Zendesk should've left this alone. I can't even fathom why they'd start. The products don't look alike. They are takes on the same name, help / support desk, which is a standard name.
I don't want to rag on Zendesk. I've been using them for years. But with stupid remarks like this, their incredibly slow / almost non-existent development on the product, and lackluster support have me keeping an eye out for replacements.
Kind of dangerous with stuff like Assistly looming out there.
That said, I'm not sure an entire domain name was warranted for this. I thought it was just a blog post at first.
Even if they did it will simply be a short lived bump unless the product and service is measurably better. If it is then in the long run it shouldn't matter either way.
However, I do think their criticisms of Zendesk and their paid blogger's method of product 'evangelism' are fair and they have every right to take their shot and fire back a bit. It's all good, the better product development team will most likely win either way.
Girish, you pull in a random quote about nationality from a source absolutely unrelated to ZenDesk as a means of sensationalizing your argument. It's a valid conversation and thread of discussion, but it has nothing to do with your dealings with ZenDesk.
If your product is as good as you say it is, I'd leave out the part about nationality and focus the message on your product, not incendiary sensationalism.
edit: Thought I'd add: I'm from India and am not associated with ZenDesk, FreshDesk or any other Desk company.
Looks like I won't be using either of these products.
Think of all that could have been accomplished on the product had they not been squabbling and setting up websites to argue with one another.
No one comes out on top in situations like this. I think it's best to end it with something like: "I'm sorry you feel that way. We'll let the customers decide."
I think Freshdesk might come out on top on this. I know Zendesk but I've never heard of Freshdesk. Now I know them because of this drama. It's on HN front page and some HN readers might become potential customers. It's free media coverage for Freshdesk. (Zendesk doesn't need this because most already know who they are). I think it was a bad move by Zendesk.
Seriously? Creating that page just got Freshdesk on the HN homepage and hurt Zendesk's reputation very badly. That's a twofer in my book.
The fact that Zendesk is using "analyst" payola smacks of the worst practices of four quadrant research firms and enterprise software. "Want to the upper-right quadrant? Sure thing, the price will be..."
So at least in this case, it was exposed and we can properly adjust the value of all involved's reputations.
It's a bad move for FreshDesk's company culture. It's a worse move for ZenDesk but a bad move for FreshDesk.
They took this and made it a part of their company by registering a domain name and making a big, glittery page about it. Also, since ZenDesk isn't exactly a behemoth, and it names names, it's quite personal.
I'm sure it will. It doesn't change my perception of them. In my opinion, anyone who thinks taking the time to create a web page for an argument or who thinks a product in the same field with a similar name is a copycat doesn't care about me, the customer.
They should be spending their time improving the product, coming up with new ideas, or responding to legitimate support inquiries.
Neither of these companies showed any "brilliant" response. Both end up looking bad.
Sure. You can argue the publicity was worth something but I am certainly turned off by the way they went about it.
They could have mockingly made a fo-ZenDesk logo or any number of other things that didn't make it look like they are on the defensive.
Either way, as a customer I am more concerned about either of these companies using ANY of their time on this. Regardless of how much time they spent, it reflects on where their priorities lie.
I agree. Guy Kawasaki suggests companies should pick fights with better known rivals. Apple vs. IBM back in the day is a perfect example.
I now know who Freshdesk is (didn't before) and might consider them in the future. We used to use Zendesk but found it too expensive for our needs. Plug: we use Tender.
> They should be spending their time improving the product, coming up with new ideas, or responding to legitimate support inquiries.
Oh, that's silly. Writing up and posting a small 1-page website did not take any time at all away from "coming up with new ideas, or responding to legitimate support inquiries".
It's fine if you don't like it, but don't act like they were somehow derelict in their normal duties by making this.
The amount of time spent in this specific instance is irrelevant. The fact that they were interested enough to put any effort into such a trivial argument and the way they responded is the issue.
This kind of response is a double-edged sword. The majority of comments in this thread seem to support the idea as a marketing ploy and that is fine. However, the other side of damaging the company's reputation & culture needs to be considered.
I do not want to deal with companies who make it a common practice to respond to slight arguments with long posts and websites instead of dealing with more important support issues, features, and bug fixes.
Time is a tradeoff. It's a finite resource that needs to be used wisely. It reflects poorly on your company (especially an early stage startup) when you publicly spend it doing things like this.
If either of these companies are serious about their products they would not be spending time responding to trivialities like this and would let the customers and product speak for themselves.
> anyone who thinks taking the time to create a web page for an argument
It's marketing, pure and simple. And if you think any company that spends time/money on marketing/PR doesn't care about you, the customer, you're going to have to have trouble finding any companies you want to give your money to.
it's just another form of marketing. spending resources on marketing is a valid approach when you need to stand out from your competitors.
with this new campaign, they're likely to get an infusion of customers and cash, which will in turn be more beneficial to their product than the 30 minutes it must have taken them to set up the mud slinging website.
Bottom line is who cares? It doesn't have to be a help desk revolution if switching customers like it better and if they don't then it will probably flame out and die.
Either way I'm not really impressed (I'd guess most consumers aren't impressed) by pointless personal bickering. Marketing based on negative sentiment is not effective.
If negative marketing didn't work, we wouldn't have negative campaigning. The point of it isn't to boost your brand so much as it is to suppress your opponent's.
However, it alienates the undecided. Mudslinging works best when targeted to base voter blocs. We rarely see it in product advertising, though, because of this fear of alienation. It takes a very well-put-together campaign to attack your competition without giving them too much exposure. The last effective one in recent memory is probably Mac vs. PC, and that focused on targeting the frustrations of current PC users. Often you see it set up in that David vs. Goliath light, which is what I think Freshdesk is trying to do here.
This however, isn't marketing. Or, at least, didn't start that way. It started with what you said: pointless personal bickering. There's no reason for it and Zendesk should probably have never have brought up Freshdesk in the first place, negative comments or not. Freshdesk took it as an opportunity to do a compare/contrast while people were paying attention. I'm guessing it has zero effect on sales in the long run, though.
(Personally, I'm now even more glad with our choice of using Assistly.)
You know you are doing something right when people hate you.. Seems like a odd thing for them to get into a pissing contest with these guys. First of all, you're acknowledging their existence and what can you do to prevent them from doing what they're doing?
This whole thing is really juvenile. The Zendesk guys look a lot worse here, but by making such a big deal out of it and turning it into an obvious PR stunt the Freshdesk folks aren't doing themselves any favors either. I understand it's difficult and highly offensive when a competitor blatantly bashes you but don't overreact and bring yourself down to their level.
Disclaimer: I'm the founder of Helpjuice.com. We compete with Zendesk's knowledge base.
This is so rude from Zendesk. In case you think someone has ripped of your product, in any way, you (as the CEO of a 30+ company with 10,000 customers) SHOULD NEVER, EVER write something like that.
I'm 100% with Freshdesk on this one specifically because of the tone of Zendesk and Freshdesk. The way Mikkel responded to Freshdesk is silly and childish.
If someone were to make a knock off of my product, I wouldn't tweet at them like Mikkel did. Or support one of my buddies (who is perhaps disguised as a blogger for blog XYZ) that's trolling a company's image, saying that they're the same as Zendesk. Or calling them Indian cowboys.
Zendesk, I hope you understand that you've turned me (an actual person who supports everything you do, and someone who talks to the folks at Assistly with a great and friendly tone) into someone who honestly hopes you loose this "battle" and have left a nasty look in a lot of people's eyes.
I don't know much about Freshdesk's product, but I know the way they reacted was nice and professional (exactly the opposite of how you responded). +1 on that.
Lesson learned: You don't do marketing by bashing on someone's product without looking like an ass (and perhaps loosing a couple customers).
P.S.: (to the Freshdesk folks) Congrats on stepping up and putting time in to create a page like this. I would have maybe included screenshots of the product to further help your customers understand that you're not a knock off of Zendesk.
It should be noted that the person who called them Indian cowboys has no relation, direct or indirect, with ZenDesk. That tweet is masterfully used by FreshDesk to stir emotions in the reader.
There isn't too many arguments in play. One thinks Freshdesk is knockoff of Zendesk, the other one makes a website describing how it isn't. The real play is the choice of words and how Mikkel("Indian cowboys", the RIP OFF comment, etc.) went on about this, and how Zendesk responded
The customers are there to tell whether they're a knock off or not. I don't want to say anything as I'm not a customer.
Correct, it was @cloudgroupsyd (Christian Marth), who promptly apologized and explained what message it was trying to originally say.
Though he should've learned from Michael Richards and never said something that stupid in the first place. He had plenty of characters to phrase it right in his original tweet. But you know what they say about hindsight...
It wasn't an apology at all. This is what he said:
@mrgirish not attacking your nationality only your lack of innovation for product development, if you were offended in any way sorry
Let's parse that.
@mrgirish not attacking your nationality only your lack of innovation for product development - here he attempts to justify himself, by trying to explain what he meant.
if you were offended in any way sorry - here he says he is sorry if @mrgirish was offended - NOT that he was sorry for offending.
That's like me saying "Please come out and have Thai with me and my friends. Oh - you don't like Thai food? Sorry to hear that - will I see you there anyway?". In both cases there is no acknowledgement of wrongdoing, and in both cases the other person is effectively blamed for either being offended or for not liking Thai.
I agree with what you said except for the last part. I think it was a great call NOT to include screenshots of their product, otherwise it would totally come across like they are trying to (directly) use the controversy to sell their product.
Including a side by side comparison of features almost gets them there but not quite since its still relevant to the article itself.
Kudos to freshdesk for a tactful reply to what could have easily spiraled down to a pathetic childish argument. And in the mean time Zendesk's brand was hurt and freshdesk got front page in HN. Brilliant!
A one-sided side-by-side comparison does get them there. Only points where the Freshdesk side is tied or wins (or is "coming soon") are displayed in the table.
I'm sure Zendesk does something better than Freshdesk.
This might be a good lesson in don't feed the monster so it gets more attention.
When the big guy talks smack about a presumably smaller guy, it's because they're threatened?
Who cares if their pricing is a rip off, it's good for Zendesk if Freshdesk is a ripoff, because no one will use it. By saying and doing nothing Freshdesk could spiral into a blackhole of me never hearing about it.
Instead Zendesk put Freshdesk on it's own level by talking about it as an equal.
Zendesk used it's brand power to legitimize Freshdesk as an option just by talking about them like this.
Instead of never seeing Freshdesk, I checked out a Zendesk competitor because of Zendesk, with more than normal scrutiny. One feature I now like about Freshdesk is that it manages multiple SLA's.
Exactly. Before this I'd never heard of either one of them. Probably hard to keep in mind from the inside, but for most tech companies, almost nobody knows you exist. Certainly less than that number know about any of your smaller competitors.
If you think that will help the HN community,I will. I have another post almost ready where I wanted to share my Series A fundraising experience . But then this happened!
Christian Marth (@cloudgroupsyd)
has a lot of explaining for that ridiculous and risible "Indian cowboy" dig. Twenty times worse because he doubled down on it while backpeddling.
Normally comments about someone's perceived race (I didn't know there was more than one human race) is reserved for idiots who get their education about the world from tv.
The indian cowboy slur against Freshdesk is beyond ignorant. Especially for a technie. They're usually pretty good for researching.
Maybe Christian Marth should learn indians invented counting, the pentium chip, hotmail, fiber optics and lots of other things without which our ability to bask in our own glory is not as possible.
If they're not perfect, but as we can see from Zendesk, neither are others.
Slightly off-topic: anyone got any ideas on how to innovate in this niche? I am always looking to add to my idea pile :) (See here: http://ideashower.posterous.com)
Wow what a craptastic response from Zendesk. I think it is fine to have a bit of a spar over features in competing products but you have to keep it civil.
"Rip-off"? It's a help desk service for Pete's sake, not the Xerox GUI or the Page-rank. If Freshdesk can deliver the same value to customers for a fraction of Zendesk's cost, kudos to them.
This whole spat just highlights one of those truths that's evident to those in the industry:
There is no such thing as a good idea, only good execution.
Being first doesn't count for anything. Having a vaguely similar name doesn't count for anything. In the end, only how well your product works, how many users you can attract and retain, and how much value it provides matter.
There is such a thing as a good idea, it's just not very defensible, because once it appears to be working well as a business, the copycats come out of the woodwork.
As much as I'd like to side with the guy getting picked on (Freshdesk), Zendesk is completely right. Ignoring the interface and naming similarities, you can't complain about ZenDesk on Twitter without multiple Freshdesk spammers bombarding you. Sure there's nothing illegal about it, but they're obnoxious with the "a customer of a rival is complaining, I MUST CONVERT THEM!" concept.
Something about the whole freshdesk attitude really rubs me the wrong way. Not saying zendesk is in the right either. I just feel like I read the whole ripoffornot page and cringe. Definitely doesn't seem like the type of company I would want to give my time or money.
A couple people complained about their product on twitter and they built a whole page responding to it? In it, they respond to the criticism by making personal attacks against those who complained about them? Really weird.
Stop starting flame wars, start making a decent product.
Yeah, I think that's the problem with these kinds of flame wars. Is freshdesk right that the criticism about them was out of line? Yes. Does responding by saying the criticism "reflects poorly on the intellectual ability of the person making the judgement" and "[criticizer should] exercise better judgement and ethics when making negative comments about a company" seem heavy-handed and just as ridiculous as the initial criticism? In my opinion, yes.
I've had people call me every name in the book over my projects: a copy-cat, a sad and pathetic developer taking advantage of people and those are just a couple off the top of my head. Did I respond by calling those people ignorant or stupid or unethical? No. I just let it be. I feel good about what I'm doing and I keep trying to make products I'm proud of. Haters gonna hate.
> Passing judgement on Product innovation based on the founder’s nationality reflects poorly on the intellectual ability of the person making the judgement.
They are complaining that nationalist insults or racist insults make the speaker look like an idiot. Is this ridiculous, heavy-handed, and unfair?
Perhaps it is simply reflective of the fact that current culture looks down on racists.
Look, I hate racism. I grew up the midwest and saw the terrible things that racism can do to a culture.
But my argument is, what does Freshdesk gain from going back and forth with @cloudgroupsyd? Beyond that, @cloudgroupsyd apologized but still they chose to bring up this quote to rabble-rouse and make personal attacks against him. We all say stupid stuff, we all make mistakes. Especially in this world of 140 characters or less. What more do they want the dude to do? Become a crusader for Freshdesk? Apologize to them in person?
I'm a firm believer in forgiveness. Someone wrongs you and they apologize. What do you do? You move on. You don't write a blog post about.
I don't know. There's no apology. Just a half assed explanation.
Taking my english skills, calling someone an indian cowboy, is saying indians (posers) trying to be cowboys (the real deal).
Literally, figuratively, metaphorically is definitely saying more than what it's not. And it's not positive.
Instead of discussing facts, @cloudgroupsys' small mindedness to discuss and expose their ignorance (and what likely shows in many other things) simply, cannot, be overlooked.
"Cowboy" is a term a developer often uses to describe someone who develops something without thinking it through properly, often fails to test, and ignores the consequences.
It's often used like this: "He's a real cowboy - he wrote a SQL query that he tested on his own machine and then deleted data when he deployed it to production".
You are correct - it is an insulting term in this context.)
How on earth did you get to freshdesk making personal attacks based on this page? I'm gobsmacked you managed to so severely misread the whole thing. The entire point of the page is to point out personal attacks made against them and then respond to the rip-off comment. Supposedly they did make a decent product already.
My point is, they respond to the personal attacks by making personal attacks against the people who made them. An eye for an eye. In my opinion, they sunk down to the level of the people who were criticizing them. Making a good product speaks for itself, you don't have to have this petty back and forth.
Taking a tweet from someone with 73 followers, throwing it front of thousands of people (maybe more) and saying that the tweet "reflects poorly on the intellectual ability of the person making the judgement" is a personal attack to me. You can argue that they're right, but does the punishment really fit the crime? It seems in poor judgement to publicly shame some dude who's comments would of otherwise gone unnoticed.
The someone with 73 followers made a racist comment. Calling a competitor "indian cowbows" does reflect poorly on the intellectual ability of the person making the judgment.
Don't throw all the blame on the Freshdesk people. Everyone is responsible for what they say - and it appears to me that you're eager to let the 'someone with 73 followers' off the hook.
"A couple people complained about their product on twitter and they built a whole page responding to it?"
The CEO of Zendesk made the comment "@benkepes you know what they say. Imitation is the sincerest from of WAIT-WHAT-A-FREAKING-RIP-OFF! ;)"
Even if the allegation is correct, that is no way for a CEO to represent his company. Perhaps he should have contacted Freshdesk (privately) and told them if he thought there were trademark or patent issues, only bringing anything public if they refused to cooperate. If not, he probably should not have replied to the original comment at all.
@ecaron - On that day,I did not know that someone else from my team was responding to you. As a startup we were just too eager to respond. I had sent you a grand total of two tweets and the second tweet was actually to apologize for the inadvertent ganging up - http://twitpic.com/7oh3ly
No. The only point I can see here is that you tried to make Freshdesk look like assholes with your comment "it took several days for @vshankar90 and @mrgirish to stop harassing me on Twitter."
Which they aren't. It would seem that you were exaggerating at best and lying at worst.
Poaching dissatisfied customers of a competitor only proves that they're targeting some low hanging fruit (which is a good thing in this case)
Sorry but that doesn't make any sense. Freshdesk operate in the same field and will naturally have some client overlap. If they spot an unhappy Zendesk user surely it is worth making them aware that there is an alternative that may prove to be a better fit? The opposite would also be valid for unhappy Freshdesk users.
In PR right and wrong have different meanings that true and false. Mikkel was wrong here because he acknowledged, supported, and then fueled a competing idea in the market helping establish in some small way Freshdesk.
When you are leading, don't elevate small fry onto the same media frame as you by debating with them. You just give them (potentially) free access to your entire expensively earned PR channel for free.
The help desk field is crowded. A quick search reveals that at least half a dozen of the large number of companies in that space have "desk" in their name. Any analyst that thinks that putting "desk" in the name of a help desk product is a "blatant attempt to piggyback" off of another help desk product with "desk" in the name is an idiot or is being paid to make that observation. (In this case, it was the latter, although that doesn't preclude the former).
Being first is worthless in and off itself. Execution and customer service are what counts. If you are:
a) an entrepreneur; and
b) think that "rip-offs" like this one are in some way unethical...
... you need to get your head out of your ass, ASAP!
Taking other peoples' great ideas and applying them to make your own product even better is not called "ripping somebody off". That process is called "business".
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 268 ms ] threadI don't want to rag on Zendesk. I've been using them for years. But with stupid remarks like this, their incredibly slow / almost non-existent development on the product, and lackluster support have me keeping an eye out for replacements.
Kind of dangerous with stuff like Assistly looming out there.
That said, I'm not sure an entire domain name was warranted for this. I thought it was just a blog post at first.
I wonder if these tactics actually have a measurable impact on sales?
/out
However, I do think their criticisms of Zendesk and their paid blogger's method of product 'evangelism' are fair and they have every right to take their shot and fire back a bit. It's all good, the better product development team will most likely win either way.
If your product is as good as you say it is, I'd leave out the part about nationality and focus the message on your product, not incendiary sensationalism.
edit: Thought I'd add: I'm from India and am not associated with ZenDesk, FreshDesk or any other Desk company.
Think of all that could have been accomplished on the product had they not been squabbling and setting up websites to argue with one another.
No one comes out on top in situations like this. I think it's best to end it with something like: "I'm sorry you feel that way. We'll let the customers decide."
It's like playing chess. Zendesk made a bad move and Freshdesk used that move to respond brilliantly.
The fact that Zendesk is using "analyst" payola smacks of the worst practices of four quadrant research firms and enterprise software. "Want to the upper-right quadrant? Sure thing, the price will be..."
So at least in this case, it was exposed and we can properly adjust the value of all involved's reputations.
They took this and made it a part of their company by registering a domain name and making a big, glittery page about it. Also, since ZenDesk isn't exactly a behemoth, and it names names, it's quite personal.
They should be spending their time improving the product, coming up with new ideas, or responding to legitimate support inquiries.
Neither of these companies showed any "brilliant" response. Both end up looking bad.
And at the same time, by picking (or rather extending) a fight with the industry leader, they are gaining lots of visibility for their product.
Was it worth it for FreshDesk to put in the 2 hours to defend their reputation? Of course. How is that not brilliant?
They could have mockingly made a fo-ZenDesk logo or any number of other things that didn't make it look like they are on the defensive.
Either way, as a customer I am more concerned about either of these companies using ANY of their time on this. Regardless of how much time they spent, it reflects on where their priorities lie.
I now know who Freshdesk is (didn't before) and might consider them in the future. We used to use Zendesk but found it too expensive for our needs. Plug: we use Tender.
Oh, that's silly. Writing up and posting a small 1-page website did not take any time at all away from "coming up with new ideas, or responding to legitimate support inquiries".
It's fine if you don't like it, but don't act like they were somehow derelict in their normal duties by making this.
This kind of response is a double-edged sword. The majority of comments in this thread seem to support the idea as a marketing ploy and that is fine. However, the other side of damaging the company's reputation & culture needs to be considered.
I do not want to deal with companies who make it a common practice to respond to slight arguments with long posts and websites instead of dealing with more important support issues, features, and bug fixes.
Time is a tradeoff. It's a finite resource that needs to be used wisely. It reflects poorly on your company (especially an early stage startup) when you publicly spend it doing things like this.
If either of these companies are serious about their products they would not be spending time responding to trivialities like this and would let the customers and product speak for themselves.
It's marketing, pure and simple. And if you think any company that spends time/money on marketing/PR doesn't care about you, the customer, you're going to have to have trouble finding any companies you want to give your money to.
with this new campaign, they're likely to get an infusion of customers and cash, which will in turn be more beneficial to their product than the 30 minutes it must have taken them to set up the mud slinging website.
I will be reminded of this incident every time i see the Zendesk logo when i submit a ticket on a site that uses them.
What an awful way to lose respect and damage credibility.
So my question for FreshDesk is this ... How is your service more innovative than ZenDesk?
They are a business, they want to make money. Consumers will choose whichever product they prefer. Everybody wins. End of story.
Either way I'm not really impressed (I'd guess most consumers aren't impressed) by pointless personal bickering. Marketing based on negative sentiment is not effective.
However, it alienates the undecided. Mudslinging works best when targeted to base voter blocs. We rarely see it in product advertising, though, because of this fear of alienation. It takes a very well-put-together campaign to attack your competition without giving them too much exposure. The last effective one in recent memory is probably Mac vs. PC, and that focused on targeting the frustrations of current PC users. Often you see it set up in that David vs. Goliath light, which is what I think Freshdesk is trying to do here.
This however, isn't marketing. Or, at least, didn't start that way. It started with what you said: pointless personal bickering. There's no reason for it and Zendesk should probably have never have brought up Freshdesk in the first place, negative comments or not. Freshdesk took it as an opportunity to do a compare/contrast while people were paying attention. I'm guessing it has zero effect on sales in the long run, though.
(Personally, I'm now even more glad with our choice of using Assistly.)
This is so rude from Zendesk. In case you think someone has ripped of your product, in any way, you (as the CEO of a 30+ company with 10,000 customers) SHOULD NEVER, EVER write something like that.
I'm 100% with Freshdesk on this one specifically because of the tone of Zendesk and Freshdesk. The way Mikkel responded to Freshdesk is silly and childish.
If someone were to make a knock off of my product, I wouldn't tweet at them like Mikkel did. Or support one of my buddies (who is perhaps disguised as a blogger for blog XYZ) that's trolling a company's image, saying that they're the same as Zendesk. Or calling them Indian cowboys.
Zendesk, I hope you understand that you've turned me (an actual person who supports everything you do, and someone who talks to the folks at Assistly with a great and friendly tone) into someone who honestly hopes you loose this "battle" and have left a nasty look in a lot of people's eyes.
I don't know much about Freshdesk's product, but I know the way they reacted was nice and professional (exactly the opposite of how you responded). +1 on that.
Lesson learned: You don't do marketing by bashing on someone's product without looking like an ass (and perhaps loosing a couple customers).
P.S.: (to the Freshdesk folks) Congrats on stepping up and putting time in to create a page like this. I would have maybe included screenshots of the product to further help your customers understand that you're not a knock off of Zendesk.
Why would you decide who is right based on tone?
Why not on the validity of their argument?
The customers are there to tell whether they're a knock off or not. I don't want to say anything as I'm not a customer.
Though he should've learned from Michael Richards and never said something that stupid in the first place. He had plenty of characters to phrase it right in his original tweet. But you know what they say about hindsight...
Sorry, but that wasn't much of an apology for a racist slur.
@mrgirish not attacking your nationality only your lack of innovation for product development, if you were offended in any way sorry
Let's parse that.
@mrgirish not attacking your nationality only your lack of innovation for product development - here he attempts to justify himself, by trying to explain what he meant.
if you were offended in any way sorry - here he says he is sorry if @mrgirish was offended - NOT that he was sorry for offending.
That's like me saying "Please come out and have Thai with me and my friends. Oh - you don't like Thai food? Sorry to hear that - will I see you there anyway?". In both cases there is no acknowledgement of wrongdoing, and in both cases the other person is effectively blamed for either being offended or for not liking Thai.
Including a side by side comparison of features almost gets them there but not quite since its still relevant to the article itself.
Kudos to freshdesk for a tactful reply to what could have easily spiraled down to a pathetic childish argument. And in the mean time Zendesk's brand was hurt and freshdesk got front page in HN. Brilliant!
I'm sure Zendesk does something better than Freshdesk.
When the big guy talks smack about a presumably smaller guy, it's because they're threatened?
Who cares if their pricing is a rip off, it's good for Zendesk if Freshdesk is a ripoff, because no one will use it. By saying and doing nothing Freshdesk could spiral into a blackhole of me never hearing about it.
Instead Zendesk put Freshdesk on it's own level by talking about it as an equal.
Zendesk used it's brand power to legitimize Freshdesk as an option just by talking about them like this.
Instead of never seeing Freshdesk, I checked out a Zendesk competitor because of Zendesk, with more than normal scrutiny. One feature I now like about Freshdesk is that it manages multiple SLA's.
P.S., I use neither Zendesk or Freshdesk.
yea, I read it that way at first but I don't think that is what they are saying. "Knockoff" is probably what they meant.
Maybe some folks start to believe their own legend too much. Originality and innovation is far rarer than we'd like to think.
Can you write a post in a week to let us know how many customers you gained from this? If you can find out how many came from ZenDesk, even better.
The indian cowboy slur against Freshdesk is beyond ignorant. Especially for a technie. They're usually pretty good for researching.
Maybe Christian Marth should learn indians invented counting, the pentium chip, hotmail, fiber optics and lots of other things without which our ability to bask in our own glory is not as possible.
If they're not perfect, but as we can see from Zendesk, neither are others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy#Negative_associations
Having said that I am grateful freshdesk is there to spur some innovation.
There is no such thing as a good idea, only good execution.
Being first doesn't count for anything. Having a vaguely similar name doesn't count for anything. In the end, only how well your product works, how many users you can attract and retain, and how much value it provides matter.
(I called them a rip-off of Zendesk back in late October - http://mobile.twitter.com/ecaron/status/123594375560302592 - and it took several days for @vshankar90 and @mrgirish to stop harassing me on Twitter...)
A couple people complained about their product on twitter and they built a whole page responding to it? In it, they respond to the criticism by making personal attacks against those who complained about them? Really weird.
Stop starting flame wars, start making a decent product.
I've had people call me every name in the book over my projects: a copy-cat, a sad and pathetic developer taking advantage of people and those are just a couple off the top of my head. Did I respond by calling those people ignorant or stupid or unethical? No. I just let it be. I feel good about what I'm doing and I keep trying to make products I'm proud of. Haters gonna hate.
> Passing judgement on Product innovation based on the founder’s nationality reflects poorly on the intellectual ability of the person making the judgement.
They are complaining that nationalist insults or racist insults make the speaker look like an idiot. Is this ridiculous, heavy-handed, and unfair?
Perhaps it is simply reflective of the fact that current culture looks down on racists.
But my argument is, what does Freshdesk gain from going back and forth with @cloudgroupsyd? Beyond that, @cloudgroupsyd apologized but still they chose to bring up this quote to rabble-rouse and make personal attacks against him. We all say stupid stuff, we all make mistakes. Especially in this world of 140 characters or less. What more do they want the dude to do? Become a crusader for Freshdesk? Apologize to them in person?
I'm a firm believer in forgiveness. Someone wrongs you and they apologize. What do you do? You move on. You don't write a blog post about.
You can argue if that apology was enough or if it was a full apology. But I feel like saying "he didn't apologize" is an oversimplification.
Taking my english skills, calling someone an indian cowboy, is saying indians (posers) trying to be cowboys (the real deal).
Literally, figuratively, metaphorically is definitely saying more than what it's not. And it's not positive.
Instead of discussing facts, @cloudgroupsys' small mindedness to discuss and expose their ignorance (and what likely shows in many other things) simply, cannot, be overlooked.
"Cowboy" is a term a developer often uses to describe someone who develops something without thinking it through properly, often fails to test, and ignores the consequences.
It's often used like this: "He's a real cowboy - he wrote a SQL query that he tested on his own machine and then deleted data when he deployed it to production".
You are correct - it is an insulting term in this context.)
Cowboy coding should have been super obvious to me, lol.
Don't throw all the blame on the Freshdesk people. Everyone is responsible for what they say - and it appears to me that you're eager to let the 'someone with 73 followers' off the hook.
The CEO of Zendesk made the comment "@benkepes you know what they say. Imitation is the sincerest from of WAIT-WHAT-A-FREAKING-RIP-OFF! ;)"
Even if the allegation is correct, that is no way for a CEO to represent his company. Perhaps he should have contacted Freshdesk (privately) and told them if he thought there were trademark or patent issues, only bringing anything public if they refused to cooperate. If not, he probably should not have replied to the original comment at all.
Which they aren't. It would seem that you were exaggerating at best and lying at worst.
Poaching dissatisfied customers of a competitor only proves that they're targeting some low hanging fruit (which is a good thing in this case)
When you are leading, don't elevate small fry onto the same media frame as you by debating with them. You just give them (potentially) free access to your entire expensively earned PR channel for free.
a) an entrepreneur; and
b) think that "rip-offs" like this one are in some way unethical...
... you need to get your head out of your ass, ASAP!
Taking other peoples' great ideas and applying them to make your own product even better is not called "ripping somebody off". That process is called "business".