Regardless of your opinion of Path’s sneaky activities, if you are part of the startup community, you should think twice before you forgive and move on. Their lapse in judgement will lower your conversions.
When the news broke that Path had been peeking into users’ address books and saving a copy on its servers, I didn’t much care. Sure, I thought it was immoral at best to do this without informing the user and it was certainly risky from a publicity perspective, but it was just another example of a startup that figured it would beg for forgiveness rather than ask for permission.
As the news, opinions, apologies, and absolutions swirled around the internet, I still didn’t much care.
But today I care.
Today I read Nick Bilton’s NY Times piece about Path where he poses the question “What’s the big deal anyway?” and immediately answers it:
The big deal is that privacy and security is not a big deal in Silicon Valley. While technorati tripped over themselves to congratulate Mr. Morin on finessing the bad publicity, a number of concerned engineers e-mailed me noting that the data collection was not an accident...
(emphasis added)
That sucks. The Path fiasco because is contributing to the public perception that startups routinely abuse users’ trust with impunity. And as that thought permeates the brains of consumers everywhere, it has the potential to hit me where it most hurts: my metrics dashboard.
It’s a bit of a miracle that startups like Mint, where part of user registration is handing over the keys to your bank and credit card accounts, have been able to get off the ground—let alone become great successes. Consumers are astoundingly trusting and we as purveyors of new products and services benefit from that endlessly. But when a story about a startup abusing users’ trust and not being held accountable by the industry breaks, a chunk of that trust erodes and a few new visitors to your site decide that they’d rather not hand over their data. Good luck, Cake Health.
There’s a lot of chest thumping in The Valley about being a “hacker” or a “hustler.” And that’s awesome if being a hacker means “ building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done” and if a hustler is a founder who masterfully pits VC against VC to get a better valuation. While we should celebrate those who find success in hacking or hustling, we must be careful that we don’t let the spirit of these terms become wed to the idea (or even the perception) that part of starting a business is a willingness to embrace moral ambiguity and play games with users’ trust.
Path has a beautifully-designed product and it’s a shame that this is the context in which many users are being introduced to it. I hope the company is able to recover and move forward. And in doing so I hope they recognize the irreparable systemic damage they leave in their wake and I implore anyone with an interest in this community and industry to make user privacy and security a big deal.
Are they A/B testing language or colors? Or just trying to confuse viewers?
“You take a hot dog, stuff it with some jack cheese, roll it in a pizza, you’ve got Cheezy Blasters!”
Thanks, Meat Cat Epicurious!
In case you’ve been living under a rock (or in a third-world country in which access to potable water, let alone the open Internet, is a rarity) and you haven’t heard, Louis CK is doing an AMA on Reddit right now.
Kramer: My service rates went up? You banks are all the same with your hidden fees and your service charges. Well, maybe I’ll just take my blood elsewhere, yeah.
Blood bank employee: Well, we can transfer to another bank for you.
Kramer: Oh, no no no…no more banks. I’m keeping my blood in my freezer with…my money!(via The Blood)
Kramer is the 99%.
(via dailyseinfeld)
This is kind of awesome. Even if you’re not a “Community” fan, check this out.
1. On Thursday an episode of “Community” aired. The episode, “Remedial Chaos Theory” explored several different parallel timelines.
2. A really perceptive viewer Tumbled his theory that events in the prior episode are clues that timeline we are lead to believe is “real” is not.
Last night’s Community featured seven different timelines based on the roll of a die. They led you to believe that the final timeline was the real one, but I don’t believe this to be true. Here’s why.
- The episode begins with a brief argument about whether Troy and Abed live in apartment 303 or 304. This episode was season three, episode four. What this hints at is that this episode takes place before the last one.
3. “Community” creator/executive producer Dan Harmon responds to the theory (and puts any speculation to rest) with a thoughtful Tumblr post of his own, revealing just how much respect he has for the show’s viewers.
The production code of “Remedial Chaos Theory” is 303, because it was the third episode to be written and shot. We intended to air it third. Troy and Abed’s apartment is 303 because, hey, we needed an apartment number, so we gave it the production code’s number.
…
As much fun as we want to have, we never want to confuse you or lie to you. We just don’t consider that a right that we have. I hated that stupid “The Killing” show on AMC after the first five minutes; don’t show me someone discovering a body but then reveal that the camera was somewhere else and it was a pig. That’s dumb. That’s not storytelling, that’s a parlor trick and an abuse of power.
4. Dan Harmon Tweeted the text exchange between him and writer Megan Ganz that began the development of the episode.
…And posted pictures of the writers room whiteboards after mapping out the parallel timelines.
I love television.
He rocked the fusion of these two disciplines so hard. Masterful.
[video]
I spent way too much time last night choosing my FB Cover photo. Love how the new profile/timeline fosters a great sense of ownership. It screams to be filled with content.
The World’s Largest Photo Libraries
This should be retitled “quality vs quantity.” Of course, that’s not to say that this isn’t impressive or that Facebook isn’t providing a valuable service. If anything, the alternate title demonstrates the problem with most info-graphics. They present a overly simplified version of a relationship that’s easy to pass around without including any sort of context. This info-graphic ought to raise questions. Instead, it is digested as an answer.
Reblogging for Eric’s caption. Infographics make us feel informed like Sorkin dialogue makes us feel smart.