Comment by hackermom | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hackermom | Hacker News Reader

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I like the idea a lot. It's brilliant. Regarding the removal of the app- and music sharing feature, I noticed that it was the number one complaint and reason for a 1-star review in the app store, and then I saw this on their website:

Q. What happened to the music bumping feature?

Listening to you and reviewing our usage data, it became clear that sharing music links wasn’t a great experience for you, our users. We have removed it for now to make the app simpler and easier to use.

Q. Why can’t I bump apps anymore?

Similar to music bumping, you made it clear that this was not a great feature and therefore, we have removed it to make the app simpler and easier to use.

Marketing tip: don't lie to your users in order to smoothen out the folds and creases, because that always rubs people the wrong way and always makes a company and its product look suspicious. Just say it like it is, "Sorry, guys. Copyright and anti piracy laws forced us to remove these features."

It's actually not a lie! Both features were legal: they shared App Store or iTunes links to the relevant app or song. This disappointed those users wanting to share the actual app or song and thus weren't used very frequently :)

It's more complicated than that though. A few months back when they removed those features, they used that spin to turn it into some free publicity that made it sound like they were unconventionally responding to their users. Now they're stuck with that lie, which I'm sure rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but I'll bet it was worth it just to have their name in some memorable headlines.

Now they're stuck with that lie, which I'm sure rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but I'll bet it was worth it just to have their name in some memorable headlines.

Not only are they playing fast and loose with insecure passing of private data, they also tell their users lies? Maybe deleting their app was the right choice for me.

That's not a lie. I've read through several hundred bump reviews and their app had very poor ratings from users who expected full app/music sharing. It was misleading in the first place to not give indications of limitations on those features, though. Edit: I had looked after Bump 3.0 and they had tons of 1 star reviews for removing the features, but now they're up to 4.5 stars, whereas they had ~2.5 on Bump 2.0

I understand that you are angry about this product (I don't really care about it except I guess the concept is kind of neat?), but your comment really wasn't a relevant and appropriate reply to my comment. In fact, I didn't even make the point about them lying; I assumed it as a premise in explaining why they might have seen it as a net marketing advantage to tell it.

It is not a lie, they were not sharing actual music or apps just links. This led to a ton of confusion and bad reviews on old app. Personally I think it was a really good idea to cut those features out. They also made the app much simpler to use in the process.

Well, I did not really mean to take a stance on whether it was a lie or not. My point was that if it was a lie, it would not be so clear cut that it was a poor marketing decision.

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