Features which by definition never generate sales are dead last on my priorities, too. I have to log into the Rails console to completely kill an account, as opposed to refunding or turning off billing.<p>These features are also frequently a usability cluster flop because users are absolutely impervious to wording like "If you tell us to delete this WE CANNOT GET IT BACK."
Just wanted to add this in:<p>Scott Balentine (CSM), Mar-03 10:29 am (PST):
Hey Omar,<p>At Yammer, our relationship is with our users. All data, whether from a free or paid network, cannot be deleted by Yammer. This would violate our Terms of Service. You as an Admin of a paid account can delete any data on the network. Like you said before, the data is owned by you. Since this data was not deleted before I downgraded you, I will re-upgrade you for however long you need to delete the data in your network at no charge to you. As a paid network, no individual users will have to delete anything at all.<p>You can delete messages using the "Delete" link under the "More" menu at the bottom of each post.<p>Let me know if you need anything else.<p>Scott<p>--
Delete each message manually. Please.
This is an unrelated rant, but aargh... what is up with the use of that text-shadow for _normal_ text? It's showing up everywhere nowadays: I don't mind it for headings, but how does anyone find it easier to read for huge blocks of text? And it almost always is accompanied by scrollbars that are super laggy.
>Why oh why have you guys built and application that I can’t leave easily?<p>I feel your pain, but isn't it obvious though? Increase the pain of leaving and you increase the likelihood of staying. Annoying, but effective.
I had this EXACT same issue with Yammer about 8 months ago. The experience of canceling my account made me want to bolt off their system and killed any hesitation I had. I checked out Presently (<a href="http://present.ly" rel="nofollow">http://present.ly</a>) the next day and after a week of using it, it erased all of our data randomly. No go. Not a great first impression. The following week we discovered Socialcast. And we've been VERY happy with Socialcast (<a href="http://www.socialcast.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.socialcast.com</a>) since that time.
I fail to see why people want to delete their accounts when they decide not to use a service any more. Why not simply stop logging in?<p>With Yammer it at least makes a little sense because there's possibly sensitive business data on there.<p>But I built and ran a moderately successful Facebook app and people bugged us about it constantly until we built the feature, but the motivations behind wanting to delete an account just baffled (and continues to baffle) me.
We're thoroughly disappointed that this experience with Yammer and our exit process didn't work out. The reality is that, up until this point, we hadn't gotten too many requests to batch delete all the data within a company network. As you all know, like in any quickly-growing startup, we need to prioritize what we build. We've always focused on the most requested features. That being said, we really have learned from this experience. We're considering ways in which we can communicate user and message deletion better to our users.<p>Of course, we've considered this issue in the past. There's also a business reason we haven't focused on building one-click network delete: we want to protect our customer companies from irreversible damage that can be caused by deleting an entire network. Each free user can delete only their own content, since only they <i>own</i> their content. You can still deactivate another user, for whatever reason, but if that user has an active email account, they can reactivate. As a premium user, which gives you admin controls, you are able to delete entire user accounts with all underlying posts.<p>We can do a better job of communicating the process of deletion and deactivation and the role that account type plays in the process. However, currently, we aren't able to offer the one-step network delete. Please rest assured that we take data security very seriously, regardless of the type of account you have.<p>I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on this.<p>- A Yammer Engineer.
Technical considerations aside it's still good practice to make it easier for customers to cancel. It makes them feel more comfortable signing up. Joel wrote a few great articles on it:
<a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/23.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/23.html</a>
If your new solution ends up making you unhappy you're probably much more likely to switch back if you can just resubscribe and have all your old data back.<p>If you trusted them with your data while you were using it they probably weren't expecting you to not trust them anymore once you left. Even as you delete every user by hand surely all that data is backed up somewhere?
People probably think that Yammer purposefully makes it difficult when the reality is that 1) departing customers are a small fraction of users and 2) it's difficult to prioritize highly a feature to "close an account".
From the website of al bogari Holdings, the company Omar is the CEO of:<p>"If you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by writing to or emailing us at marketing@albogari.com"<p>Case in point of building features valuable to customers and the company before those that are not. Why is there no feature on this website to unsubscribe from marketing, just as there is to subscribe? Because it's work to build one, and it doesn't have immediate benefit to the company.<p>On a side note, as CEO of a 35 year old international holding company - I find it odd that Omar is claiming to be the "little guy" in this thread.