Hacker News Reader

Comment by Derferman | Hacker News Reader

So to get buzz I have to post hidden links, tweet sensational headlines, and lie to popular blogs?

Count me out.

Like I mentioned, this was really nothing more than an experiment. I certainly would not have done that if I was trying to generate buzz for a legitimate company. These were the efforts of a broke college student who thought it interesting to see if he could ride the swine flu hysteria. And to a certain extent, I was able to ride it. It was a great learning experience.

I have to reiterate the grandparent poster's point... The tactics you used might be great to generate buzz in one week, but they would suck to generate buzz over 6 months, because once everyone finds you're basically abusing forums for your SEO, lying to journalists, and spamming twitter, they won't want to deal with you on principle.

So this works for a throw-away company that you don't care about. That said, I'm doubtful of the wisdom of linking your name to it publicly like this. You only have one reputation...

It depends greatly on what your motives are. If you want to sleep well at night you're absolutely right. If you want to start a successful business it's not so clear cut.

I know that this is a sensitive point, particularly on HN where people tend to judge companies by the merits of their pproducts and not on their ability to market them, but cheating gets results. It's of course a fine line, but if you don't get caught and attract new customers then it's good for business.

Sad as it may be, if you want to make serious money you often have to do things you wouldn't normally do, including black-hat SEO, promising more than you can deliver and squeezing your competitor by spreading FUD and rumors.

I'm not saying that this is the only way to do business, and there are many examples of companies with an impeccable moral record that are doing well. But the bottom line is that shady tactics work if you don't get caught. And more often than not you don't.

Please, just say the dollar figure already.

If it's in the hundreds, you don't have to be too embarrassed.

Demanding a dollar amount and judging marketing campaign's effectiveness at this early stage in the game is pointless. If (s)he made, say, $250 up until this point, that could potentially grow to $2,500 in 2 weeks or $25,000 in in 2 months, all as a result of the same campaign.

The SEO from the influx of new links is just kicking in, the public awareness of the products needs to sink in, customer base is still unstable, etc.

Success or failure at this point is just... unknown.

I'm afraid you'll have to wait for the Forbes article.

...Which may involve "embellished" numbers right?

That's a bit cynical. The only reason he'd do such a thing would be to increase buzz.

Isn't this what social hacks are about? To use the dynamics/mechanisms of the system to your own advantage.

Many people have a gleeful need to be mischievous; but they also feel bad about it, and so they immediately reveal their mischief, well, gleefully.

Note that this hackernews post - and your reply - increases the publicity. But on what basis could anyone possibly object to his tactics anyway?

http://flushirts.spreadshirt.com http://flushirts.spreadshirt.com http://flushirts.spreadshirt.com http://flushirts.spreadshirt.com http://flushirts.spreadshirt.com http://flushirts.spreadshirt.com http://flushirts.spreadshirt.com http://flushirts.spreadshirt.com http://flushirts.spreadshirt.com http://flushirts.spreadshirt.com (I'm not him, just making a point)

  But on what basis could anyone possibly object to 
  his tactics anyway?

Because those tactics selfishly add to the massive pile of bullshit we have to deal with every day.

[edit: not very constructive of me, true. But really, I think that's a pretty good objection.]

This is my just deserts: yesterday I took someone to task for not being clear because they were being ironic (or possibly not); and today I am being ironic, and my meaning was not understood.

From my point of view, I can't see how you (and 6 net upvoters) could possibly have misunderstood me when I follow it by spamming the forum and add "just making a point".... and that's the essential communication problem of irony. Lesson learnt. HackerNews, I salute you for requiring my principled integrity.

That's a 'lol', I never suspected.

Maybe it's more indicative of the types of statements we've come to expect here, at least I've read a few things here over the past week or so that have left me puzzled about the community, so your dry statement seemed a bit more like par for the course.

It was meant to be horror, not humour, in the spirit of Swift's "A Modest Proposal" to eat Irish babies. Actually, many people took him at face value too, so maybe I'm not doing so bad.

Yes, I feel that HN has seemed a bit more like reddit over the past week or so.

Thank goodness HN links are embedded with the 'nofollow' tag.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com