AdGrok is joining Twitter | Hacker News Reader

AdGrok is joining Twitter

adgrok.com

74 pointsmceachen19 comments

What about your loyal users? Are they supposed to fend for themselves now? These types of exits create bad precedents for other startups and will make customers wary of using services from the newer companies.

How about open sourcing some of your code if possible?

Most startups have something like this in their TOS, it's just part of the risk using their product:

ALL MATERIALS AND SERVICES ON THIS SITE ARE PROVIDED ON AN “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” BASIS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND...

http://adgrok.com/terms-of-service/

I posted something similar about Whrrl when they were purchased by Groupon and basically said "see ya" to users.

I too find this trend a little unsettling.

Though they surely have some loyal users maybe there's not as much of a market for a front-end to Adwords to make sense continuing the product?

This really was kind of shitty of them. On the one hand, I understand the excitement of being acquired by Twitter. One the other, that was really shitty and, to be honest, seems very unprofessional to me. People should be in it to produce long-term services and get paid by customers, not by providing a service for a little bit, getting people dependent on it, and then yanking it out when it's profitable to do so.

So, if adgrok were to, for example, not provide nearly as equitable terms as competitors, would you stay out of loyalty or bolt for the better deal?

Just to let you off the hook, neither answer would really justify your harsh (almost personal) criticism of what seems to be a pretty straightforward business acquisition.

So far, Twitter has been invading third-party developers who have built extensions of their system. From apps that hold users (TweetDeck) to those that facilitate extended service (URL shortening, image hosting), to date, Twitter has been carefully identifying what their users consider valuable and bringing those features, functions and complete applications under Twitter's privately owned umbrella.

AdGrok is a departure from this logic. Why did Twitter buy AdGrok (other then the stellar team)?

Google monetized their core product not by bowing to paid placement but rather in building a robust ad network to compliment it. Is this what Twitter is doing?

"AdGrok is a departure from this logic. Why did Twitter buy AdGrok (other then the stellar team)?"

Probably for the stellar team.

As they did with DabbleDB and Values of N (I Want Sandy). Both cool products, neither had overwhelming traction, both shut down when the deal closed.

I'm not sure if "invading" is the right way to look at this

I'm not sure that this is entirely true for Google. Recall that Google bought DoubleClick and that much of their current advertising empire is built on that foundation. I think Twitter is aiming to do something similar here.

It's time for someone to start a new company replicating what AdGrok did!!

Working on it...

can you elaborate?

Truthfully, I felt a bit spammy on the last past, but you can email me at the address in my profile.

I'm not actually interested in it personally, I just felt like it'd be in your interest to elaborate on your plans and include a sign up page, as I imagine there is quite a few AdGrok users here that'll be looking for an alternative.

Congrats to Adgrock, but selfishly unhappy about this. I was really looking forward to trying Adgrok in a few weeks when I launch my next site.

Any suggestions for alternatives?

Based on their site, it looks like Adgrok was an alternate front end to Adwords. If you want to learn PPC/Adwords, the best tool to use is Adwords. Adwords is complex and it is not something you can figure out how to use correctly in an afternoon. Dedicated a few days to learn the terminology and the intricacies of the system.

congrats!

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