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How I'm using Twitter to acquire 100 uniques a day for my startup

trevorstarick.com

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Re: How I'm using Twitter to acquire 100 uniques a day for my startup

#81

Post by dang »

trevorstarick wrote: post #69
phea wrote: post #49

This is unscrupulous, even the account that submitted this to HN is only 3 hours old and I'm guessing most of the upvotes have been faked.

My account had posted it from Medium earlier but I realized how SLOOW it was loading so I loaded up a Ghost Blog droplet for Digital Ocean and reposted it there. I needed a new account to post it on behalf of so a smashed my keyboard. Voial!

The reason you didn't address what phea said is that you promoted this story through abusive techniques. So abusive, in fact, that we've banned your main account too, as well as this site.

Edit: We're also banning the site that you've abusively promoted here in the past [1].

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637010

Re: How I'm using Twitter to acquire 100 uniques a day for my startup

#82

Post by phpnode »

gk1 wrote: post #58
phpnode wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but the general point is that specific marketing tricks that work well should be hoarded, not shared, because sharing them destroys their value.

> "because sharing them destroys their value." ... Why? Because it'll lower your competitive advantage? If your main competitive advantage is knowing about some cheap Twitter trick--sorry, I mean "Growth Hack"--then you need to rethink your game plan.

because sharing them makes them stop working. No one said anything about this being his main competitive advantage.

Re: How I'm using Twitter to acquire 100 uniques a day for my startup

#83

Post by MichaelGG »

gone35 wrote: post #74

The idea of directly engaging potential users actively seeking/asking for a particular product/service on Twitter is very interesting; but unfortunately the way you are implementing it right now is unethical and in violation of Twitter's Automation Rules and Best Practices [1]: "Creating serial or bulk accounts with overlapping use, however, is prohibited." I initially thought you were using your company's own Twitte…

Perhaps, but some famous startups got traction by doing such "unethical" things. IIRC even Reddit seeded their site with fake accounts and conversations.

Also if the Twitter accounts are truly of the interns like the post says then it's not really that bad. In that case, it would really be an employee mentioning their employer's product.

Re: How I'm using Twitter to acquire 100 uniques a day for my startup

#84

Post by dang »

untog wrote: post #28
Theodores wrote: post #25

The amount of startup-culture Kool Aid going on here is quite mesmerising. First the product, 'let's aggregate the aggregators!!!' The monetization: those affiliate marketing codes everyone else uses!!! Then there is the user acquisition strategy. Getting some intern to post stuff to Twitter for you. The spin off product: a Twitter spamming machine! Then there is 'sharing economy'. Is this really all it amounts to?

Hacker News is so much more honest at this time of day, before Silicon Valley wakes up. It'll never last, they're going to disrupt us any second now.

I'm not sure what you find honest about this behavior, but you're right that it isn't welcome on Hacker News.

Re: How I'm using Twitter to acquire 100 uniques a day for my startup

#85

Post by trevorstarick »

dang wrote: post #79

This post was upvoted by sockpuppets. We have banned those, buried the post, and banned the site. Edit: We're also banning the site of the startup this was promoting, since it has been promoted abusively on HN in the past and asking for that to stop [1] seems only to have encouraged more. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637010

I don't get why there seems to be hostility towards Outpost. On both occasion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637010 and the current) the articles have been relevant to the YC community and to my knowledge hadn't been up voted by sock puppets that we created or operated. This article mentioned Outpost once and wasn't even centred around it. I could have replaced Outpost with any other company and it still would have same purpose.

Re: How I'm using Twitter to acquire 100 uniques a day for my startup

#86

Post by dang »

trevorstarick wrote: post #85
dang wrote: post #79

This post was upvoted by sockpuppets. We have banned those, buried the post, and banned the site. Edit: We're also banning the site of the startup this was promoting, since it has been promoted abusively on HN in the past and asking for that to stop [1] seems only to have encouraged more. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637010

I don't get why there seems to be hostility towards Outpost. On both occasion ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637010 and the current) the articles have been relevant to the YC community and to my knowledge hadn't been up voted by sock puppets that we created or operated. This article mentioned Outpost once and wasn't even centred around it. I could have replaced Outpost with any other company and it still wou…

Our hostility is to abuse and gaming of HN. If you aren't doing it, it must be someone else. In that case, their dedication to promoting your personal blog is remarkable.

They managed to find their way to both of your own (now deleted) submissions of this article from medium.com, and then helpfully re-submitted it from your personal domain and ring-voted it up. They don't seem interested in anything else, either. Quite the fans.

Re: How I'm using Twitter to acquire 100 uniques a day for my startup

#87

Post by wpietri »

bengali3 wrote: post #55
wpietri wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's ridiculous. People often write about making web stuff here. And their email addresses are often easy to find. Does that mean that we're all asking for outsourcing firms to send us "manual, personal" form emails via a 99.8% automated process, even if a marketroid blesses each one? Of course not. That's spam. Similarly, if I post a question on Twitter, I'm asking my followers. If some random jackass butts in bec…

There's a difference between holding up a 1x1 foot sign at a gathering of friends and planting a 1x1 foot sign on your lawn. Are you expecting your tweets to be private or public? If you publicly announce a problem, (and asking for public comments back.. ) then it is not spam if you get a relevant and appropriate message sent to you. Scaping usernames here however is not comparable to the blog post's example edit: mi…

My tweets are public. As are my posts here. From both, I am easily contactable. But if you are doing it in bulk to push your product, it is spam.

Re: How I'm using Twitter to acquire 100 uniques a day for my startup

#89

Post by shankysingh »

jaredsohn wrote: post #56
shankysingh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similar product exists : http://launch.c4chq.com/

Also a YC startup called InboxQ just shows you the questions to let you manually respond.

Thanks @jaredsohn . I wonder how I can get in touch with them.

I have been trying to preview it, but the it get stuck after Enter keywords. https://www.dropbox.com/s/jr3kkq1x4p6wf3q/Screenshot%202014-...

Re: How I'm using Twitter to acquire 100 uniques a day for my startup

#90

Post by jaredsohn »

shankysingh wrote: post #89
jaredsohn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a YC startup called InboxQ just shows you the questions to let you manually respond.

Thanks @jaredsohn . I wonder how I can get in touch with them. I have been trying to preview it, but the it get stuck after Enter keywords. https://www.dropbox.com/s/jr3kkq1x4p6wf3q/Screenshot%202014-...

If you click on "Help" on their webpage, it takes you to a getsatisfaction page: https://getsatisfaction.com/inboxq
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