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Please tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles on OkCupid and spamming our users. Behaving like that doesn't inspire much confidence in your service.
by goodside 12y ago
Please tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles on OkCupid and spamming our users. Behaving like that doesn't inspire much confidence in your service.
- railsdude 12y agoIt's not "spamming", it's Growth Hacking ™.
- pocketheyman 12y agoI'm going to write a Grease monkey script to prevent the word "hacking" from ever being displayed on my screen.
- jacalata 12y agowhat are you going to replace it with? "butt" is already taken and wouldn't fit grammatically anyway. [https://github.com/panicsteve/cloud-to-butt https://github.com/panicsteve/cloud-to-butt]
- hderms 12y agomy sentiments exactly. HN comment of the month.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoDo a version replacing "growth hacking" with "spamming" and "marketing" with "lying", and I'll very happily install it (and wire you two beers worth of money, if you have a donate button or sth.).
- untog 12y agoFrom the same outfit that brought you that weird crowdfunding campaign to send women from New York over to woman-starved Silicon Valley: https://www.tilt.com/campaigns/working-on-it https://www.tilt.com/campaigns/working-on-it Another solid YC investment at work.
- laurenkay 12y agoNothing about that campaign itself was sexist. But mix women and dating, and you get a ton of outcry from the media that the women are prostitutes. As a feminist company, that wasn't fun for us to be associated with, but there was little we could do about that. The trip was mostly a joke, and also because we honestly thought a few people may end up having a good time. And one woman ended up falling in love and is now moving to SF. So, I'd hold off on insulting YC based on some publicity we've received. And .. all press is good press for growth for an early stage startup.
- untog 12y ago...I never said it was sexist?
- king_jester 12y ago> As a feminist company, that wasn't fun for us to be associated with, but there was little we could do about that. I don't see how your company could describe itself and feminist while also making a campaign that relies on some of the structural sexism of the Valley and tech. How did that campaign challenge the existing power structures and stereotypes/mythology of tech?
- atom-morgan 12y ago> How did that campaign challenge the existing power structures and stereotypes/mythology of tech? That wasn't her goal with the campaign.
- king_jester 12y ago
- laurenkay 12y agoOur employees don't have fake profiles on OkCupid, although the Premium Matchmakers do occasionally use their real profiles if they find someone that is exceptionally good for one of their clients. This is a pretty common practice overall in the matchmaking industry - do whatever it takes to find a good match for clients who are paying you a good amount of money for the search. We do our best to not spam and inspire trust by being available 24/7 to answer questions and personally interact with users. At the same time, we're constantly trying to grow so that we can provide the best matches. It's hard! Cut us some slack? No? Because it's HackerNews? Yea, I guess that's okay then.
- otterley 12y ago> Premium Matchmakers do occasionally use their real profiles Unless they're on OKC to look for dates, they have no business being there. The only messages that they could legitimately send on OKC would be to ask someone on a date.
- bravura 12y agoI have a friend in NYC who is a old-school matchmaker (sole proprietor). If she told me that she was doing a search for a client and looking on dating sites for prospects, I wouldn't blink. I guess that I trust she is trying to act in the best interests of the two people in the potential match. Is this substantially different?
- otterley 12y agoThe interests of the clients are irrelevant. If you owned a business and your competitor used your business's facilities to promote his to your detriment, you'd understandably be upset. That's precisely what the poster is being accused of.
- patmcc 12y agoI think it depends - would your friend message the prospects on okcupid/POF, or tell her client "here are some great profiles, you should message these people"? Those are very different; I suspect dating sites would have a problem with the former and not the latter.
- fubu 12y agoOff topic life advice: When you tell someone to stop doing something, don't start out with the word "Please". It doesn't really make any sense as it's a pleading word used as an order. It comes off passive aggressive and abrasive. Same thing with "I'd really appreciate it if" and "Would you mind". If it really is a simple request, then by all means, but when it's an order or a direct request, just say it without the weird prefix.
- Hoozt 12y agoOn Topic death advice: when giving someone advice, don't start your sentence with "Off topic life advice", as you will drop 30% of your readers* when vision hit the "off topic" part. *No scientific evidence behind this statement, but this is the internet, so it's true.
- fubu 12y agoIt's okay. If only one person reads it and stops the passive aggressive, office speak?, whatever that bizarre stuff is, I've done the rest of the normal sane people a favor. I'll take plenty downvotes to save just one person from having to listen to that weirdness even once.
- enraged_camel 12y ago>>I'll take plenty downvotes to save just one person from having to listen to that weirdness even once. You are such a martyr! Your parents must be proud.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoIf it takes a lot of karma to save a soul, maybe we can pool our collective scores to save more?
- Joeboy 12y agoAs a native, English, English speaker, I don't see anything at all wrong with goodside's phrasing. I think they successfully expressed what they were trying to express, succinctly and with appropriate tone.
- laurenkay 12y agoAlso, to clarify, while I did personally message a ton of people during our early days (CEO in her pajamas at 3am doing anything to get a site off the ground) - this is not at all what we do now. Our Premium Matchmakers will contact someone if they have someone they want to set them up on a date with. You're on OkCupid for dates, right? So we're trying to help :)
- adamio 12y ago"Our Premium Matchmakers will contact someone if they have someone they want to set them up on a date with." This is unsolicited spam. And likely against OkCupid's terms of use.
- zdean 12y agoThere's an entire ecosystem (though possibly not very robust) around providing services to people on dating services like helping with writing their profile. I've heard from a few people that it would be awesome to have someone just manage their dating profile for them. This service seems in some ways to add to that ecosystem and fill the need. I would think that OKC, etc. would in the end benefit from their contribution.
- railsdude 12y ago> I would think that OKC, etc. would in the end benefit from their contribution. That's BS and you know it. If that were the case, OP's startup should've bought ads on OKC and OKC would be glad to sell ad space. I really doubt that OKC or its parent company will sell ads to a competitor dating site.
- jonathanjaeger 12y agoOkCupid does have big ads for PlentyOfFish on their logout screen. They do allow ads, but of course, PlentyOfFish is paying for that ad space. Many niche or competitor dating sites advertise on other dating sites, but since it's paid advertising, the benefits outweigh the possible loss of users (think of it as shared users?).
- eegilbert 12y agoReminiscent of folklore surrounding Airbnb's Craigslist campaign: http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion-dollar-company http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion-do...
- nether 12y agoI think MyTwinPlace is currently doing such a campaign.
- nostromo 12y agoAirbnb was spamming, but they weren't being dishonest. To me, dishonesty is worse.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- UrMomReadsHN 12y agoWow, I can't believe that worked. That message is so spammy.
- ilamparithi 12y agoIts AirBnB all over again.
- laurenkay 12y agoNicest comment ever. Marry me?
- ilamparithi 12y agoSorry. My comment was not positive. I love YC and what they are doing. But the fact that they are turning a blind eye to these kind of practices has been a sore point for me. First AirBnB, then Rapgenius(now genius) with their black hat SEO and now you. I though YC was about helping geeks succeed without making compromises to their moral principles.
- 7Figures2Commas 12y agoFor every company that successfully uses gray and black hat techniques to spur growth there are literally hundreds that don't achieve the desired result. YC companies that think they're being clever and are more likely to employ these techniques successfully "Because AirBnB" shouldn't be disappointed when they fail.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago> For every company that successfully uses gray and black hat techniques to spur growth there are literally hundreds that don't achieve the desired result. Exactly. But every such campaign contributes to the erosion of trust on the Internet and generally makes the world suck more.
- samstave 12y agoEveryone did this, Tagged did the same thing as well, so did HI5. (create fake users that is - not doing it on OKCupid) (Then tagged and HI5 took the user base's email addresses and turned them into mailing lists for their spam email side companies...)
- sauere 12y agoOh boi. This is going to be good.