171–180 of 198 posts
Very well executed response. If they can execute that well on this I can imagine that they are even better on product development and customer service. I don't understand the comments against their response. I find shameful that a paid blogger tweet against a competitor with a subjective attack without disclosing the conflict of interest and that the guy paying the blogger chimes in insulting the competitor. And Ghan…
HackerNews readers, watch and learn. I'm about deconstruct what is going on. Anybody who brushes off FreshDesk because of its Indian roots is doing FreshDesk a favour. This is a sharp mind at work and it is lethal. FreshDesk is executing the standard modus operandi of upstart against an incumbent. Jobs is a master at it (I'm Apple I'm Microsoft), Calacanis too (remember the SEO controversy, and then the Angel controv…
Aussie here. Australia has in the recent years acquired a bad reputation when it comes to its treatment of immigrant populations, for e.g.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Indians_in_Aus....
If you truly care about avoiding an "Australians enjoy India bashing" meme, then make sure to hold Christian Marth (@cloudgroupsyd) accountable to his tweet, and other Aussies who say things like this. It belies an insensitivity toward other cultures, and we should really address this seriously.
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Thank you for pointing out this obvious PR campaign. The whole point of highlighting this exchange, the surrounding publicity, the custom url/etc is to raise the profile and get people to pick sides to generate discussion. This PR technique is as old as the sex tape and about exhausted as it gets. It's the online equivalent of reading "britney spears vs lindsay lohan".
"custom URL" which was just created yesterday (12/3/11): Domain ID:D164025278-LROR Domain Name:RIPOFFORNOT.ORG Created On:03-Dec-2011 14:26:48 UTC
Freshdesk is SCUM. This kind of strategy, of generating controversy and creating "noise" around your company is rooted in the "there is no such thing as bad publicity" belief. It's immoral, and ungentlemanly.
And yes, it is very common with 3rd world companies. I've seen it before. Very often their products ARE rip-off of established market products as well (no idea if this is true in this case though). I suppose it comes from the social corruption and "everything goes" that surrounds life around there. Basically lack of civilization.
It would be very sad if the market rewards them instead of the companies focused on developing a good product, improving it and keeping an atmosphere of cooperation and civility in the industry.
HackerNews readers, watch and learn. I'm about deconstruct what is going on. Anybody who brushes off FreshDesk because of its Indian roots is doing FreshDesk a favour. This is a sharp mind at work and it is lethal. FreshDesk is executing the standard modus operandi of upstart against an incumbent. Jobs is a master at it (I'm Apple I'm Microsoft), Calacanis too (remember the SEO controversy, and then the Angel controv…
> Girish, if you are reading - I'm in Australia, if you could - please don't turn this into a wider "Australians enjoy India bashing meme". We already have a hard time here, and race doesn't factor much if at all in business. Aussie here. Australia has in the recent years acquired a bad reputation when it comes to its treatment of immigrant populations, for e.g.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Indians_…
Zendesk CEO was stupid for paying them attention. Freshdesk is SCUM. This kind of strategy, of generating controversy and creating "noise" around your company is rooted in the "there is no such thing as bad publicity" belief. It's immoral, and ungentlemanly. And yes, it is very common with 3rd world companies. I've seen it before. Very often their products ARE rip-off of established market products as well (no idea i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
@ecaron - On that day,I did not know that someone else from my team was responding to you. As a startup we were just too eager to respond. I had sent you a grand total of two tweets and the second tweet was actually to apologize for the inadvertent ganging up - http://twitpic.com/7oh3ly
My point is that Freshdesk's marketing plan (spam anyone who hints at ZenDesk dissatisifaction) adds credence to the "rip-off" claim.
Which they aren't. It would seem that you were exaggerating at best and lying at worst.
Poaching dissatisfied customers of a competitor only proves that they're targeting some low hanging fruit (which is a good thing in this case)
The whole thing is completely overblown (intentionally so and calculated, of course, by Freshdesk) and was very unnecessary to begin with (on Zendesk's part). As an Indian-started helpdesk software company ourselves, the 'Indian cowboy' comment raised our brows a bit. It was very unfortunate. But then I realised it was said by a relative nobody. That didn't stop it being used to inflame the situation, though. Disclos…
We all should realize it's Twitter, home of public flame wars. Agreed. That comment was from a bystander and Freshdesk pulled it into the story to sensationalize. Yes, I remember back in 2005 when there was Kayako, Cerberus, Activecampaign, Request Tracker and PHP Ticket. All required self-hosting of files and maintenance. A cloud based helpdesk just wasn't an option. In the end, customers will select technology that…
> customers are making decisions about technology vendors based on the ethics and relationship with that company
Indeed. In such a crowded space with plenty of the same feature-wise, there is no doubt that the personality of a company (in this case, conveyed over social media) is going to play this kind of role.
PS: We were doing SaaS in 2005 :-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
@ecaron - On that day,I did not know that someone else from my team was responding to you. As a startup we were just too eager to respond. I had sent you a grand total of two tweets and the second tweet was actually to apologize for the inadvertent ganging up - http://twitpic.com/7oh3ly
My point is that Freshdesk's marketing plan (spam anyone who hints at ZenDesk dissatisifaction) adds credence to the "rip-off" claim.