They can truly measure the value of the service by charging for it and seeing what service providers are willing to pay.
All the fake phone number does is measure how many phone leads the site generates, but it does nothing to measure the value of those leads. What if it generates 30 leads a month from consumers that are a bad fit for the service provider? On the other hand, what if it's 3 leads a month that turn into valuable business?
I'm with the plumber on this one. If you're trying to gain favor with a business you don't do it by hijacking their name and representing them as something they are not.
The article says, "Up to now, HelpHive has been free for both consumers and businesses that sign up to be on the site."
But, according to to plumber, "These local business listings are not placed there by the business but have been harvested from other sources."
And, "If it isn’t illegal to place ads or listings to the public using our company’s name without permission and faking our phone numbers, we need a law now."
I see nothing that says the plumber signed up for anything, had any agreement, or paid any money. It appears that HelpHive took upon themselves to "help" this guy.
Unless I'm missing something, Karim Meghji's rebuttal completely skipped over the claim that HelpHive was harvesting company data from other sources and listing businesses without prior approval.
HelpHive uses the same bullshit model that GetSatisfaction and Seth Godin's lame new project got railed for, where it sets up an official looking page for every company it can find, regardless of whether it has that company's permission or not, and basically tries to extort money from that company by hoarding customers who think they're dealing with the actual business.
The article you linked is about a 'feature' they're experimenting with, where a business signs up for the opportunity to pay for the leads from these pages. From a quick look at HelpHive's site, it looks like basic claiming is still free, but it specifically says: Your business contact info (email and business phone) are used when customers call or send messages to your business. Your business information isn't displayed on your business profile page... You are not permitted to enter your email, phone or other web contact information in other areas of your business profile page.
Please show me where this is mentioned. In the link that you submitted the plumber claims (in the comments): "These local business listings are not placed there by the business but have been harvested from other sources."
So:
- HelpHive listed plumber's company with falsified information
- Plumber didn't request the listing or authorize the 'proxy' phone number.
- Plumber has no recourse to 'turn off' the feature.
How is the plumber a customer? He didn't sign up for the service and he doesn't want the service, but he's forced to have it 'provided' to him for free by HelpHive.
Measurement is important to HelpHive, not to the plumber (who doesn't even want the service, let alone the metrics).
unknowns are just the nature of the business, if everything was known, then there won't be any risk and everyone will pounce on it. I completely agree with the author that best thing entrepreneurs can do to help their cause is to be honest.
The other side of the story of course is maybe that the entrepreneur needs to rethink their product, reconsider their strategy and take it as a signal after it is passed on. Just because you got in to a prestigious program, doesn't necessarily mean that you have a product with a lot of potential. Funny thing with potential is that it doesn't always turn into something fruitful.
paid system definitely has its benefits, while you are debating free vs monthly charges, how about one time nominal sign-up fee till the site is in business? Similar model as iPhone Apps, where for some odd reason, people are more inclined to pay than for web apps. I wonder if anyone has had serious success with such a model on the web ?
I see your point, but 90% is just an arbitrary number I am guessing you have made. But number is going to be up there, so 90% might be a good guess. I probably won't pay monthly for facebook if a day like that comes. Unless you provide a service that provides constantly changing information of sorts, it is hard to charge customers monthly, I would have a hard time paying for the game scramble that I play on facebook. I might be tempted to pay them $5 once after trying the game for a month,
I might be wrong, but this might be worth exploring as a revenue stream for simple applications. Donations probably still do better than this.
When I left my day job, I expected to be in a uncomfortable zone and I am luckily still in an uncomfortable zone :)
Only thing I would like to add is that uncomfortable zone is not for everyone, I think you need to be a certain personality type to actually enjoy the uncomfortable zone.
This is perhaps true. But how would you ever know? Maybe there are people coasting along thinking "I'm not the type of person who enjoys being uncomfortable and I don't need to be" when in reality they're just boring or not changing much.
More than boring and not changing, my comment was more towards the people and their aversion to risk and the level of self - belief in them. There are days in enterpreneurs lives that are just as boring and not changing as any corporate jobs out there.
But the idea that they are working towards something bigger and the fact that they are doing it for themselves is what brings excitement to the table.
Not that I know much about psychology, but like Buddha said Change is the only constant in life. Even as children, exploration is at the root of all our instincts. Tell a child not to touch something or go near it, and he/she definitely will. As we get older, generally most people lose this exploration aspect of their daily lives in the face of jobs and careers. But the joy of exploration is always there and it always comes out when you learn something new or visit a new place, etc.
I suppose google can't win at every project they undertake, the law of averages is bound to catch up. of course, there are other google projects with varying success, I use one called GWT whose succes is hard to measure
well it is too much to ask for a search engine to be able to actually judge the qualilty of services provided by the enterprise. The current system has its merits and demerits and like any other system, it will be exploited by some
To me it is baffling that while there is a revolution in many ways of life, the education system still seems to be following the long established norms for the most part. Use of laptops and presentations are just different mediums, the philosphy behind imparting knowledge needs to be looked at. I would like to live in a world where I am able to pick up knowledge on say latest advancements in the M-theory within weeks or months, but years at a university :)
We live in a time when average person will have multiple careers for shorter durations, so this is not a surprise to me. I personally feel that its hard to make life decisions about careers at the age 18 or 19, so a shift in professions after graduation considering science and engineering students have strong backgrounds in math, algorithms & models for better paying jobs is quiet understandable.
