

Show HN: Get an email when press, investors, or competitors use your app - heynk
http://dailycred.tumblr.com/post/29951775485/press-investor-competitor-alerts

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dmethvin
I used to work in the media. We would get special treatment because companies
knew we were opinion influencers. We didn't know it was happening, but the
license key or other information would be their tip-off to provide us with VIP
service. Quite often that prevented us from giving accurate information to our
readers.

If you are a company offering products/services, this service is great because
it lets you give the media, investors, etc. that special treatment that you
might not ever give a "normal" customer. That can let you cover up for
inadequate customer support, products and procedures that aren't quite ready,
etc. Heck, you could even hide or show parts of the site based on the VIP
status, so for example those VIPs would think some extra-pay service was part
of the free offering.

Maybe I'm looking at the worst-case scenario here, but a company that decides
to use this service is going to be tempted to give those people special
treatment. Perhaps they can make some more money by letting schmucks like me
pay to get on the VIP list so they'll treat me nice too.

~~~
memnips
Just curious, but do you think this gets creepy at any point? Is this your
expectation if you sign up with your company's email for a service you're
reviewing?

~~~
dmethvin
Only a few publications like Consumer Reports actually buy the stuff they
review, everyone else goes to the vendor and asks for a review copy or free
membership. If their support team asks for license info or if it's linked to
your email (even not a company email) it's easy to tag that license as
deserving special treatment. Sometimes you suspect it's going on but there's
no way to avoid it, especially when there's some sort of "preview" arrangement
before the public even gets to see it.

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cookingrobot
The regex that powers this is hosted here - anyone can fork it to add their
own VIPs.
[https://github.com/juliuss/dc_autotag/blob/master/autotag.xm...](https://github.com/juliuss/dc_autotag/blob/master/autotag.xml)

Quite a big list of investors & press.

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sudonim
This reminded me of something I did a while ago.

For fun, here's a never before seen concept of customer.io. We went in a very
different direction.

"When fred wilson stops by your site..."
[https://img.skitch.com/20120823-b1hqqqssee4khwxjbm48nu4eyq.p...](https://img.skitch.com/20120823-b1hqqqssee4khwxjbm48nu4eyq.png)

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amatix
We built a tool to create links for embedding in personal sales/marketing
emails. When clicked, an XMPP message gets posted to the sender. We've found
this is a great time to follow up with a phone call: "Hey, did you get my
email?" "Funny you should ask, I actually have your site open right now"
"Really? Great timing! So, what are your first impressions?" ;)

It's a winning idea to follow up when it's at the very front of the
recipient's mind. The tool also gives you feedback if nobody ever clicks on
the link, or if it gets passed around to other colleagues.

Simple. Do it today.

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SwaroopH
Umm, what's with the fake SSL favicon?

"World class security

We've implemented https so you don't have to."

Not sure if sarcasm or ..

~~~
corin_
Looks like they're just using the same favicon from
<https://www.dailycred.com/?redirect=false> where that quote fits in
truthfully

~~~
nostromo
Thanks -- that's exactly what was happening. We've removed the favicon from
our Tumblr blog.

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e1ven
Very Very cool.

I don't want to use your service (sorry!), since I don't want to have any
other services inbetween my and the users, but I love the idea, and the regex
list.

I'll implement a clone of this on my own side.

Thanks!

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koopajah
This idea is pretty neat but I don't really understand how you detect your
competition. Would they really register/login with an email based on their
main domain and not use a throwable email or at least a personal one ?

Same for the media/influencer do they really use daily their work email to
test applications/websites? When I was testing applications/sites most of the
time I used a throwable emails first to check without fearing to be spammed
later on my work email. But I'm not the target so maybe it makes sense for
them?

Can we provide specific names you don't have to improve the list for everyone
?

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TomGullen
Looks awesome! Very cool idea.

Edit: Awww, have to enter CC number to try it? I'm afraid I don't know you
well enough.

Edit 2: Oh ok I just tried logging in and it worked. No idea why I was asked
for my cc number?

Edit 3: Ok sorry I'm confused, this isn't a service I signed up for? I read
that, got excited and went straight to 'sign up' at the bottom. I can now see
it's a regex open source list. Still useful though, thank you!

~~~
nostromo
You can skip the CC (button on bottom left), We thought we'd try and put that
in the sign up flow to see how many add vs. skip. :)

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gnu8
I'm an investor, how can I block this from my iPhone/web browser/etc?

~~~
andrewreds
simple:

don't sign up with an email whos domain is on this list:
[https://github.com/juliuss/dc_autotag/blob/master/autotag.xm...](https://github.com/juliuss/dc_autotag/blob/master/autotag.xml)

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dmix
So, we'd have to share all of our users emails with your service?

