Comments on: Great Example of Blogging Changes to Your Product

By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:48 +0000

In our blog post, we published a screen by screen example of what Facebook does for their invitation process. While I am not going to walk off a cliff because someone else is doing it — I must point at them as a clear standard of what is "acceptable" vs. spam inducing. Most other quickly growing and highly ethical social networks have a similar standard.

By: brian_hart1973

brian_hart1973 — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:48 +0000

The default, though, is still to place checkmarks next to all of your contacts, which I feel is the wrong approach. Their own research showed that in the beginning only about 1% of people with large address books were sending messages to all of their contacts, and approx. 10% now. To me, checking the boxes isn't a sensible default.

By: kimm_viebro1980

kimm_viebro1980 — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:48 +0000

And, as the comments here and back at the original Shelfari post make clear (and more to the point of THIS post), blogging about these kinds of decisions and the background for them also opens up a whole new dialog with your users. Having access to consumer feedback this way is an important part of being successful in business.

By: bfeld

bfeld — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:48 +0000

Oscar, unfortunately I've been in these situations before. While it's easy for someone on the outside to crucify a startup for whatever it does, there are often sincere and good minded people running the startup that are overextended to the point that they (a) don't catch key problems or (b) hire the wrong people or don't supervise the junior ones. Remind me to tell you about the time one of the junior guys at FeedBurner (a widely loved company) spammed the top 100 bloggers asking them to sign up, including about 25 that are personal friends and another 25 that were already FeedBurner users. Simple fuckup – huge backlash – apology – and appropriate user response (e.g forgiveness.)

When a shitstorm occurs, you find the problem, admit it, fix it, and do your best going forward. When I pointed out what I saw as a building problem to Josh (Shelfari's CEO), he acknowledged it, put it on "the list" and planned to get to it. They got to it (a few weeks later) and are now tuned in to the mistake(s) they've made, have fixed them, and are paying attention to doing a better job going forward.

It's easy to be nasty about it, especially when a few people are fueling the fire. In this case, I think Josh and team are sincere in their intent, recognized and acknowledge that they had a bigger problem that they thought, and that they didn't react quickly enough. They have now – and I think they've learned a lot from the pain of the experience. it's time to move on.

By: Oscar

Oscar — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:48 +0000

"By addressing it out in the open, they should earn extra karma credibility points"

I read this post on Gadgetopia and offers a different perspective: http://gadgetopia.com/post/6157

"They are not changing this because they give a crap about you in any way. They are changing now because the disadvantages of their under-handedness suddenly outweigh the advantages. They acted like jerks for as long as it benefited them, and as soon as that plan was no longer viable, they crassly switched gears and tried to pretend it was because they cared about their users."

By: steve_bergs2126

steve_bergs2126 — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:48 +0000

Brad: You asked in another post for feedback on the comment functionality. I don't know how your response ot Oscar appears to you, but for me. it's displayed as white text on a light grey background. It's rather difficult to read.

By: isaac_keyet

isaac_keyet — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:48 +0000

Brad, Steve, anyone else reading this: The issue has been taken care of. Thanks Steve for pointing it out.

Our latest release turned out to be pretty rough, unfortunately. Thank you all for your patience with Intense Debate!