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by Julien Hagege For many entrepreneurs network effects sound like a distant promise of a $100 billion jackpot. In a crowded space with only a finite span of user attention, it is no surprise that most will fail and that some will try anything to succeed. Triangulate struggled whether to ‘play dirty’ and use ‘sleazy’ marketing tactics to boost user trials. Last week Path – a social media app - has been dragged through the mud when a hacker revealed that the app was uploading the user’s address book to Path’s servers, without his/her consent. It was indeed very tempting to snatch such data to generate leads and to foster growth, but at what cost? Today the consensus around private information appears clear: one should not gather private information without the user’s consent, or at least without making it public to the blogosphere (so that bloggers / twitters can denounce any abuse). Path, Carrier IQ and others played ‘dirty’ and paid a hefty price: losing customer’s trust. Path’s CEO ...

by Michael Schrader We’ve all seen the methods: Spam emails Free trials that automatically convert into paid subscriptions Installation of products or spyware without sufficient warning Overhyping services and under-delivering once installed/purchased Relentless posts to your Facebook profile It’s obvious that some companies believe that these are acceptable, and may even be in users’ best interests. So when is this behavior acceptable and when will customers push back? While we don’t have clear data, we can infer from recent examples that there are four strong variables that decide just how much sleazy behavior customers will put up with: 1) How much true value does your product or service offer? Facebook has shown the world that a valuable platform can get away with extremes in questionable practices. Examples such as Beacon, which tracked user’s online purchases and posted the updates online, have drawn uproar from users, yet Facebook continues to grow, with more than 845 millio...

by Albert Chung One of the most important issues facing an early stage startup is how to attract a user base . Thus far we’ve seen companies that have been reluctant to employ “sleazy” marketing tactics, presumably to not compromise the overall user experience. Below is a list of some sleazy marketing tactics that a startup could employ to drive early growth in both its user base and initial revenues. Some obviously register higher in sleaze factor * than others: Scam lead gen (i.e. Online quizzes turning into $9.99 monthly subscriptions without any notification ). Sleaze factor: 10 Shill posting (a la Whole Foods ). Sleaze factor: 9.5 Spamming people off purchased email lists. Sleaze factor: 8 Selling email addresses to third parties. Sleaze factor: 8 Installing difficult to remove adware. Sleaze factor: 7 Crippling functionality unless users invite X numbers of friends. Sleaze factor: 6 Legit lead gen (i.e. Netflix subscriptions). Sleaze factor: 5 Incentivizing users with extra stuf...