morganb180

Related: http://info.activeintime.com/news/2014/10/8/say-hello-to-hea...

Just in time for iOS8 and Healthkit. Makes it super-easy to call and write to the TrueVault API natively within Xcode.

Just in time for iOS8 and Healthkit. Makes it much easier to build HIPAA compliant apps for iPhone/iPad.

I agree. That was the key takeaway from me. How the sustain growth over such a long period of time is amazing.

It's a valid point. The entire early growth team is gone and onto other ventures. It's probably very likely that the new growth team is facing increasing pressure to continue to grow, which can lead to overly aggressive tactics.

I also think the product is in the middle of a massive pivot from referral network to network+content destination and that transition isn't quite done yet. It will be interesting to see what the next few years hold for them.

I didn't, and to be honest, after going through 10+ years of interviews and articles to find the growth nuggets, I wasn't exactly looking for them.

One thing, that I mentioned in the follow up comment, is that much of the early growth was built by Josh Elman, Reid, Keith Rabois, and then later Adam Nash and Elliot Shmukler. All of those people are now gone.

As LinkedIn looks to continue its growth, it will be interesting to see how the company responds to a massive talent turnover on the growth team, and whether they can 1) keep it going, and 2) balance growth with user experience and value so that it doesn't continue to alienate users.

Hey Guys, I wrote the post.

Here's my take, after researching them for so long. LinkedIn is definitely aggressive with their growth tactics. From the endorsements product, which has some questionable value, to the gimmicks like the "You're in the top 1% of profile views" emails, they definitely push the limits on growth and driving sustainable engagement. There's definitely an argument to be made that they cross the line too often for many people's tastes.

But what I think the most important takeaway from their success is that even after a decade they are constantly pushing the growth envelope. They are launching new products, new tests, new features, many focused on creating repeat visits and new growth, all the time. It doesn't stop.

To innovate on the growth engine for a decade straight? That's impressive. Sure they get things wrong, but they don't stop trying. Even as a public company. Even with 225 million users they keep trying new things.

I think that's a great lesson for companies to learn from, regardless of how hard you decide to personally push tactics for growth. So many companies lament their lack of growth, but what did they really try? What have they shipped that is actually focused on driving growth? PR, AdWords and a referral program does not make for a sustainable startup growth engine. I think the focus on the need to grow and the constant iteration and learning is something that has certainly given me a new perspective on how to think about startup growth.

Lots of good discussion going on. Definitely swing by and drop a question if you have it about Healthkit.

This is awesome.

The question becomes: What about links from sites like HuffingtonPost, Forbes, and Medium?

His title should really be "The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO" because guest blogging is still relevant for traffic, awareness, thought leadership, reaching new audiences, etc.

So while it may no longer a worthwhile SEO strategy, guest blogging still has some other PR-related upsides to consider.

Thousands of startups have been saying this _exact_ same thing for 10+ years in real estate. Out of all those that tried, only two have had major success.

Why?

Entrenched interests that don't want to give up control or data for fear of being disintermediated.

Regulations and association control that makes it tough to get traction & adoption.

Real estate is like anything. The vast majority of transactions are done by a fraction of the actual base. Getting traction quickly enough is very challenging.

So while it seems like a great space, and there is tons that _should_ and _could_ be done, it's a helluva battle to get things to change.

Great list. And while not a blog, <shameless plug> GrowthHackers.com is like HN for growth knowledge. </shameless plug>

The dual network + marketplace dynamic is amazing. They really took off in 2013.

Dumb SEO != growth hacking

What the author does get right, however, is that the need for growth puts a lot of pressure on a founding team and sometimes that pressure can push teams to take more risks than they should.

This is not "black hat" SEO. This is dumb SEO. Real black hats aren't so obvious/careless/thoughtless.

Facebook isn't their only problem. If Upworthy videos suddenly disappeared tomorrow, would anyone care? That's a bigger issue than Facebook.

The notification fatigue is going to set in. Not sure this is a sustainable growth lever.

Whether it lasts is another story—but their meteoric growth is definitely worth studying.

Really like this. Looking forward to using it.

This is fantastic. My dad and I would go around yelling this all the time when I was growing up.

Tough to get valid validation when the product your shipping doesn't solve the need for the end user due to its MVP-ness. If you deliver crap, it's hard to separate the feedback of "this is crap because it's missing xyz feature or looks ugly" vs. "this is crap because it doesn't solve a need."

I've found that people have a hard time separating the two in interviews.

Totally agree with this. If you're shipping something not remotely close to the product that actually solves the user's problem, then you're not shipping something that's viable.

The danger is shipping a non-viable product, get feedback that it's not needed because in it's MVP state doesn't solve a need, and pivot based on bad data, because you didn't deliver the thing that you believe people want.

This is so spot on. Asking questions is completely different than asking good questions. Conversion Rate Experts, who are pretty much the leaders in conversion rate optimization, talk about using questions to light up different areas of a user's motivations and mindset (they call it a psychogram, that's their branded term).

I like that mental model, because if you think about questions as tools to illuminate different areas that you are blind to (whether in your business or customer mindset) you ask different and more insightful questions.

If you want to figure out churn, and you're trying to figure out what you're blind to with your churn numbers you have a more investigative mind set and end up with better insights.

They dive more into it here: www.conversion-rate-experts.com/questions/

You're right—read the thread too fast. What's more interesting to me, is how many of these so called "transactional" emails actually pass the test?

More on that here: http://www.the-dma.org/press/PrimaryPurposeFactSheet.pdf

I read the thread too fast. Transactional emails are excluded under CAN-SPAM. But there are many times that "transactional emails" going out contain marketing/commercial content. There's a test for those emails to see if they pass: http://www.the-dma.org/press/PrimaryPurposeFactSheet.pdf

Many "transactional" emails probably fail the above test. It's shitty UX to make you login to opt-out, even if it's not against the law.

Edit: I missed the transactional part here. Transactional emails are excluded from CAN-SPAM. There's a test to figure out which is which: http://www.the-dma.org/press/PrimaryPurposeFactSheet.pdf

It's shitty UX regardless of whether it's a violation of law, IMO.

Original: It's a violation of CAN-SPAM law to put unsubscribe behind a login process. Asking for a password violates the requirement that no additional PII except for the email be required to process the opt-out.

From the FTC:

Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request.

http://www.business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-com...

It's a fair point, but to be honest, I think if anyone is OK with an ad-supported product, it's teens. They're used to free services being supported by ads. They get the tradeoff.

So I don't think the ads will drive them away, but they are an inherently fickle group, so something that is shinier, newer, and doesn't have every parent on the world using it will always be appealing.

"...but to suggest that it has the same impact as Facebook's photo sharing offering is completely ludicrous."

The point of Benedict's tweet, which is not associated with the analysis in any way, is merely a way to look at the traction or activity on the platforms. Totally agree that they're not one in the same—one is a "messaging" app, while the other is a network; but I do think that it shows that Snapchat is very much a real and budding user base that is not just a flash in the pan.

Their fanatical race to be there on day one of every new appstore launch, and ride the promotion that entailed was brilliant for the time.