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The Next Feature Fallacy

andrewchen.co

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Re: The Next Feature Fallacy

#31

Post by ryandrake »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #16
lqdc13 wrote: post #4

The other side of the coin is that there are many products that lack that one feature that makes me not use them or makes me less interested in using them. Example is sorting products by some variable or filtering products by some property. If I can't do that, that means I have to write a greasemonkey script and it is much easier to go to a competitor.

The challenging sales cycle (if there is one) is this, "If this feature were added, would you commit to using this product?" that question is hard to ask and answer in a web based freemium world. In the enterprise sales cycle I've seen customers decline to buy 'for lack of a feature' and having that be a way to say "no" without explicitly saying no. When I worked closely with the enterprise account teams at NetApp th…

That's a good way to qualify features, too, so you don't end up building a Franken-product full of half-baked ideas from people who aren't even paying customers.

Bad salesperson: "Here's a laundry list of features that people say that they'd want in our product. Go off and implement them to make my job easier."

Good salesperson: "I have a firm commitment from Company Abc that they'll buy a 5,000 seat license if we implement this one feature. Is this a worthwhile investment?"

Re: The Next Feature Fallacy

#32

Post by jonny_eh »

yeldarb wrote: post #3

While I thoroughly enjoyed this blog post, this seems to not be in the spirit of Hacker News: https://twitter.com/andrewchen/status/605422107028131840 "Can I ask people to upvote my submission? No. Users should vote for a story because it's intellectually interesting, not because someone is promoting it." via https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Isn't asking people to upvote your article is a clever "hack"?

Re: The Next Feature Fallacy

#33

Post by motoboi »

yeldarb wrote: post #3

While I thoroughly enjoyed this blog post, this seems to not be in the spirit of Hacker News: https://twitter.com/andrewchen/status/605422107028131840 "Can I ask people to upvote my submission? No. Users should vote for a story because it's intellectually interesting, not because someone is promoting it." via https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Does anyone has any metric about Ad revenue on a top HN item?

Re: The Next Feature Fallacy

#34

Post by ams6110 »

minimaxir wrote: post #6
yeldarb wrote: post #3

While I thoroughly enjoyed this blog post, this seems to not be in the spirit of Hacker News: https://twitter.com/andrewchen/status/605422107028131840 "Can I ask people to upvote my submission? No. Users should vote for a story because it's intellectually interesting, not because someone is promoting it." via https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Upvote begging (and knowingly using the /newest trick) is pretty unethical, although fortunately uncommon in HN. I'm working on a blog post about the problem of upvote begging. Usually, it's in the minority of users, although some websites don't explicitly enforce it well. (Case in point, Product Hunt makes upvote begging part of the status quo , which compromises the integrity of the site as a whole.)

While vote begging has been around since the first site that supported comment voting, the "Like this on Facebook" thumb-up icon really entreched this in people's minds as a common and accepted thing to do.

Re: The Next Feature Fallacy

#35

Post by matchagaucho »

A 2% conversion rate is actually pretty good.

The attrition identified in the article may have less to do with having a killer feature, and more to do with how an existing feature is marketed to the correct audience.

Re: The Next Feature Fallacy

#36

Post by baddox »

minimaxir wrote: post #17
baddox wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not reasonable in many cases to infer that the promoter isn't intending people to up vote if they're not interested in the article?

That is not a reasonable inference, even if there wasn't an explicit call-to-action. (Otherwise, why make the comment?) This is the reason for the infamous IF YOU LIKE THIS VIDEO LIKE/SUBSCRIBE/COMMENT! phrasing that has plagued modern YouTube.

> Otherwise, why make the comment?

The comment is a tweet, which ordinarily is only seen by the user's Twitter followers.

Re: The Next Feature Fallacy

#37

Post by Silhouette »

Does an average web app really get 20% of visitors signing up, or are we talking about a subset here, such as web apps running a freemium model? If any of the (commercial) web apps I've worked on could get 20% of visitors to actively start a sign-up process and 80% of those to complete it, everyone involved would have been celebrating for weeks.

I'd guess most of the apps I'm familiar with are around an order of magnitude lower, but none of them currently uses a freemium model. Some are considering shifting to one, and if it really does get this dramatic a bump in initial sign-ups in a typical case then that would be a good argument for doing it.

Re: The Next Feature Fallacy

#38

Post by alextgordon »

lqdc13 wrote: post #4

The other side of the coin is that there are many products that lack that one feature that makes me not use them or makes me less interested in using them. Example is sorting products by some variable or filtering products by some property. If I can't do that, that means I have to write a greasemonkey script and it is much easier to go to a competitor.

I like: "Dangling by a Trivial Feature" http://prog21.dadgum.com/160.html

Re: The Next Feature Fallacy

#39

Post by pyre »

minimaxir wrote: post #12
cat9 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's common because the likelihood of escaping /newest on the basis of "intellectually interesting" alone is miniscule. The traffic just doesn't work that way. Solve that, and you have much more traction to complain about what people should or shouldn't be doing.

What? No it isn't. (See my submission history for URLs to minimaxir.com, and I have negligible influence in the tech world) Even then, two wrongs don't make a right. It comes down to luck, and sometimes it doesn't pan out. "Growth hacking" to correct bad luck is not necessarily ethical.

On the other hand, we can't act like the front page is a meritocracy either when there is a significant element of luck involved. Would be be "growth hacking" if I analyzed upvoting patterns to determine the "correct" time to make a submission to maximize the chance of hitting the front page? Don't I gain an advantage over someone that sees an interesting link and just immediately submits it to HN?

Re: The Next Feature Fallacy

#40

Post by talmand »

minimaxir wrote: post #20
zem wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what /newest trick? do upvotes count for more if they're made from the new page rather than the front page? (and if so, does it track state when you click through to the comment page first, then open the article in a new tab, read it, and then upvote from the comment page?)

The inverse: upvotes are penalized if the voter comes from a direct link from a non-HN source (e.g. Twitter), so people direct others to vote via /newest.

So, I see a submission I think is interesting and direct link it from my Twitter account; the submission is penalized on every upvote it receives through my link?

That just seems like a silly thing to do. Especially since there's an obvious way around it.

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