MichaelJacksonPopcorn.gif.

More popcorn here if you're hungry: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5034606

lol

I assumed you were using mturk. Interesting.

Time to issue a 'we ****ed up, sorry' blog post that gets to the top of HN too.

this. although I doubt my opinion bears any weight since I'm just a "Silicon Valley douche" these days

+1

From heated twitter exchange to SERP nightmare in < 10 hrs. Internets!

No matter what customers say to you, you can't tilt or it can explode in your face like this. You have to take control of your emotions better.

Probably the best play now as others have said is to write an apology blog post and hope it goes front page on HN. A close second would be to do nothing at all. If you go for the apology route be very careful how you phrase it as there have been cases of people not being able to apologise very well which has made the whole situation worse. Which is perhaps why doing nothing might be the best option here.

Edit: Just reading some other tweets people are posting in the HN comments, really really unprofessional. You won't ever get anywhere doing tweets like that. You need to seriously re-evaluate your ideas about appropriate ways to contact people.

At least we will all get to see if "any publicity is good publicity" is true. You were getting a ridiculous amount of @ mentions from people retweeting that blog post; this may end up being the best thing that ever happened to BetaPunch.

The play here is to do nothing but continue on about my business. Any formal apology I make at this point is just going to get picked apart by everyone anyway. I think people are treating this situation a little too harshly. People are trying to execute me for a couple of tweets. I didn't kill anybody here, I just didn't tweet to a person in a very civil manner. That's the crime here. It's not the end of the world, and I most definitely didn't lose any sleep last night.

I think this whole debacle really shows the type of startup community that exists out there particularly when it's rallied behind a influencer or two from Sillicon Valley. While the whole situation was blown way out of proportion (and most likely from my actions) I take it as a learning experience just like anything else.

I didn't study business or marketing (like many of the articles suggest) in school. I was a college jock that played lacrosse in school and had zero interest in anything I was studying. While in school and once I graduated I grew a sincere passion for starting up online communities and businesses. I have been just teaching myself as I go. I am far from perfect and know I have a ton to learn and I am loving every minute of it. I get to do what I love, and whether the rest of the world thinks I suck at it or not doesn't mean anything to me. Because I am still doing what I love and being passionate about it all the while working a full-time 65 hr/week job.

If people want to rally a big circle jerk behind BetaPunch's demise, then so be it. In all honesty both my traffic, sign ups, and paying customers have been better now than they ever have been. But no, this wasn't some big publicity stunt like people think. I didn't do this so I could get traffic to my website. I did it because I honestly felt something needed to be said. There are always 2 sides to every story, and 99% of the people who are familiar with the situation only know Danielle's side. And that's ok. It's not exactly easy to explain my side of the story in a 140 character tweet. And it doesn't excuse my actions either, I know there was a bit of tilt from me in this situation and I should have known better.

But what a fantastic learning experience. Startups are all about failing, and this is just one fail along the way. It doesn't mean I am going to quit. I am taking as much positive from this away as possible. I can't tell you all the tweets I got from people that said things like:

"They should fire their social media team..."

or

"I feel sorry for your investors..."

When people look at my business, even in a negative light, they are seeing a real business: with employees, investors, etc. This is flattering. I can't say anything more about that, and it means a lot to me when you have worked as tirelessly as I have on this current project and my many failures before it.

Anyway, that is sort of my take on things. Again, I am in no way right in this situation. But then again I don't think she is either. As somebody in her position who has a lot of startup cred she has a lot of power. Is this necessarily the most mature thing she could have done in this situation as a response? In many respects one could argue she may have dropped herself down to my level in this instance.

Don't think you really want to be on that level in the first place if you're taking this seriously?

Unfortunately when you interact with the public as a representative of your business, it's pretty much always more +EV to play it passively.

If you call someone a douche on Twitter, the two ways it can unfold are:

- Nothing happens and they go on their way
- It blows up in your face and you lose reputation for your business

Best case scenario is nothing happens, which would of happened if you didn't make that Tweet. So those sort of Tweets put added unnecessary risk on to your startup.

It's great that you seem to be using this experience as a learning experience, that's definitely the right attitude! Also non-response is a pretty good play imo. You're right that an apology would be picked apart, it might be +EV but it would be high variance.

This is a good example imo of why going solo can be hard. I have a cofounder, and if I need to vent about a customer I vent to him. If I was solo I'm sure every now and then I might of vented in the wrong places (public).

Agreed. I don't want to be on that level in the first place, but in this case I was on that level unfortunately.

Site is looking good but damn, judging from those tweets (which is what most people will be judging on so it's all that really matters) you are 100% in the wrong.

Depends on your response.

Yep, doing nothing is a lot better than this.

You'd have to 100% own up for what you did and apologize flat out, no excuses, nothing. Whether you mean it or not. You clearly don't have the ability to do that, so saying nothing is better.

Given how you're handling and responding to this and what you did to get into this situation, I don't have a lot of hope for you not doing it again. You seemed to have learned nothing and think what you did was fine.

I'm partial to a well timed apology to keep the story going.

All you really have to say is that you're really passionate about the idea, about this business, that you poured your heart and soul into it for the past X months, and sometimes you get frustrated or short tempered when things aren't going your way because you put so much of yourself into it... Or something similar that makes you just sound passionate about what you are doing in a good way.

I love how you copy and pasted sentences out of context and strung them all together to make it sound like something that it is not. Is that what you do when you read? Not a very good comprehension practice in my opinion.

I admitted I was wrong, never said I wasn't. I already contacted and apologized to her privately via email to which she accepted. I feel like this was the best way to handle the situation.

I wasn't trying to comprehend what you were saying, I was trying to comprehend how HN would interpret it and whether this would result in a net PR gain or loss. Those sentences I chose are things people would latch onto and interpret in ways you wouldn't want them to - and you'd ending up digging a deeper hole.

The only reasonable thing to do, other than keeping quiet, would be something like:

Title: 'I'm a jackass, I'm really sorry'
Body: 'To my users, my coworkers, to Daniel (misspell that **** on purpose) I am very sorry. What I did was completely unprofessional and uncalled for. I thank you for the valuable feedback you've given to me and my company and we'll surely take it to heart in the future.'

Maybe a bit longer but you can't say a single defensive thing or anything that shifts the blame. Facts are irrelevant, it's just for pure PR purposes. If you are unable to swallow your pride and do that, which you clearly aren't, then say nothing.

Dude that is very nice man it's always good to get something going on.

I'd love to do something too but I'm a total "wantrepreneur" like you mentioned. Recently, I've been learning Python hoping to fill the I have 0/zero technical experience part.

I'm actually having even the hardest time coming up with the basic questions because I'm a complete stranger in this area. I mean I watch Shark Tank all the time but I don't think that really helps lol.

So, for a newbie like me, where do I even look to get familiar all this startup stuff?

Read hacker news everyday. If you have it in your blood you'll enjoy it far more than shark tank anyway.

In case you are still following along, I decided to come out with a formal apology and posted it on my blog.

I also put it up on hackernews.

I know the apology was far from perfect, and it did get picked apart a bit but as I mentioned before I was expecting that. I think the overall response to it has generally been pretty ok.

How much traffic did the original story get you? How much traffic did the apology get?

site looks nice, cool idea, execution seems like it was alright finding testers and offering one free test. but wow @ those tweets. what were you thinking?

Like I said, people would pick it apart and hone in on any indication you weren't taking full responsibility.

If you're gonna succeed you need to either completely get rid of your ego or put a muzzle on yourself and just let your product do the talking. That's what Steve Jobs did and it's why his media interactions were so limited and scripted. If he were to have been on Twitter speaking his mind it would have been a complete trainwreck.

Some people just have no diplomacy skills. That doesn't mean they can't be entrepreneurs, it just means they have to be really careful to avoid situations like this.

Just the title of that apology blog post is awful. Should probably hire a PR intern for $10/hr.

#hownottousetwitter

This was my traffic over the 3 day span:

Visits: 4,407

Unique Visitors: 3,862

Pageviews: 9,294

Pages / Visit: 2.11

Avg. Visit Duration: 00:02:08

Bounce Rate: 58.02%

% New Visits: 82.05%

Received about 25-30 new sign ups too (no paying customers though).