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

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

#61

Post by arcturus17 »

edp wrote: post #40

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.

I was thinking of signing up to Instagram to create a golf and fitness diary and connect with a few people I really care about. There goes that - fuck that noise!

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

#62

Post by bee_rider »

klyrs wrote: post #38
acedTrex wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 positi…

This seems like so obvious an observation that I don’t get why advertisers haven’t made it. If I’m in work-mode, and you show me an ad related to a hobby of mine, I have a 0% chance of clicking it. If you show me an ad related to my work, it is probably more like .01%. Which is still an infinite-times improvement.

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

#64

Post by kokanee »

User and business priorities are aligned during the growth phase, when user acquisition is the most important thing for the business. Once there is a self-sustaining level of user activity and new signups, revenue per engagement becomes an increasingly important metric. At that point the user's priorities and those of the business are no longer aligned, and the company starts asking more of its users.

A third phase occurs when phase two is successful enough that competitors lose traction. If you can achieve a monopolistic position in your market, then you can stop asking for attention and money, and start demanding it. Pay up or else you don't get to stream music. Sit through more and longer ads with increasingly insipid UX and privacy issues, or else you don't get to stream videos.

My view is that the Internet is in a consolidation phase where a smaller number of companies are getting a larger share of traffic, resulting in monopolistic dynamics.

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

#65

Post by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #56

The reason is simple: These companies are ad-supported. When you create an account and log in, the ads they show can be better tailored to your interests. This is especially true for companies like Pinterest, where users catalog their interests on the site. I think this is surprising to people for two reasons: 1 - We've been told the "companies sell your data" narrative for so long that many people don't realize that…

Facebook did more than just hoard user data; They performed research to actively change user behaviour.

It is said that if you don't pay, you aren't the customer, but the product. Perhaps YOU never were the product either, but your mind and actions are?

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/facebook-ma...

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

#66

Post by mynameisvlad »

bee_rider wrote: post #58
edp wrote: post #40

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.

Sounds like an interesting stable diffusion prompt.

Text is still a big challenge, I don't think I've seen any that have properly rendered the text you want. I wonder if handwritten text would be easier or harder since there's more variation.

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

#67

Post by nonameiguess »

wincy wrote: post #8
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.

Good news, one of Elon’s top priorities is to remove this nagging stuff and make Twitter fully usable via browser again.

That seems to not be true. I just made the mistake of not noticing a Hacker News post was to Twitter a few minutes ago, clicked on it, and couldn't even read the Tweet because it was covered by a modal telling me to turn on notifications, which I'd never seen before. What can Twitter even notify me of if I don't have an account? Everything that is ever Tweeted globally? That would probably be billions of notifications a day.

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

#68

Post by HDThoreaun »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #56

The reason is simple: These companies are ad-supported. When you create an account and log in, the ads they show can be better tailored to your interests. This is especially true for companies like Pinterest, where users catalog their interests on the site. I think this is surprising to people for two reasons: 1 - We've been told the "companies sell your data" narrative for so long that many people don't realize that…

> mega companies don't actually profit from selling your data

Does anyone on HN actually believe big tech companies are selling data as opposed to using it to target ads? I thought we were over that long ago.

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

#70

Post by twiceaday »

I think the global recession triggered enough companies to worsen their products (cost more, get less, more ads, etc) in order to increase / maintain profits that a tipping point was reached and other companies simply followed suit. A new norm is building; one that hopefully goes away when the money tide goes back in.
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