1. Today, @Jason's voicemail got "hacked" by a YC-alum looking to get attention for his new product in the name of a growth hack. (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QkTa-zWgIh8J:https://medium.com/%40avizolty/my-investment-hack-jason-calacanis-voicemail-e4b414659ad7)<p>2. We've seen plenty of stories about growth hack spamming of all sorts, especially for mobile virality.<p>There are plenty of details we could debate about specific nuances, but at a high/paradigm level, when is a "growth hack" appropriate or inappropriate?
Most growth hacks are inappropriate. It's not a risk-free endeavor. It hedges on whether the customer would actually be annoyed enough to stop using the service in disgust, which is uncommon. (of course, hacking a voicemail would have expected consequences)
If you ask the HN crowd, effectively all growth hacks will be considered spam/inappropriate. Case in point:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8455138" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8455138</a><p>In general, tech people believe that any message of any kind that may result in revenue, clicks, or new users for the sender is spam. I think real users consider unsolicited messages that don't deliver value to them to be spam, and welcome things that do deliver some value to them.
Most "growth hacks" are not "hacks" in the malicious sense but rather hacks in the sense of doing something clever. (see "life hack", etc.)
This clearly crosses that line and even though they claim it wasn't malicious, it's an invasion of someone's personal space. I'd expect this to backfire massively, it shows a tremendous lack of judgment.