How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company • Hacker News Board

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#191

Post by pbreit » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 5:16 AM UTC

c2 wrote: post #46

Mizza wrote: post #26

Is anybody else slightly disturbed by all of the 'attaboy!' comments here on a post exposing unscrupulous and probably illegal business tactics? Think the response here would be the same if it was MicroSoft or the RIAA caught in something like this and not a YC alum? Anyway, great investigation and great analysis here, I think.

I agree the 'attaboy' comments are way out of place, but there is also an over the top reaction the other way with the criticism being heaped onto the AirBNB guys in my opinion. It was technically wrong of them to leverage craigslist by circumventing the community's own "no commercial email" request, and they should get dinged for it. But in the grand scheme of things, when you are a tiny start up struggling to survi…

I agree. Likening this to spammers sending out millions of wholly untargeted emails is incorrect. These were extremely well-targeted communications likely sent out one-by-one by humans who had done some research.

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#192

Post by prodigal_erik » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 8:54 AM UTC

fuzzmeister wrote: post #188

warp wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still get spam in my inbox regularly. I'm using google postini to do the filtering, in my situation I wouldn't classify it as "quite effective". Are there better alternatives I am not aware of?

I use the default GMail filters - perhaps I'm just lucky and receive easily filtered spam. I get hundreds of spam messages per day, and none break through on the average day.

Hundreds a day sounds plausible. So with that much crap to wade through, how long does it take to finally discover and rescue false positives from the spam folder?

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#193

Post by Hisoka » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 2:46 PM UTC

gigantor wrote: post #9

Blackhat or not, this is a great example of how there are very viable alternatives to SEO in terms of internet marketing. The ever changing rules and laws of search engines unfortunately make or break a vast majority of online businesses.

I agree. What AirBnB did is the modern version of creating thin content farms to spam Google search results.

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#194

Post by Hisoka » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 7:24 PM UTC

Whether or not it's wrong or right doesn't matter.. what matters is are there consequences? If not, then the guys at AirBnB probably could care less, and are laughing and enjoying cocktails in rooftop bars while the rest of us are toiling away at jobs...

Remember, we only got 1 life to live.. think about it. Arguing right or wrong makes little sense

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#195

Post by tzm » Fri, Jun 03, 2011, 1:17 PM UTC

vacri wrote: post #169

tzm wrote: post #111

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.

If you don't care, why would it ever piss you off?

Do I ultimately care? No. Lots of other things to focus on.

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#196

Post by Eternal » Sun, Jun 05, 2011, 4:48 PM UTC

BYurgi wrote: post #154

> After harvesting email addresses (I only grabbed real email addresses, not anonymous craigslist addresses) I did one email blast to people that were advertising vacation rentals on craigslist...My results: 1,000+ vacation rental owners signed up and listed their properties on my test site. He's missing a few steps... How many email addresses did this dude harvest and blast to get 1,000+ people to sign up for his sp…

True this guys methods are questionable, as well as his objective.

But if his claims are true than both and AriBnB was faking user recommendations to gain users than they should get criticized for it. Even more so if they systematically violate Craiglist ToS.

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#197

Post by nokcha » Mon, Jun 06, 2011, 8:10 PM UTC

suking wrote: post #176

nokcha wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>CA has a specific law that pre-empts CAN-SPAM A state law cannot pre-empt a federal law; when a federal law and a state law are in conflict, the federal law takes precedence over the state law. (U.S. Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2.) Notably, the CAN-SPAM Act expressly pre-empts any state law that "expressly regulates the use of electronic mail to send commercial messages, except to the extent that any such statu…

Business & Professions Code § 17529 Pre-empts it. www.DanHatesSpam.com

I think you misunderstood my comment. It is legally impossible for a state law to pre-empt a valid federal law. However a state law may, in certain situations, enact additional regulations on types of conduct already covered by federal law.