Forum Discussion

jesse2's avatar
jesse2
Occasional Contributor
7 years ago

Can SmartBear stop using private messaging to solicit advertisements to community members?

I find it rather annoying that SmartBear uses private messaging to send forum members mass messages. Advertising is okay in my book, but masking advertisments as private messages is NOT OKAY. They are the only company that I know of that uses this practice to circumvents any normal means of notifying users to new things they are trying to push.

 

It seems really unreasonable that when I get a private message from the community forums that I already don't trust that it's from a user. I assume it's from SmartBear trying to push something into my face and I don't appreciate the means in which they are doing it. 

 

Please stop this practice. It destroys the integrity of private messaging. If SmartBear wants to show me something cool and new, don't mascaraed it as a private message.

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  • MrDysprosium's avatar
    MrDysprosium
    Contributor
    7 years ago

    I'm sure this thread is going to get deleted, but I'll drop my $.02 while it's up.

    This is a new low for corporate marketing. It's insane to think that a group of SB employees sat down and said to themselves "We should try and market to our customers more by abusing the private messages function in our help board".

    This is low, this is very low. I suggest you stop it immediately, there's a reason other companies don't do this and, no, it's not because you are the first geniuses to come up with the idea. 

     

    Look at this:

     

    It's ridiculous, and you should be ashamed of yourselves.

    • tristaanogre's avatar
      tristaanogre
      Esteemed Contributor
      7 years ago

      The SmartBear community news journals aren't soliciting ads necessarily but simply to summarize activity on the community here... the philosophy behind it is that this is a bit more than just a help forum but an actual community of folks with common goals of software testing and quality, specifically using the SmartBear tools.  To that end, being kept in the loop as to the activity across the community forums is actual kind of nice.... it indicates trends in conversations, where activity is happening, interesting topics, etc.

       

      But I understand the annoyance to some extent...  I guess an "opt-in/opt-out" would probably be nice... personally, I'd opt-in... but that's my opinion.

      • jesse2's avatar
        jesse2
        Occasional Contributor
        7 years ago

        I do agree that an opt-in/opt out feature would be nice. I just highly dislike the use of private messaging to communicate this to users.