It’s Amazing What Your Users Will Do If You Ask | Hacker News Reader

It’s Amazing What Your Users Will Do If You Ask

blog.earbits.com

65 pointsearbitscom12 comments

> "Last month, we were feeling like a little validation for our efforts. But mostly we wanted to replace the fake testimonial on our About Us page with a real one (which we haven’t done yet). So, we asked our users to write our editorial team a love letter"

Wait, what? In what world is fabricating testimonials okay?

Here, take a look at the "testimonial" in question[0]:

"When I first saw Earbits, I couldn't believe my eyes. Worlds collided, rivers flowed upstream, birds sang in languages that could only be described as the purest form of unconditional love. Since that day, no other radio will do. I have lost my wife and children, but I don't care. All I care about is Earbits."

Anonymous

Yeah.

[0]: http://www.earbits.com/play/#/about_us

Haha. Clearly you didn't read it.

Its so common that people think it is okay.

Earbits seems really neat. I like the music it played and was excited to start using it. Once I realized that I needed a facebook account and that it would share what I listened to with my facebook friends it wasn't worth it to me. I really don't like the trend of requiring facebook to login to a website.

Facebook required their music partners to eliminate their non-Facebook authentication systems for new users to be promoted in the Facebook ecosystem. It's not really up to the services themselves. Spotify had to do the same thing.

I work for Rhapsody and helped implement Facebook Music as an initial partner. We don't use Facebook login and have no plans to do so.

But you don't need an account. Most of the features that require one are FB oriented anyway.

Damn - something's wrong with Google Translate. Usually it pops up at the top of foreign language websites.

"Oh stewardess - I speak Jive!" "Oh good."

It's interesting how Earbits is leaning towards being a people aware music startup. Music industry has mostly been power centered (whoever has the record deal) looks like it's shifting in terms of business and bucks.

Question: What was the conversion rate—how many users were asked to leave a review vs many actually did it?

I wonder if you could compare the quality of different cohorts of users based on how willing they are to go say nice things about you once prompted.

We don't know an actual conversion rate because the email blast was sent to our entire user base, and many will not be Chrome users, etc. I suspect, though, that we'd have to have many times the user base we have now to do a true cohort test of it. Even then, something like this is very qualitative, right? What if more people wrote love letters or reviews from one group, but the other group spent significantly more time writing much more enthusiastic material?

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