DISQUS

kzat · 1 month ago

wow james hong isnt at HOT or NOT ??? so why did michael quote him.....?

james hong · 1 month ago

The comment I made in the original TC article was talking about when I WAS at HOTorNOT. I just made the comment that back then, we stopped offering offers because it seemed like all the offers that were performing were sketchy. I believe that is likely to still be true today, and I presume Mike agrees based on his assessment, and that is probably why he quoted me.

I'm not sure why Ms. Shukla thinks bringing up the fact that HOTorNOT uses offerpal now changes the validity of my opinion. That decision was made well after I left. A company that i AM involved with now, Slide, certainly made the decision not to run offers.

kzat · 1 month ago

james - thanks for chiming in.. but what i dont' understand is how MA thinks by quoting your experience from 4 years ago could possibly support his point, especially when fb platform opened only 2 years ago

does michael not know his facts?

boris131 · 1 month ago

Because Arrington makes it sound like you still represent HotorNot, when you don't. Arrington's story is full of holes. But then, he's not one to let the facts get in the way of a good story, is he?

prasen88 · 1 month ago

What are you guys talking about? This guy said no to this bullshit then, and says no to this bullshit now - its not about him representing hotornot - its about ethics, which he stuck to.

swang75 · 1 month ago

A simple read of James' profile shows that while he's no longer a part of HotorNot, he is deeply involved as an advisor and investor in multiple dominant social web companies so it's not like his knowledge of the current industry has grown stale.

Commenters claiming ignorance to the prominent, blatant continuing scammy lead gen offers that plague many leading Facebook games are astounding. It's akin to smokers who point to tobacco company-sponsored studies claiming that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer... a sad farce.

And people who claim that it's 'no big deal' discount how issues like this reduce the legitimacy and value of the WHOLE industry.

LIAD · 1 month ago

nothing for nothing, the way Anu handled herself in-front of Arrington at the conference over the weekend was a mistake and may end up costing her dearly.

I'm sure there would be less of a storm brewing had she handled the situation differently.

Morty · 1 month ago

This woman is a beast!

BlastOff Scam · 1 month ago

Well said Ron, that fact that everyone is doing it does not make it ethical. Fine print has always been a part of capitalism...just one that people hate.

boris131 · 1 month ago

Thanks for sharing the "real" side of the story, VentureBeat. It seems like Michael Arrington is just trying to stir the pot for the sake of getting traffic to his blog. Shukla is right -- there's nothing worse going on in social games than anywhere else on the Net. If the offers were truly as bad as Arrington makes them out to be, the channel would have been shut down long ago. Hats off to Shukla for standing up TC!

Ron Williams · 1 month ago

The FreeCreditReport.com scam has been running for years with national broadcast TV ads. The FTC has just recently tried to go after them but does not have the teeth to shut down an established corporation. The New York Times has a couple of timely reports http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/senat...

So the fact that the government has not stepped in to force Offerpal to stop the scams is not a green light from the government. Also, Offerpal's CEO claim that less than 1% of consumers complain about scams to Offerpal is a misdirection, most consumers have no idea Offerpal is behind the scenes powering these scams so they are stuck with trying to deal with their mobile phone company and credit cards and SuperRewards only provides a general email address, no phone number.

If Offerpal and SuperRewards really feel they are not ripping off consumers they should make it very clear they are part of the deal AND also provide OPT IN for any subscriptions as well as an email with a link to cancel. If consumers are in such love with these deals, they have nothing to lose right?

Ted Yu · 1 month ago

Wy not just call this what it is, a guest post. All of your questions are loaded and phrased in favor of offerpal. not a single tough 'question', just a forum for them to justify what they are doing

Btw, Dean, the reason they do not get complaints is because the Offerpal name is not mentioned anywhere. They are a middle-man, and they proxy most of their ads. Call facebook and ask them how many calls they get complaining about what are Offerpal offers, go on, do it.

Ron Williams · 1 month ago

More like an attempt to discredit Techcrunch by providing Offerpal a safe outlet.

Jayson · 1 month ago

Agree with Ted. This is a promotional piece for OfferPal loaded with softball questions. Where is the direct question about the legitimacy of quizzes that dupe users into submitting their mobile phone number and then charging a daily or monthly subscription? And let's be clear...take a look at any OfferPal wall and you'll see that these mobile offers - and not credit card offers- make up the vast majority of offers. Anu is spewing shit, double shit and bullshit.

mouseman · 1 month ago

The article on TechCrunch by the CEO of TrialPay says something that really undermines Shukla's repeated statement that there are few complaints by the users. It's because the users complain to the advertisers - NOT the offer provider. This is the fundamental problem and Shukla is quite pansy to bring this to the surface.

While true that the majority of users do not want to pay for social games, those that do pay with real money (not by taking offers). There's a deep underbelly of users who don't want to pay/don't INTEND to pay and take the mobile variety of offers (their parents pay for these and end up calling their mobile provider - not Offerpal because Offerpal remains invisible).

Facebook started cracking down in July. There are only two handful of offers that power ALL the offer provider systems. It takes 2 hours to pull them down - but they all reacted *after* Arrington's solid rant and Shukla's prissy reaction. They milked it while they could.

dennisyu · 1 month ago

Shut down the underlying advertisers or the mobile carriers and the ad networks will be forced clean, too-- solve the problem at the source. The point of my article on TechCrunch was that as a middleman, I was caught between the publishers and advertisers.

Kim Bjorkland · 1 month ago

yes let's shut down the mobile carriers....

I guess nobody here has actually tried to complete one of these purchases or understands the ecosystem between these offers and how the carriers are involved?

the carriers have been going crazy the past 4 years trying to claw back and penalize the scammers. they don't wnat their industry to turn into the next 1-900 lines. it's very very very difficult to get set up as a biller through the carriers. and if you make a mistake you have very hefty penalties and fines.

they even have stringent rules like you can't use the word 'free' and the font size of the pricing can't be below the fold and it needs to be the same font size as the offer. and when you make a purchase you have to double opt in. ie. you get a pin on your phone, the pin has to contain the pricing in the first string, then the user needs to buy the product again.

this is just muchadoaboutnothing.

Kim Bjorkland · 1 month ago

Firstly - GIRL POWER - Shukla handled herself very well and I don't think she acted inappropriately to Michael Arrington - Arrington doesn't realize what he's talking about and in typical MA style came out swinging before getting his facts straight. In fact, his rebuttal point was that "a lot of powerful people disagree with shukla" he was of course referring to the founder of Slide... uhm... okay 'powerful'? what does that mean in the valley? who cares, innovation is the most powerful thing MA you should know that.


Secondly - James Hong's comment is material. MA didn't disclose that Hong works for Slide now. He also didn't disclose that Hong's comment was related to 4 years ago. Clearly the 'offers' business aka the mobile scam ringtone business was the wild wild west 4 years ago. But everyone in the industry has done a lot of work to make it legit. From mobile operators through to to the platform vendors -- so why throw the baby out with the bath water?


Thirdly - how easy is it to call something a 'scam' in the MA/Tech crunch audience? if something is not free then it's instantly a 'scam'. Michael Arrington thinks the music industry is a scam. he thinks starbucks' insane profits are indicative of a scam. Should anybody seriously care what Michael Arrington thinks anymore?