Unethical? possibly. Does it piss me off? Sometimes. Do I care? No.
I generally expect to receive spam from CL when posting or responding to ads.
How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company
111–120 of 197 posts
Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company
#112Seems to be happening for over a year so far.
> It never fails that I get at least 20 marketing emails a day from airbnb when I post a property on craigslist. I hope they do more of these PR stunts than filling up my inbox with unsolicited messages.
Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company
#113Is this 'grey' ? In the sense that it can be interpreted as 'shady' ? Hell yes. But is it "wrong" ? I don't think so. I always thought that getting that first set of customers that will take you to product/market fit was going to be easy. What with the Twitterverse, Facebook and all and sundry. But let me tell you, from experience, it is DAMN HARD! I guess the true test of whether or not this is 'unethical' is whethe…
"Is this 'grey' ? In the sense that it can be interpreted as 'shady' ? Hell yes. But is it "wrong" ? I don't think so." I post a listing on Craigslist specifically saying it's not "ok for others to contact me about other services, products or commercial interests" (an option in Craigslist) and then a business tries to convince me to use their site using a disguise DESPITE clearly stating that I don't want to be conta…
But wouldn't you say that's a bit unreasonable given that if you listed your apartment/house for rental on Craigslist - it can be safe to assume that you are interested in renting your house/apartment, no ?
I think every 'savvy' user always checks those boxes, but if there is an option that allows you to actually fulfill your original intent - i.e. you got no hits on Craigslist, but with AirBnB you have tons of requests and make a ton of money, wasn't that a win/win - even though they used a 'grey' tactic to reach you.
You say you don't want to be contacted, but that's to protect you from emails from the Nigerian prince and the blatantly obvious annoying spam. But things that are targeted at you, and can add value - I think it would be safe to say it makes sense in those cases.
Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company
#114I hadnt heard about anything like this from the airbnb folks, but I do know they have had successful advertising campaigns since over a year ago. So the basic premise of this article, that their growth source is a big mystery, is false.
Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company
#115i think people would have a much different view if this wasn't airbnb and was a less reputable company. The things described in the post definitely constitute as spam and violate CAN-SPAM...but these types of tactics do work (if they didn't we wouldn't have spammers) and there wasn't anything malicious about it.
AirBnB is less reputable, and this incident is why.
Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company
#116I love this. Being scrappy is one of the best qualities among entrepreneurs. The attitude of "do anything" to succeed usually results in success not to mention it is one of the characteristics that PG looks for in founders.
I agree - maybe I'm just drinking the YC gatorade here, but to me it shows scrappiness and dedication and does not seem especially immoral. Who did it hurt? For the people who were annoyed by the spam, it took 30 seconds out of their life to read and delete the email. For the ones who went ahead and posted their rental on airbnb, it probably led to more business plus the added benefit of getting to use airbnb's elegant interface instead of trying to keep track of dozens of craigslist emails. The only money that airbnb made from this lie was by finding people additional renters for their homes, which seems like an everybody wins scenario.
If it was outright illegal then they'll have to face the repercussions of that, but I doubt they'll lose much sleep feeling bad about what they've done.
Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company
#117I love this. Being scrappy is one of the best qualities among entrepreneurs. The attitude of "do anything" to succeed usually results in success not to mention it is one of the characteristics that PG looks for in founders.
"I love this." Really? Personally, I hate spam.
Have you been on craigslist? I fully expect to be spammed about anything I post on the site, it seems like a natural price to pay for being able to get the attention of hundreds of interested buyers instantly. And at least in this case the spam was a useful offer that was in line with what the posters were trying to do anyway.
Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author already claims he has access to professional spamming tools. All he has to do is spam people on craigslist pretending to be AirBnB in a way that can't be traceable to AirBnB. Then he writes an article complaining about AirBnB and asks "why would they hide behind shady tactics?" You get maximum impact if you wait two years and post when your competitor gets really big so everything is forgotten and really u…
Your comment is ridiculous. Can you really imagine someone making a two and a half year plan to set a competitor up like that? And in the meantime you're giving the competitor customers like crazy? Pull the other one.
Sorry, I didn't mean to go all conspiracy theory here. I just felt a sleazy linkbait vibe from the article and wanted to provide my "fair and balanced" opinion.
Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
All this is true, but has no bearing on the common use of language. When a trader refers to Acme corporation as an $N company, he is indicating that $N is its annual revenue, not its market capitalization.
Citation needed Common usage that I've seen is to refer to the market cap as the value of the company. For a random example http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2010/03/19/how-does-ap... . The other common usage that I've seen is to refer to a company as being worth X billion a year . In that usage the a year bit is not dropped, because dropping it would introduce confusion with the first common usage.
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Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
All this is true, but has no bearing on the common use of language. When a trader refers to Acme corporation as an $N company, he is indicating that $N is its annual revenue, not its market capitalization.
Citation needed Common usage that I've seen is to refer to the market cap as the value of the company. For a random example http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2010/03/19/how-does-ap... . The other common usage that I've seen is to refer to a company as being worth X billion a year . In that usage the a year bit is not dropped, because dropping it would introduce confusion with the first common usage.
I have no horse in this race, but $x billion company has traditionally referred to revenues. The usage of "___ company" to mean valuation is new (last five years), rare among traditional press outlets, and overrepresented among the startup/Silicon Valley crowd. The idiom may be changing in meaning, but if so, it's in the early stages.