Towards a repeatable and practicable strategy for customer development
zacharyburt.com
zacharyburt.com
It can't be that good :)
A while ago there was a question here by someone if there was evidence of voting posses and bury brigades, if this isn't it then I don't know what would be it.
At the end of the day I posted it to spur discussion about a relevant topic to the HN community and in the spirit of that I ask that you generously apply your intelligence to criticism of the article's claims and suggestions.
Do you think that's ok?
Here is what I think, and we disagree strongly about this:
I think it goes entirely against the spirit of what HN is about. I may be wrong about that, but that's what I feel.
If you use your friends - and sockpuppets apparently - to cheat your way on to the front page as a long time and fairly visible member of the community then you are setting a very bad example.
It's true that plenty of 'good stuff' scrolls off the new page before it gets enough upvotes to make it to the homepage, but that's life, everybody takes their chances with that.
You are essentially changing it from a level playingfield in to a 'how many friends can I muster' game.
The fact that it isn't in the guidelines is not relevant, I think that you could easily work out for yourself that even if it isn't in the guidelines that this is not the way HN is supposed to work.
The same mechanism (bringing your friends along to flag an entry that you don't like) could be used for burying content.
I'd hate to see HN go down the drain the way digg did because of behaviour like this.
Ethics is not what's in the guidelines, ethics is knowing intuitively what is wrong and what is not and then living by that.
Lawyers read the guidelines and figure out how they can cheat without getting caught, nice people play by the rules even when they're unwritten.
edit: I completely fail to see what that link you added has to do with the price of tea in China.
edit2: I've posted an 'Ask HN' to get an idea about how others feel about this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1035206
Because I used an unorthodox tactic, the thread was derailed. So nobody's discussing anything about practical Customer Development.
The thread was derailed because you chose to cheat and got called out for it, but most likely it has worked wonders for you in the past.
Look, I have 0 clout on this site, but if this were my site you'd be booted out for this, it's as simple as that.
There are plenty of people that have been kicked off HN for just their tone of voice (unalone comes to mind, he may not be the most polished of characters but some of his stuff was quite interesting), the only saving grace as far as I can see is that you at least are honest about what you did.
What I'm really wondering about is how common this tactic really is. If you think it is ok and you ask your friend to vote your stuff up, it stands to reason that you'd do the same for them, it is proof positve that there is a back-channel that is being used to muster voting and/or flag power beyond what 'ordinary' users have.
That's a really really bad development in my eyes.
Or would you like to state that you are not aware of anything like this happening in the past because of you asking your friends to vote stuff up or flag it and / or you voting stuff up for your friends and / or flagging stuff at their request?
Is a shortened regurgitation of a steve blank book sleeve really worth being on the front page? If so, why not just a link to his blog or the book on amazon?
I know why you wrote the post; to market your website, but HN front page-worthy? I should hope not.
My intent is not to scrutinize and demean your efforts. I think we both know why you wrote the post, to market your app. I have no issue with that, so long as you are honest with yourself. I understand people repackage content all the time, it's business as usual. But this is HN, you are asking for a discussion on the merits of what _you_ have to say. And in that respect, you've said nothing.
#1, Market Assessment, is the hard problem.
That's quite hard to believe. Especially when your solution to this problem is essentially 3 links. A survey, a splash page, and your twitter app. (2 of which are free).
So how is implementing these 3 things harder than:
2. Product Building
3. Get product into hands of early customers
I think #3 is probably the hardest for most of us here on HN. Do you mean to tell me its easy to get lots of early adopters to actually give a damn about your product to fill out your survey in the first place? Please write a post on how to get 50 dedicated users to fill out my survey and I'll be the first one to upvote that story - I promise. Oh and if it works, I'll sign up for your app too - dead serious.
And who the fuck are you?