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Comment by hahla | Hacker News Reader

I found it interesting when an unrelated twitter user posted that they shouldn't insult a "influencer" as it would just hurt their reputation. For some reason this struck a wrong chord with me, while the BetaPunch guys handled this entirely the wrong way, if they were in the right and a "influencer" didn't like what they had to say I wonder what would happen.

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Hi - I'm said twitter user; guess I said it wrong! Really anyone with a Twitter account and/or blog is an "influencer". The point is being in a netwide pissing match with customers is (obviously?) a bad idea.

I think it strikes the wrong chord because it shouldn't matter whether the person is an "influencer" or not — that's just not the way to talk to anybody when you're trying to build a brand, unless your brand is built on public spats

Exactly, treat every one of your customers with respect and if they choose a competing product, attempt to understand why instead of demanding, in a very passive aggressive way, that they become your customer or are grateful/thank you for some free service which you unilaterally provided.

Tech has a small but noticeable celebrity culture to it. Danielle has a decent number of twitter followers and has had articles at the top of HN at least a few times. I don't find it too surprising that she has some fans willing to defend her with a "You don't know who you're messing with!" message to the BetaPunch people.

I felt the same way. It's like celebrities who yell "don't you know who I am?!", but instead of being an A-lister, it's just someone with a few thousand Twitter followers.

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