151–160 of 197 posts
If you were an investor, would you feel lied to, or is this a cause and not an effect?
Some investors would reward this; many would encourage it. It depends on why they are investors, right? Those looking for a significant return would take a fairly hard-lined "and the problem is?" position.
I do not want to argue if this type of stuff is good or bad. But I do want to point out to you all that list of tech gods is full of similar stories. Off the top of my head: MySpace started out purely through spam...Tim Ferris started out in online supplement sales...People complained about Plaxo doing black hat stuff... they sold ok. People complained about Zynga ripping off other games and about breaking every Face…
"Everyone's doing it" isn't a valid excuse.
I do not want to argue if this type of stuff is good or bad. But I do want to point out to you all that list of tech gods is full of similar stories. Off the top of my head: MySpace started out purely through spam...Tim Ferris started out in online supplement sales...People complained about Plaxo doing black hat stuff... they sold ok. People complained about Zynga ripping off other games and about breaking every Face…
So and your point is now, that it's okay to be unethical like the people you mentioned, just to get rich?
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 special vacation rental site? What did the email say that he sent out? Was he also sending them from throwaway gmail accounts? What were his tactics?
This guy needs to follow up with more details. All he's shown is that at some point he posted 4 vacation rentals to Craigslist and he got 5 emails linking to AirBNB.
His findings rely on the fact that he got 1,000+ people to sign up their vacation rentals on his site after spamming some number of emails he admits to harvesting.
The "test" site he made (he's since edited it out), but google cached it http://bit.ly/iOPWi5 is www.mimbeo.com.
A quick look at the press page (http://mimbeo.com/vacation-rentals/press) and they have press releases announcing they got 1,000+ properties in one month: http://www.prlog.org/10408565-mimbeocom-reaches-1000-vacatio...
Here's a quote:
> "It's a no-brainer" said one of the founders. "We are offering owners and managers the same great service they receive from the pay-for-placement sites like VRBO & Homeaway. Not only that, but we broadcast our members listings to Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and more - and we do it all at no cost. We like to think of ourselves as the 'craigslist' of vacation rentals - with the added bonus that the listings do not expire - which is the main complaint we have heard from craigslist users."
Seems odd to go through all that for a weekend project "test" website. What's this guy's deal? This seems weird...
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…
Nobody here knows how much of Airbnb's growth is driven by Craigslist, it's purely speculative. Until Airbnb confirms, you'll never know but you'd have to be naive to believe that you can build a company up to $1 billion by firing off a bunch of emails. Nobody here has even suggested the possibility that "Airbnb became a billion dollar company" by suggesting how many Craigslist rentals are posted each day, along with…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. It's a violation of the CAN-SPAM act.
Do you drive 66 MPH in a 65 MPH zone? This is hardly breaking the law. This would have been perfectly legal in CAN-SPAM if they added three things: an unsubscribe link, a physical mailing address, and mentioned it was an ad. It probably would have been even more effective. If you want to stop spam, don't rely on bureaucratic processes to resolve it through legislation. Build a spam filter, or do some simple pattern r…
These types of messages definitely appear to fit the CAN-SPAM Act, which covers " any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service ". Airbnb may be spending that $100M sooner than they thought: " Each separate email in violation of the law is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, and more than one person may be held responsible f…
Nobody will ever be able to legally prove the gmail accounts were created for and by AirBnB. Actually, I don't think those accounts were created by AirBnB guys, but by a third party, for AirBnB use. Ad extremis, the AirBnB founders might as well plead they never knew what was the exact method this third party will use to generate traffic and users.
You think they'll be using anonymous proxies or something? I doubt it.
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"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 reque…
I expect lots of the CL folks were perfectly happy to list their places on AirBnB and so far I've not heard complaints from users about they were approached (although I've not been looking for them either).
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Multiple of my email addresses posted online unmasked multiple times, so I certainly get spam. My point is that filters are quite effective.
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?