Please tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles on OkCupid and spamming our users. Behaving like that doesn't inspire much confidence in your service.
would be my pick
Growth snacking? Snacking on some code?
Another solid YC investment at work.
So, I'd hold off on insulting YC based on some publicity we've received. And .. all press is good press for growth for an early stage startup.
I don't see how your company could describe itself and feminist while also making a campaign that relies on some of the structural sexism of the Valley and tech. How did that campaign challenge the existing power structures and stereotypes/mythology of tech?
That wasn't her goal with the campaign.
And by any measure, it was outrageously successful.
> If they identify with the feminist cause and support it, they don't need to prove it to you or justify how their campaign is or isn't feminist.
We've seen that many times organizations that claim feminism or feminist principles often don't act in a way that is supporting of women, so being critical is fully warranted when an organization says one thing but does something that seems to do nothing but perpetuate existing stereotypes and problems. Moreover, they made the claim, not me, so asking "why is what you are doing feminist" is important.
Is it a mythology if it is based on hard facts? I.e. this sounds a bit like saying that heat engine works on mythology of lower energy levels in a heat sink. Also note that just like heat engine equalizes energy levels between source and sink, such campaing seeks to equalize gender inbalance. Which I guess is as feminist as you can get.
I think it is actually beneficial for a person or an organization working toward women's right to disassociate themselves from the feminism movements and related labels lest they actually do end up spending all their time constantly justifying themselves.
My point is, that a) that campaign didn't foster a myth, it used a real, existing potential gradient and b) it is very much pro-feminist as long as they're letting things equalize and not actively trying to maintain that gender gradient.
ETA: of course I can compare a physical phenomenon to a social one, mathematical models don't differentiate between those. Still, I chose that example only to highlight that calling facts a "mythology" is weird.
By accepting those women as adults who are free and intelligent enough to make decisions that may not necessarily line up with the common branch of feminism popularized by the media.
Given that 'feminist' and 'feminism' are used by many people to mean many different things, it would be nice to specify what being a feminist company means.
Is it just a company run by people who self-identify as feminists, maybe one that only hires other people who self-identify as feminists? If so, how do you enforce this? Or is the company's feminism defined by specific policies that are based in a specific meaning of 'feminism', and if so, what are they?
Being against the harassment of women is pretty fundamentally feminist.
Clearly, goals can belong in several umbrella categories at the same time. Most people would agree that "not harassing women" falls under "not being a bad person." But, at the same time, it is also a major goal of most feminists.
> Given that 'feminist' and 'feminism' are used by many people to mean many different things, it would be nice to specify what being a feminist company means.
Which feminist values?
I actually think this is an interesting example of YC's investments, but not for the reason you seem to suggest.
YC's public persona is all about "hyper-growth" and building "very large" companies[1]. But if you go through the list of companies it has funded, a good number would have a very difficult time making a prima facie case that they fit the profile of a business that can achieve significant growth and scale. Dating Ring is the perfect example of that.
There are numerous challenges associated with breaking into the online dating space generally. First, the costs of customer acquisition are typically quite high because there's so much competition. That makes it very difficult for new services to gain traction without significant investment in advertising. Second, there's an additional level of churn built in to this market because when a dating service works, it loses customers. That produces a constant need for investment in the aforementioned user acquisition which is so costly.
More specifically, Dating Ring seems to be positioned in no man's land (no pun intended). It can't compete with the quantity and immediate gratification of online services that cost nothing or roughly the same, and it can't compete with the quality and exclusivity of matchmaking services which generally have costs signaling much higher value.
If the OP's comment is true, Dating Ring would ironically appear to be offering the worst of both worlds by trying to package users from the former as part of a service masquerading as the latter. Even with adjustments to its model, the odds that this company ever achieves "hyper-growth" or becomes a very large business are next to nil.
(Then tagged and HI5 took the user base's email addresses and turned them into mailing lists for their spam email side companies...)
YC companies that think they're being clever and are more likely to employ these techniques successfully "Because AirBnB" shouldn't be disappointed when they fail.
Exactly. But every such campaign contributes to the erosion of trust on the Internet and generally makes the world suck more.
This is unsolicited spam. And likely against OkCupid's terms of use.
That's BS and you know it. If that were the case, OP's startup should've bought ads on OKC and OKC would be glad to sell ad space. I really doubt that OKC or its parent company will sell ads to a competitor dating site.
1. OKC is a listing of profiles where the lister is expected to manage the transaction 2. The management of the transaction is a huge friction and pain point for a significant number of people (as is writing a profile, taking pics, etc...for which there are also people that help). 3. this service reduces/removes that friction/pain point for okc. 4. this service is NOT a listing of profiles (as far as I can tell) 5. this service does NOT discourage people from signing up for OKC, Match, POF, etc...in my view it encourages participation in those services (whether implicitly or explicitly).
If I'm missing the mark on any of the above, feel free to correct me.
As far as I understand it from the copy on Dating Ring's web page, their service is meant to replace all those dating sites. It's a fire-and-forget product that frees you from the need of maintaining an on-line profile and visiting a dating site - discouraging people from singing up for OKC is exactly what it is meant to do.
The thing is, marketing is mostly zero-sum game; people are stuck in a negative feedback loop of throwing more and more money to one-up their competitors at attracting customers from the same limited pool. It's an unlimited resource sink, but it's a) what you have to do lest you get outcompeted by others, and b) profitable for those who facilitate advertising.
Weixiyen is also right that this "growth hack" is effective, but remember that "growth hacking" is mostly a fancy term for spamming / abusing trust. Every new way to trick people into buying something will work for a while, until everyone else starts doing the same and the ROI drops to zero.
Once upon a time, a pop-up banner was the clever growth hacking trick. As HN's idlewords tells the story,
"One of the first banner ads had a click-through rate of 78%. That's mind-boggling. Do you know what two words were on that banner ad?
"Shop Naked!" CLICK!
But banner ads turned out to be like poison ivy. People clicked them once, and learned never to touch them again. The industry collapsed in a flurry of pop-overs, pop-unders, and shame."
I guess the better way to put it is that if your startup has to resort to paid advertising as the main user acquisition funnel, you probably already lost unless you have ridiculous conversion and LTV on each user.
If it was just generic "come sign up for our new dating service!" messages, I'd agree with you, but that's not what they were doing.
If it were to become more common (not sure how common it is actually...probably very), that could result in an overall poor experience for OKCupid users who would associate using the service with receiving spam that never netted out to anything.
There is nothing wrong with OKCupid drawing the line on another service trying to get "free" marketing on its dime and at the expense of its user experience.
That said, if it never amounted to anything -- as in, I got Dating Ring spam promising dates that never materialized, I would be pretty pissed.
However my point was that it is not exclusively Dating Ring doing this. It is important to consider the overall signal to noise ratio when you factor in the messages from Dating Ring and any other company out there trying to use OKCupid's platform to promote themselves.
OkCupid, barring the creation of a program/partnership specific to this case, has decided that overall, it is worth filtering out. If they thought it added value based on the data they had, they would try to partner with Dating Ring. Heck, it would likely have been fine if Dating Ring purchased ad inventory on their site. As it stands, it seems they view this approach as spam per the OP. If it is against their terms, Dating Ring doesn't have much leg to stand on as that would make it a pretty black and white situation.
Part of me wonders if a Cease & Desist is en route to Dating Ring's office.
Such situations are exactly the kind where Kant's categorical imperative applies. If something is clearly wrong when everyone does it, it should not be OK for a particular company to do.
Just off the top of my head. And then consider that, by the context, they probably meant anyone who hasn't had a new message in a while. Yeah.
TL;DR: Lots of good reasons.
Yeah, from a prospective date, not a matchmaker.
A similar situation: posting a job ad and having a recruiter reply to it trying to sell you their services, rather than a prospective employee. If you've ever been in that situation you'd know that it isn't a comparable response, and is just irritating spam that results in an instant delete.
The downvote button is to the left....fire away.
That's exactly what a recruiter does, though.
There are plenty of international recruiting firms that just spam short to mid length contract jobs in places nobody wants to move to at hourly rates nobody would take. Those are the ones you want to ignore.
I hope you realize that this is almost word-for-word what any telemarketer or spammer will say about what they do. They're just trying to help you!
I've never used it, but I'm guessing that people don't sign up for OkCupid because they want messages from Premium Matchmakers. You're spamming them. It doesn't matter how much you think you're helping.
For example, if you contact someone with a message along the lines of, "Hi, we're _____, and we've got someone who's perfect for you. Just sign up for our service at _______ to get started!" that's definitely spam. No question about it.
On the other hand, if the message is more like, "Hi, we're _____. We think one our clients, ________ would be a great match for you. You both enjoy _______, and in particular, he(she) like that you mentioned _________. Here's a link to his(her) profile. You can contact him(her) at _______." that doesn't look like spam to me at all. Effectively you're just acting as a proxy in that situation. The OKC user is indeed getting exactly what they're looking for.
So I guess my point is, it all depends on the message. If you make them sign up for your service, spam. If your message is generic, spam. But if you give them information about a real person, and a way to contact them - ie exactly what they would expect to get in a message directly from another user - that seems fine from the user's perspective.
Of course, OKC would likely still not appreciate your use of their service to facilitate competition. In that case, a better model might be to strictly act as the agent of your user; search OKC for them, and if you find a good match, help them create an account and message the user directly. Obviously this might require tweaking your model a bit.
We do our best to not spam and inspire trust by being available 24/7 to answer questions and personally interact with users. At the same time, we're constantly trying to grow so that we can provide the best matches. It's hard! Cut us some slack? No? Because it's HackerNews? Yea, I guess that's okay then.
Unless they're on OKC to look for dates, they have no business being there. The only messages that they could legitimately send on OKC would be to ask someone on a date.
Is this substantially different?
This isn't true. Some look for companionship on OKC. Why they use OKC for it, I have no idea but 100% of the user base isn't strictly for dates/hooking up.
The right way to go about helping out their clients without potentially spamming OKC users would be to message their client on their own site that they have found someone for them on OkCupid. They could then ask their client to sign up to OkCupid to view the account and message the user.
This is bait and switch and also poaching, same as if a realtor goes to another realtor's web site to find prospects and start soliciting them, plus using false pretenses in your case.
"So I went through the effort of making a profile and messaging them and they never replied. Now what?"
*No scientific evidence behind this statement, but this is the internet, so it's true.
You are such a martyr! Your parents must be proud.
> Tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles on OkCupid and spamming our users.
Seems to be what the poster really means.
>Please tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles on OkCupid and spamming our users.
That means the poster is begging the person stop? Does that really make sense? It sounds like someone is directly telling someone something, but is adding "Please" to get themselves off the hook for being seen as directly telling someone something.
As a native English speaker, I cannot remember anyone, except maybe an old person at dinner saying "Please pass the salt", say the world "Please" at the start of a phrase where it wasn't an aggressively postured order. Like this obviously was.
Serious question: Could you tell me what I'm missing with that?
"Please" is not a pleading word, it's a polite word. If you're going to give life advice, make sure it's right.
It would be more accurate to say that I don't have to, and that I sometimes don't. I'd be more likely to say "Can you pass me the salt?" or "pass the salt, will you?", which strikes me as a middle ground between "Please can you pass me the salt" and "Pass me the salt."
I sometimes find the English language to be quirky or frustrating, and I have some sympathy with efforts to change it for the better. I think in this instance you are tilting at windmills, and not offering sensible or sincere "life advice".
So in fact it doesn't make sense in some circumstances (though those circumstances are narrower and fewer than fubu seems to think).
For instance, "please" is clearly out of place in "please put the gun down on the pavement, or I will shoot!".
The civility-conveying meaning of the word is out of place in abrasive speech; for instance it is out of place in "please get off the f___ing road!" In abrasive language, if "please" appears, its presence is ironic. For instance, in a sentence like "please don't start with that bullshit again!", "please" doesn't have any connection to being civil; it doesn't function that way. Other such politeness words are also ironic in abrasive speech. "Kindly keep your mutt off my lawn!"
(There is even the usage of the word "please" by itself, or nearly so: "Oh, please!" or its variant "Puh-lease!" which expresses disagreement or disapproval.)
It conveys friendliness, the concept of "we're all friends here and we don't want anyone to get hurt, so let us sort this out without a mess"[0]. On the other hand one could argue that abrasive speech is very effective at bypasing various psychological bareers and delivering message straight to the target - after all, that's the reason for so much shouting and insults in the military. So there's a trade-off.
[0] - I guess I might have been watching too much Star Trek in my childhood, which gave me a deeply ingraned attitude that we can all see the bigger picture if we try hard enough.
It's not civil to say "Please stop spamming." That's like saying "Please stop beating your wife." It contains an accusation, which is never a civil thing to say. There is no civil way to bring up how your conversational partner is beating their wife or spamming OkCupid.
Adding a "Please" is pretending to be civil.
There are just some conversations that cannot be had "civilly". If you think this is stupid ....I can't really help you. Try to go have a civil conversation about someone's weight gain with them.
I think here lies our disagreement. I do believe that you can talk about anything in a civil manner. Being polite is completely orthogonal to the topic discussed. In this case, "please stop spamming" is just a more polite way of saying "stop spamming", period. The difference is in tone, not context, and this is how the word "please" is supposed to be used. Also, what goodside said was not "please stop spamming", but "please tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles (...) and spamming our users". Which is a request, not an order.
Accusations have nothing to do with civility. Telling me "please stop beating your wife" when I'm beating my wife is valid, just like saying "please stop spamming" is valid here because they're spamming. If you believe goodside is dishonest about Dating Ring's employees spamming OKCupid, address that.