willsmith72 5 days ago

how do you build a product without analytics? how do you measure the success and failure of every change?

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  • msgodel 5 days ago

    Many users tend to be pretty vocal when changes break things they like, you don't need to spy on them for that. Mail readers > analytics frameworks.

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    • willsmith72 5 days ago

      "not breaking things they like" is a very low bar for building a great product

      To be honest building things this way seems like such a competitive disadvantage I don't see how it could ever work at scale. Certainly all the big players are using them. If we shake our heads at the little players doing the same, we're just going to widen the moat

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      • adastra22 4 days ago

        Spying on your users does not give better feedback than simply asking your users (surveys, focus groups) and responding to the considered comments you receive. Spying and trying to infer intent is such a low bar to improve upon.

        Reply View 8 replies
      • collingreen 3 days ago

        Isn't that an argument against any piece of ethics? Am I missing something or are you arguing that gaining an advantage by being a bad actor means you shouldn't be a good actor because then you'd be at a disadvantage?

        I get that I am making a general statement from your original narrow scope so correct me if I'm wrong that you mean THIS bad thing is fine but other bad things are still bad.

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  • adastra22 5 days ago

    You know that generations of engineers built and sold products without spying on their users.

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