[troydavis]

Siftery has repeatedly engaged in Twitter spam. Here’s one example account, @SifteryHello that exists solely to mention other companies and individuals: https://twitter.com/SifteryHello

Check out the tweet history to see what I mean. They sent thousands of tweets from this account (and very possibly others), solely to get visibility for Siftery from the customers/others who search for the company's Twitter handle.

They take the same approach to other mediums. Regarding mholt’s comment, here’s another one: https://twitter.com/guusdk/status/909773952561696769

I can’t imagine ever trusting a company or person/team who does this.

Update: Here's another medium that Siftery spams, albeit at a lower volume - HN itself: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ggiaco. ggiaco, an employee, submitted ~100 low-value Siftery pages about companies (rather than, say, the companies themselves, or sites he actually liked).

Update 2: Here's a second Twitter account, @SifteryFeed, which does the same thing as @SifteryHello: https://twitter.com/sifteryfeed. Example tweet:

> "Are you using Apache Hive (@TheASF) and recommend them? You can do it here http://siftery.com/some-landing-page … "

[Xunxi]

The product itself is garbage. I really dont know why Google will use Histats https://siftery.com/company/google and this https://siftery.com/company/microsoft

[ggiaco]

The posts to HN that you're mentioning are interviews with founders/creators of the products. They're actually similar in nature to interviews posted from other sources (e.g. Indie Hackers). Here's an example: https://siftery.com/stories/monitor-online-mentions-of-your-...

I know when we post new ones, so I can add them here first. It's not the only type of content I post, and the HN community can decide if they're worthy of attention or not.

[troydavis]

Okay. That addresses one update; how about the main focus of my comment, the thousands of low-value tweets that @ mention companies and people?

[ggiaco]

Troy, We don't believe we're running afoul of TOS and have good reason to believe this. We want to add value by mentioning product handles once to generate awareness about their profile and their ability to curate their presence in front of a large buyer community.

Of course, Twitter is free to change its mind and decide we're treading on the wrong side of the line and then ban the account or ask us to stop; we would immediately comply.

FWIW - we were already thinking of cutting back since it doesn't convert that well anyway. Feel free to report the account though. I kind of wish you'd done that instead of letting the mob loose. It's probably for the best that you're not actually a journalist.

[kaoD]

Strawman. He's not accusing Siftery of violating the ToS. He's accusing your company of spamming (even if within Twitter's ToS) low-value tweets.

[troydavis]

I'd even generalize it to "Doing anything you can to get attention, even when the overall impact is obviously negative."

A ToS is the absolute minimum (well, other than the penal code). That someone needs to consider whether or not something violates policies is a strong sign that it's probably not helping people. A malware/adware company may not mind that, but if Siftery's goal is actually to help product consumers and creators, their bar should be way higher than whether it can slide past a ToS. Find positive-sum ways to get attention.