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Survata (YC S12) replaces paywalls with "surveywalls"

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Re: Survata (YC S12) replaces paywalls with "surveywalls"

#41

Post by rabidsnail »

awenger wrote: post #34
rabidsnail wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are cases where surveys are useful, but none of them hinge on getting accurate results. The two that come to mind: push polls, and exploiting sample bias to make yourself look good.

I've enjoyed the recent 5-hour ENERGY ad about how many doctors approve of their product. A whopping 73% of doctors recommend low calorie energy products... when measuring the percent of those who recommend energy products. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCqT3fdAAHQ While there are abusive uses like push polls and leading questions, there are legitimate uses too.

That example is even worse; 73% of doctors recommend that if you must use an energy product, you should use a low-calorie one.

Re: Survata (YC S12) replaces paywalls with "surveywalls"

#42

Post by dhimes »

MetalMASK wrote: post #32
kcl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be evaluating this company based on either A. how it would work for you personally, as someone who isn't interested or B. an inaccurate assessment of how it would work for other people who aren't you. When discussing a company you typically try to avoid both. For instance, many girls like dolls, but if you don't like dolls that doesn't make dolls a "No." business, and it's not illuminating to hear why dol…

My argument is targeting at the whole "survey" business, not this or that dev team in particular. I would much prefer the dev team here to do a great job, "fixing" the broken online survey business instead of adding on to it. If you are part of the dev team, I apologize for the confusion. Not sure how the "doll" analogy applies here. When a doll sells, even to a small proportion of population, it sells. When you do a…

but I really want to avoid discussion on grammar on HN.

Good. Because you either have your apostrophe or your verb tense wrong here in your original post:

Bad survey's uselessness are

It's best, in an international community, to let these things slide without comment.

Re: Survata (YC S12) replaces paywalls with "surveywalls"

#43

Post by awenger »

rabidsnail wrote: post #41
awenger wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've enjoyed the recent 5-hour ENERGY ad about how many doctors approve of their product. A whopping 73% of doctors recommend low calorie energy products... when measuring the percent of those who recommend energy products. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCqT3fdAAHQ While there are abusive uses like push polls and leading questions, there are legitimate uses too.

That example is even worse; 73% of doctors recommend that if you must use an energy product, you should use a low-calorie one.

I always forget how sarcasm is lost online. I meant that as an example of a misleading, bad poll.

Re: Survata (YC S12) replaces paywalls with "surveywalls"

#44

Post by oo »

It would be easy to write a Web browser extension to automatically do the surveys with random choices in order to bypass the surveywall. And as the surveys are anonymous, what if some evil user or competitor deliberately cheat or manipulate the results over net?

Re: Survata (YC S12) replaces paywalls with "surveywalls"

#45

Post by awenger »

MetalMASK wrote: post #36
awenger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the interest, and sorry for the delayed response. We certainly hope that the surveys are not annoying. We know that some people will prefer to pay, but others (like me) would rather take a few seconds to complete a survey than pay. Our hope is that the surveywalls will let users access content that otherwise would have been beyond their reach. And at the same time, quality content publishers will be able t…

Thanks for responding to my, as noted by others, rather "rude" critique. I think you guys are building something distinctive from the surveys on AmazonTurk, SocialSci, because your recruitment poll is not chosen. Turkers went to amazon with the idea to properly do survey, your survey might took the user by surprise. A few suggestions: 1. Hire someone with experience on experimental psychology, I mean, by trade. Not n…

Thanks again, Alex. I appreciate the comments and great ideas.

We do plan to add polling and survey design experts to our team (I have stats but not polling background). And an analytics platform is coming.

What do you mean by our survey "might take the user by surprise"? Do you mean that it might be surprising to the user to have a survey launch when clicking one of our links? We're testing different "teaser" text for the links. And hopefully we can make it clear that a survey will be coming when you click.

If you're willing to run a test survey, fill out the contact us form on our site, and we'll give you a discount code. Appreciate the feedback.

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