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Comment by jgrahamc | Hacker News Reader

It’s unfortunate that you were picked on as a child. It must have been difficult to you. But you’re an adult now. If you want to debate, please do so with facts, not just blind fury.

That last line of reply was worth reading the whole article for.

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Before this, I knew nothing about Comscore. That one line has really turned me off. If they want to win people over, insults are not the way to do it.

Yeah, never understand why companies go this way, when responding to social media. I assume it's an act of impulse by one of their employees, I would be amazed if it was actually discussed and cleared by their PR department. But it sure doesn't look professional at all, and I do expect professionalism from a company like Comscore.

Isn't that the whole point of social media? Be authentic and don't sound like a PR?

I, for one, give them a hell of a lot of credit for pushing back at Jason in this way. He's the one who brought up the subject, and it's fun to see people stand up for themselves. It's part of why Jason is such an entertaining writer himself. He's a big boy; he can take it.

I can understand that certain companies use social media to be more authentic and to not sound like a PR. But comScore targets enterprise clients. They should play the enterprise game, not the social media game (although the two aren't mutually exclusive, I expect them to sound professional at all times).

Correct, I'm a big boy and I can handle it. :-) No one should ever feel bad for me... I got a free roll on life. I'm playing with the houses money and my life is 1,000x better than I ever thought it would be.

Seriously, I've been fighting with these guys for a decade trying to get them to address the fact that their data is wrong and HIGHLY DAMAGING for startups looking to get ad revenue.

They ignored me for a decade, and this email was the FIRST time I've really been able to get them to address the issue.

I try to take these inside conversations and put them in the sunlight and part of that is writing with a certain, well, flair (at least 20 pieces of flair in fact).

You can be sure I'm laughing and smiling when I write these things, and more so when folks like Comscore or Kiretsu Forum take the bait.

Now that Comscore has engaged the debate other folks can move it forward. I think Comscore will do the right thing here and move to a freemium model like:

1. Free for companies with under 50M impressions 2. $1,000 a year for companies with 50m-250m impressions 3. $5,000 a year for companies over 250M impressions

If they did this they would build a funnel of clients and a ton of good will. Compare that plan to their current plan:

1. Pay us $5,000 for accurate stats or... 2. Don't pay us and we will use our old and admittedly inaccurate system for counting your stats--thus damaging your company and ability to get advertising.

best j

The problem with your freemium model is that there's no real incentive to jump up once you're over 50MM impressions. At over 50MM impressions, you have your own in-house ad sales force (or you should) and they can open the kimono to media buyers. I think they're kind of screwed in that they have to charge everyone and I can see the logic that a min/max model would spit out $5,000 as the magic number. Plus, the only people who care about impressions are people selling on a CPM (or similar) basis. Someone like, say, Dropbox or 37signals or even Consumer Reports doesn't care.

(Lastly, you've been around here long enough to know not to sign your comments/posts. If you're going to add extra stuff to the bottom, add some of that sweet, sweet LA sunshine.)

Everyone had some valid points and we're all a lot better for the discussion. But don't become another Mark Cuban. :)

Note that Calacanis was the one who started about the boy/kid incident, if you haven't read it.

The last line was petty. No need to sully a well-written response like that... offering to answer any further questions instead would leave me much more impressed.

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