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given two competing anythings the one that plays most aggressively wins in the short run (see ww2) but these tactics usually turn out to be short lived crutches. the path of user choice and openness (which starts with emptiness) is not going to win an a/b test but in the long run is likely to win the war. and its going to force you to come up with something genuinely compelling.

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At the end of the day a web app can do one of three things. It can delight it's users, it can exist and nobody cares or it can annoy it's users.

It's helpful for companies to think before they act. Is this action going to delight, annoy or have no impact? The companies that choose to delight their users will win over time. Delighted users tell their friends, which is the biggest form of social proof. Too many companies choose perceived short-term gains at the cost of annoying their users. That's not a long-term winning strategy.

This comment appears to be orthogonal to the discussion, which is rooted in a comment that says aggressive auto-follow (EAFP) is likely to outperform asking permission (LBYL).

Facebook is not an LBYL company, nor is Google, and Facebook and Google are crushing the social space.

What may be the case is that normal people are in fact delighted by the EAFP approach, and that the opinions of nerds are irrelevant.

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