Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 131 posts

Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?

#31

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

It does feel like every website is turning into a bad 90's infomercial - instead of "buy now and get 2 for $39.95!" its "like and subscribe!" multiple times per video, even more fluff in the video to lengthen them or ad reads by podcasters that don't care what they are advertising because just 1% is all they need to click/follow the link.

Everything on the internet is a metric (likes, subscribers, mins viewed, followers, etc.) and pushing those metrics higher gets more money from advertisers. I'm finding less and less quality content across the board. That and the pushy-ness could result in less of those metrics they all want to increase.

Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?

#32

Post by everdrive »

This is merely my assumption, but I would guess that it's simply much easier to monetize users who have clearly identified who they are. (ie, they have provided an account name with email, name, phone number, etc.) If that's the case, then users without accounts are "free riders" who are getting the benefit of the service without "paying" since they're not as easy to track and sell their data.

Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?

#35

Post by ne0flex »

I noticed this too. After a decade break or so, I've started getting back into music mixing as a hobby. I noticed a lot of sites to I used to frequent in order download free sound samples now require an account in order to download. There are a few no-signup needed sites but compared nothing compared to what it was in the late 2000s.

Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?

#36

Post by avereveard »

AlexandrB wrote: post #15
themanmaran wrote: post #2

Things I've noticed: 1. Obtrusive messaging / sign up modals / exit intent modals work. I hate them. But they convert. 2. There is a large group of people who don't blink at the 'account required' messages. They just sign up. 3. If you don't have an account, you're not a useful customer. There is no reason for the company to cater to you.

What honestly bothers me more is how "Yes/No" dialogs are increasingly being replaced by "Yes/Later", even in paid products/services. Seems like companies are done with even pretending to take "No" for an answer when they want to push something on you.

Even game mods now come with intrusive "subscribe to my patron" popups there's no rock unturned for monetization

Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?

#37

Post by ergonaught »

Consequence of everyone thinking the purpose of anything at all is to make money (which is almost never the point of anything). Everything is always an advertisement, everyone is always selling. There’s no positive end game to it, it’s just drain circling. The EU and such will horribly mangle “solutions” because they don’t understand anything, and “governments” move too slowly even when they do understand things.

Lest you think that’s cynical, note that all the companies focused on what is likely to be our “next generation computing experience” are all advertising giants.

Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?

#38

Post by klyrs »

acedTrex wrote: post #7
niklasd wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last point always confuses me. Twitter can show ads to me without me having an account. Instead, they block me from reading on Twitter after a few tweets, thus loosing my eyeballs. Maybe that's compensated by signups, but it certainly didn't work for me.

Twitter makes more money showing TARGETED ads, ads that dont have a demo targeting are not nearly as valuable

Old school webmasters (perhaps this is redundant phrasing) know that's okay. Back in the day, you'd say "I'll put your animated gif on my site for $500 per month" and if you had a networking forum Cisco or whoever would happily pay that secure in the knowledge that your viewers were in the market for their product.

Lesson: target the content, not the viewer. You know the general demographics of who is engaging positively with the tweet, and you show ads relevant to that group. A small fraction of the viewers need to be logged in for that to work.

Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?

#39

Post by svnt »

EFreethought wrote: post #9
amflare wrote: post #6

IMO its because the demand for ever growing growth (not only must we grow on last year (growth up 5%), but our growth must be faster (growth trajectory up 5%)) is running headlong into a shrinking economy. Anonymous users have always represented the best potential growth since they already use the service, so convincing them to convert should be easier than convincing someone who has never heard of the product. Ergo,…

Second derivative capitalism will be the end of us all.

NPV of future monopolies is going to take a permanent hit by 2030, hopefully will be regulated.

Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?

#40

Post by edp »

On Instagram, when you create an account, you now need to submit a selfie picture while holding a code given to you while registering. For suspicious account, it can even be a video selfie. I know bots are an issue but they should ask for this only when posting/commenting, not for browsing. No way I'll send a picture or video to facebook linked to my email/phone number.
Post reply on HN