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Show HN: Product Substitutes – what software top companies are replacing

siftery.com

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Re: Show HN: Product Substitutes – what software top companies are replacing

#31

Post by krishmv »

thisisit wrote: post #23

One of my pet peeves on the new products launched on HN has been a missing "About" page. If people are asking for personally identifiable information like emails etc, they should be open about who they are and what their competencies are in storing this kind of data. Secondly, I don't see an explanation for what exactly the promoter score is? Lastly, the source of data. While I am sure that is the secret sauce here,…

there's an about us on the footer? the landing page seems to be missing one though.

Re: Show HN: Product Substitutes – what software top companies are replacing

#32

Post by ggiaco »

krishmv wrote: post #31
thisisit wrote: post #23

One of my pet peeves on the new products launched on HN has been a missing "About" page. If people are asking for personally identifiable information like emails etc, they should be open about who they are and what their competencies are in storing this kind of data. Secondly, I don't see an explanation for what exactly the promoter score is? Lastly, the source of data. While I am sure that is the secret sauce here,…

there's an about us on the footer? the landing page seems to be missing one though.

Yeah, we decided to de-clutter the LP (would you say we overdid it?), but the About Us link is on close to 1M pages throughout the site. Not hiding :) https://siftery.com/about-us

Re: Show HN: Product Substitutes – what software top companies are replacing

#33

Post by dawnerd »

ayanb wrote: post #29
mholt wrote: post #28

Siftery kind of annoyingly added my OSS project to it and started emailing me about it without me signing up for it... (months ago)

Inclusions usually come from the community - users tend to add products to their stack, a lot of them obviously being OSS. We have tried to reach out to creators/admins in the past to understand if they'd like to represent themselves in the right way in front of a large buyer group. Apologies Matt - we'd love it if you gave the platform a try, but will not include you in any future email-campaign, going forward.

How about not emailing like that from the start without an opt-in?

Re: Show HN: Product Substitutes – what software top companies are replacing

#35

Post by hobofan »

dawnerd wrote: post #33
ayanb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inclusions usually come from the community - users tend to add products to their stack, a lot of them obviously being OSS. We have tried to reach out to creators/admins in the past to understand if they'd like to represent themselves in the right way in front of a large buyer group. Apologies Matt - we'd love it if you gave the platform a try, but will not include you in any future email-campaign, going forward.

How about not emailing like that from the start without an opt-in?

Yup, it's not just a dick move, but is also illegal in some countries (e.g. Germany) and can get you sued.

Re: Show HN: Product Substitutes – what software top companies are replacing

#36

Post by thisisit »

teej wrote: post #25
thisisit wrote: post #23

One of my pet peeves on the new products launched on HN has been a missing "About" page. If people are asking for personally identifiable information like emails etc, they should be open about who they are and what their competencies are in storing this kind of data. Secondly, I don't see an explanation for what exactly the promoter score is? Lastly, the source of data. While I am sure that is the secret sauce here,…

Net promoter score is a extremely common and very valuable gauge of customer loyalty to a product. It sounds dumb when you look into it but sometimes the simplest thing works and this is one such case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter

Yes I found the wikipedia page later but it was confusing the first time around. The second data point on customers is intuitive though.

I just wish there was a "what is this?" explanation somewhere. Maybe a hover over text like the one showing - promoters vs detractors.

Re: Show HN: Product Substitutes – what software top companies are replacing

#37

Post by thisisit »

ggiaco wrote: post #32
krishmv wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's an about us on the footer? the landing page seems to be missing one though.

Yeah, we decided to de-clutter the LP (would you say we overdid it?), but the About Us link is on close to 1M pages throughout the site. Not hiding :) https://siftery.com/about-us

I am sorry but I never implied anything about hiding. But it was difficult for me to find the exact page.

Additionally, the point was on whether I could trust you guys with my work email id, which in my opinion is more sensitive than my personal id. I can create a throwaway personal id but not business email id.

Re: Show HN: Product Substitutes – what software top companies are replacing

#38

Post by yorwba »

hobofan wrote: post #35
dawnerd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about not emailing like that from the start without an opt-in?

Yup, it's not just a dick move, but is also illegal in some countries (e.g. Germany) and can get you sued.

IANAL, but I think cold emails are still legal in Germany, provided they're not just advertisements (e.g. "someone added you as maintainer of [super awesome project]" is probably OK) and you offer a clearly visible option to unsubscribe (i.e. it shouldn't require posting on a random internet forum to get the attention of a company representative).

In essence, the law prohibits business practices that are an "unacceptable nuisance". While advertising via email spam is clearly called out as such, not all cases are so clear cut and will depend on the judge's opinion of acceptable behavior.

http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/uwg_2004/__7.html

EDIT:

English translation of the law: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_uwg/englisch_uwg....

Re: Show HN: Product Substitutes – what software top companies are replacing

#39

Post by misnome »

EliRivers wrote: post #8

Microsoft Word’s primary category is PDF Readers and Editors I did not expect MS Word to be listed as a PDF Reader (and editor). Does this mean that (according to your data) when a company switches away from MS Word, it's because they just wanted a PDF Reader? Perhaps that implies that those who don't switch away from it simply find that there is no substitute software for their principal use case.

I can believe this to a certain extent; certainly the only reason most at our labs use Word on a week-to-week basis is to download and print forms distributed by the HR department, which should just be PDF.

Where this data would come from/how this categorisation would be made, I have no idea.

Re: Show HN: Product Substitutes – what software top companies are replacing

#40

Post by ggiaco »

thisisit wrote: post #37
ggiaco wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we decided to de-clutter the LP (would you say we overdid it?), but the About Us link is on close to 1M pages throughout the site. Not hiding :) https://siftery.com/about-us

I am sorry but I never implied anything about hiding. But it was difficult for me to find the exact page. Additionally, the point was on whether I could trust you guys with my work email id, which in my opinion is more sensitive than my personal id. I can create a throwaway personal id but not business email id.

Point well taken.

Our approach is to minimize the need to sign up at all - a lot of Siftery, including all of these alternatives/substitues pages, is fully accessible without logging in.

We only suggest that you sign up (with a non-personal email), where we think we can meaningfully improve the experience by personalizing the experience to your company, and this also allows you to contribute verified data.

We stopped supporting personal email signups because there's not very much we can do to improve the experience in that case, so why bother? We can spare you a meaningless drip campaign.

You can see this philosophy at work clearly in our Product Recommenations AI (https://siftery.com/personalized-recommendations) where you can choose your own adventure by signing up or not.

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