product[0] actually unwanted email for the majority of start-up founders? Especially to an email that is specifically mentioned on the site as a suggestions/feedback email. Both Erik and Ryan have said that many founders were happy with the notification. It seems to me that companies might even actually pay for a service like this and if enough people thought it added value, I don't see where the issue with scraping emails is. Perhaps you could enlighten me or provide a different viewpoint as this would be something that I'd have no issue implementing myself and the fact that it scares you so much has me worried that I would be overreaching if I ever did. I just don't see why an email scraper is seen as inherently evil? [0] I imagine a system where there has to be a minimum amount of comments and not one in which the only comment is made by Erik (or a bot) and used as the "motivation" for responding to the thread as a founder.
  - logicallee 12y ago
    It's still a conversation even if he started it. I find it totally bizarre that you would claim "you don't care about" this. As in, I do care about it. Am I saying it's okay for someone to start talking about my product, then spam me to let me know this is happening? Yes.

minimaxir 12y ago

Being in YC does not guarantee that the companies will use ethical marketing strategies, unfortunately. Remember the InstallMonetizer incident while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711

cnaut 12y ago
Or the rapgenius fiasco
27182818284 12y ago
It does a better job than most, though. InstallMonetizer incident involved YC staff contacting the founders and looking into it. They also implemented this: http://blog.ycombinator.com/founder-ethics http://blog.ycombinator.com/founder-ethics http://www.ycombinator.com/ethics/ http://www.ycombinator.com/ethics/
MCRed 12y ago
AirBnB spammed craigslist, etc. I actually think it's something they teach them to do.

rrhoover 12y ago

The majority of the tweets you're referring to are notifications to founders when their product is on Product Hunt so they can answer questions that arise. This leads to (1) a more interesting conversation and (2) fewer bummed founders. We started doing this more actively after receiving emails and tweets from disappointed founders that didn't know their product was featured until days later. Also, we're not using an automated script to send these tweets.

crazypyro 12y ago
You might as well automate this. I believe it would not be a great undertaking. Also if your only concern was notifying the creator/owner, why would you not DM them on twitter? Or better yet, e-mail them with a bot that scrapes emails off the product site as an example? Clearly, you guys are also trying to benefit from the increased publicity from using a public message "board" platform instead of a more private form of communication. I believe that may be the origin of some of these concerns. You guys aren't addressing the fact that you are doing this on a public platform to promote your site. Instead, you are still trying to argue that you are doing this completely independent of the traffic benefits....
- rrhoover 12y ago
  "why would you not DM them on twitter" Most people's twitter settings require that they follow you to DM them. "e-mail them with a bot that scrapes emails off the product site" Not a bad idea and we could make some educated guesses as to what the email address is (e.g. support@company.com). That said, we've found some founders aren't as quick to respond to email as they are on Twitter. I personally prefer the more ephemeral nature of Twitter for these type of notifications as my email inbox is already difficult enough to manage. "Clearly, you guys are also trying to benefit from the increased publicity from using a public message 'board' platform" We send direct @mentions to founders/startups on Twitter. These tweets will not surface in other's Twitter feed unless they're following both people.
- sixQuarks 12y ago
  How else are they supposed to contact the product people? Twitter is probably the easiest way to do it.

jqueryin 12y ago

I understand that you want the startup to interact with the comments and I also understand you don't want them to miss an opportunity of receiving and answering feedback, but I'm wondering if it would make more sense to have these automated messages come from a Product Hunt twitter account that's not associated to a person. I believe this would solidify that it's an automated message. I get the feeling that you're trying to play the messages off as not being automated as they come from Erik, but people already know they're automated. The gig is up. You could simply create an account such as "ProductHuntNotifier" or equivalent and remove any ambiguity. I still think that the messages are both relevant and important. You're in a unique position where you can even manually add and promote new startups to Product Hunt yourselves followed by automating a tweet out to the founder(s) and growth hack user acquisition that way. This seems to be the approach you're taking. I do applaud the fact you go so far as to do the legwork of finding the twitter accounts associated with the startup; that task is by no means automated. Most people can't take this approach as they have nothing beneficial to offer the user they're tweeting to. Because there's some value add to what they're doing, I'm not sure I'd say it's a cut and dry case of calling it spam given it's not fully automated and the startups in question are getting promoted. It seems mutually beneficial in many ways.

rrhoover 12y ago
We should probably find a way to streamline this outreach but right now it's entirely manual. If we can't find the founder's Twitter handle, we send a message to the startup/product's Twitter account.

erikto 12y ago

no robot here - just a hustler working on product hunt and, yes, manually reaching out to founders to let them know that they just got free press. Many of them respond with a "Thanks". Not one person has said "Spam".

btipling 12y ago
Erik, you even posted this spam almost verbatim on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8032837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8032837 I hope you're not going to continue to do that. I get you're hustling, but this isn't the right way to do this. > Not one person has said "Spam". I marked the tweet as spam via the report the tweet feature, I don't know if people usually actually reply as "this is spam."
crazypyro 12y ago
Sounds like a missed opportunity for a bot then... It is not like you are really personalizing the message at all. The only human part of this would be deciding which photo to use to entice the developer. (Could this be optimized by a bot and A/B testing?) I agree with the other comments that this is a useful feature, but would be more well suited for a customized twitter account with a name explaining it better.
- erikto 12y ago
  the idea of a bot is intriguing, but right now I'm manually finding founders contact info, reaching out, getting them in the system, asking them Q+A's on producthunt.com, cc'ing other relevant players in the convo, and following up with them to see how PH influenced their traffic and how we can help (which, again, founders respond gratefully for all the free traffic) If anyone has suggestions for ways to automate part of this, as it takes a long time, i'm open!
  - singer 12y ago
    Ever try emailing founders instead? I wonder if you'd get a better and/or faster response. Perhaps you could require your product submitters to insert the contact email for the products they are submitting. Then, you could auto email the founder as soon as their product is posted on Product Hunt.

logicallee 12y ago

Do you want to amend or respond to this comment in light of rrhoover's reply to you?

btipling 12y ago
Considering that if you look closely at the screenshots and see that it is Erik himself commenting on products, so as to have a reason to notify users, no, not really. http://www.producthunt.com/posts/instant-chemistry http://www.producthunt.com/posts/instant-chemistry http://www.producthunt.com/posts/jumpido http://www.producthunt.com/posts/jumpido http://www.producthunt.com/posts/customeed http://www.producthunt.com/posts/customeed Maybe if they made it something you could subscribe to, opt-in, I would think it wasn't spam, but as it stands now, getting a notification on all of my Twitter enabled devices about something I don't care about, that I didn't ask for nor subscribe to, is spam. That some are advocating actually "scraping emails" to automate email notifications because this is so useful just leaves me a little bit dumbfounded.
- crazypyro 12y ago
  Is getting an email, albeit unsolicited, about a community having a discussion about your generally new product[0] actually unwanted email for the majority of start-up founders? Especially to an email that is specifically mentioned on the site as a suggestions/feedback email. Both Erik and Ryan have said that many founders were happy with the notification. It seems to me that companies might even actually pay for a service like this and if enough people thought it added value, I don't see where the issue with scraping emails is. Perhaps you could enlighten me or provide a different viewpoint as this would be something that I'd have no issue implementing myself and the fact that it scares you so much has me worried that I would be overreaching if I ever did. I just don't see why an email scraper is seen as inherently evil? [0] I imagine a system where there has to be a minimum amount of comments and not one in which the only comment is made by Erik (or a bot) and used as the "motivation" for responding to the thread as a founder.
- logicallee 12y ago
  It's still a conversation even if he started it. I find it totally bizarre that you would claim "you don't care about" this. As in, I do care about it. Am I saying it's okay for someone to start talking about my product, then spam me to let me know this is happening? Yes.