
Survata (YC S12) replaces paywalls with "surveywalls" - ckelly
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/20/yc-backed-survata-wants-to-replace-paywalls-with-research-friendly-surveywalls/
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MetalMASK
No.

You probably don't need a degree in experimental psychology to understand that
forced recruitment gives you invalid/biased/low quality data. These surveys
are annoying to the users; more importantly, the data provided has little if
at all value to the organization behind the survey. No matter how well you
design your survey.

I don't even want to start on how bad/biased some surveys are designed.

The only way the survey business is still in business is because it is so
distant from the revenue. If your ad campaign doesn't boost sale, you pull
your ad away. Bad survey's uselessness are not so explicit so people still
trust that "something can be gained".

No, stop creating useless data from online user. If you want insights on
usage, do analytics on server logs. If you want feedback on user experience,
do a serious experiments and plan to spend some ten thousand bucks on it.

~~~
colmvp
"You probably don't need a degree in experimental psychology to understand
that forced recruitment gives you invalid/biased/low quality data."

Interesting point. Anecdotally, I am less honest with my selections if I'm
taking a survey specifically to get a reward (i.e. contest, Kongregate points,
access to a site), as I usually just want to get it done with as fast as
possible.

However, if it has tangible results (i.e. will tailor my experience on the
site like Netflix) then I am likely to spend more time choosing honestly.

~~~
masterzora
Even the honesty of your answers is not the only issue. One of the big ones is
that the set of people opting in to a survey is already demonstrating a
characteristic different from the set of all people of interest unless the
people of interest are for some reason "the set of people opting in to a
survey". This alone is enough to muddy or even invalidate the output data.

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dm8
Interesting idea. Google is already doing this
(<http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home>) and they have solid
relationship with big publishers. Question to founders - 1\. How are you
different from Google? 2\. As a UX person, I'm not sure what sort of data I
will get from these surveys. Is there anyway you can maintain the quality of
responses? I assume in most of the cases users will give dummy data for the
sake of getting away from surveys.

~~~
jedc
And I think the solid relationships with big publishers is the big part that's
hard to replicate.

That said, you could probably more easily approach smaller (more local?)
publishers that are more willing to experiment to get traction. Is that what
you're planning on doing?

~~~
kunle
Would also say, there are tons of blogs out there with dedicated readerships
in niche, but high value demographics (to advertisers). This is perfect for
them.

~~~
awenger
Have you wiretapped our office?

While we hope to work with big publishers too, niche blogs are an awesome
place to start. As you say, they provide a self aggregated group of
individuals with a common interest. They're perfect for polling.

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Ataraxy
This has been done to death in the incentive based affiliate marketing world
for some years now.

The quality of data that will be generated from these surveys is going to be
extremely poor and I would be interested in seeing how they're able to sustain
advertisers (market researchers).

~~~
ktsmith
I'll second this, we put together a system that did this around 2008 and while
it worked out well initially within less than a year it became a loss for our
company. We couldn't charge much for the data as even with large amounts of
filters and detection techniques for bogus data and users the results were so
bad no one was willing to pay for them any more. Within a year we scrapped the
project and ripped it out of our ad system. People are more than happy to
answer a survey to get to paid content, they are also more than happy to
supply bogus answers to the questions.

That being said, I'll be interested to see what, if anything, makes this
different than all of the surveys running in the affiliate marketing/lead
generation space.

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DanBC
This seems like a really neat idea. I'd be happy to do a _short_ (20 second)
survey to get access to content. I'd much prefer to do a short survey than
watch some of the pointless stupid annoying ads that Youtube is giving me at
the moment. And there's little chance of me taking year subs for all the sites
I read maybe once a week.

Survata should be aware that any longer than that, or poor content hidden
behind the survey-wall, means that I'm likely to just click random options on
the survey. But I'm sure they are.

Good Luck to them!

Really, someone 'just' needs to fix micropayments.

~~~
awenger
Thanks for the support, Dan.

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vasco
This is just content locking with lipstick on, which was up until now among
tactics such as cloaking and keyword stuffing, at least in my view. Hopefully
they'll make it less scammy. If I could just do a 1min survey to access
premium content that would be fine, but my fear is that I would have to go
through 1min surveys for stuff that I now get for free.

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jjacobson
People hate taking surveys. The only reliable way to get data out of people in
survey form is to ambush them on the phone or in person and pressure them into
answering some questions for you. And even then, the data has to be filtered
appropriately. Paywalls and most online polls are the wrong place to ask
people serious questions.

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endianswap
I think it's a great idea, especially in lieu of a paywall, but I honestly
can't think of that many websites that have paywalls. Maybe I just avoid them
naturally?

It also seems like this could be useful for free versions of iOS apps, as
advertisement replacements (or supplements.)

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memset
The neat use-case I see coming out of this is enhancing an onboarding process.

I work for a company which sells wine online, and a large number of people
have strong preferences about the types of wines they like (red, white,
chardonnay, half-cases, etc.)

It's useful to give people a survey - combined with an explanation of how the
site works - as they are signing up. Even more useful is to use their answers
to show the new customer a wine which is suited to their tastes. (If you like
high-end reds, it wouldn't make sense to show you a half-case of inexpensive
white wine to convince you to make you first purchase.)

And if our marketing department can manage their survey, marketing copy, and
graphic design without having to ask developers every time they want a change
(or if they can save me the time of writing a customizable interface) then all
the better.

Onboarding. That's where it's at, yo.

The idea of surveys as a paywall mechanism (eg, New York Times paywall with a
survey) is, at first glance, pretty unappealing, because paywalls are de-facto
abhorrent. But we'll see; I may not mind filling out a 4-question
questionnaire in order to read an article that would otherwise be blocked.
Especially if I know that after filling it out once, I will never ever have to
fill the survey out again.

And let's not forget about the adult industry! Instead of captchas... well,
why not get some interesting marketing analytics out of the deal?

Interested to see how this evolves!

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AznHisoka
Isn't this just a fancy ad? A lot of sites already have lightbox Javascript
popups (that AdBlock can't block?) that acts as ads or gateways to getting
your email address.

~~~
awenger
I agree that the lightbox experience is common, but I view the surveys as
fundamentally different than advertisements. Part of our idea is that your
attention is more valuable than a banner/video ad. If I had 30 seconds of time
from a smart HN reader, I'd rather ask for advice than show a commercial.
Hopefully getting at that valuable opinion will allow you to get better free
content online.

And, just to be clear, we're keeping the surveys fully anonymous; so we will
not collect or tie to an e-mail address or other personally identifiable
information.

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zio99
Survata, how about a sticky to the top of the site? Just a thought - it'll be
easier on the mobile crowd.

~~~
awenger
Thanks for the suggestion. We'll be moving to and optimizing for mobile soon.
(I'm a Survata co-founder).

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andrewcooke
it would be nice to have an example that you could run through several times.
i tried the football example once and then wanted to see how it handled
incorrect answers, but wasn't going to start searching for cookies to delete
just to re-enable it...

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tomjen3
I hope this doesn't catch on. At least with youtube ads adblock can block
them.

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killahpriest
Doesn't Wufoo offer this already?

