Sadly Danielle's site is down so I can't read the original post. I also had the pleasure of interacting with BetaPunch's Twitter account a while back: they posted several tweets advertising that they were doing user testing for our service. I thought my co-founder had signed up for them but I still felt it was unethical to post details about clients publicly and asked them to tone down the tweets. The result was that they called me a "silicon valley douche"[1] which I can't help to find entertaining even still today. Only afterwards I learned that nobody from our company had signed up for them and they were using our name just to give the impression that we were using them.
I'm really sorry about the site, it went down so hard that I can't even get a cached version for Cloudflare to serve. Time to upgrade some things... personal blog is so neglected.
I highly recommend Jekyll and other static generated blog engines as they can handle high traffic and don't suffer from security problems. Hit me with an email if you need any advice, happy to help out.
Another great solution that doesn't involved changing anything in how you run your blog (or even moving off of Dreamhost), is a front-end cache like http://www.fastly.com/.
It's really affordable for personal sites, and for static sites like yours you'll be getting 98%+ cache hits – almost no traffic will ever hit your Dreamhost box, it will all come from their highly optimized Varnish caches around the world.
Learndot's blog is hosted on a ec2 small instance fronted by fastly, our launch article was on HN/Techcrunch/etc... simultenously and we never went over 10% cpu.
Yes, actually I have been a CloudFlare user for awhile but had paused it on my blog while dealing with a vulnerability. By the time traffic spiked and I turned it back on there was no way to reach the site to cache a copy. I also use the paid version for the Referly site and blog, and love it.
Dreamhost has one-click Cloudflare integration from the control panel, it will route your DNS for you. I would also use recommend a WP cache plugin to serve mostly static cached files. (edit - looks like you already knew this)
Yeah – I was and still am super grateful for the free test I received from BetaPunch (implemented feedback from it, too) but after seeing that "silicon valley douche" tweet, I am very glad I didn't become a paying customer.
I have also interacted with this guy in the past. I remembered our interactions to be fairly pleasant, so I was really shocked to see some of this nastiness.
Made me want to figure out what kind of person would pull stuff like this.
Turns out he's a kind of serial entrepreneur[1]. And not that it matters, but he didn't build BetaPunch himself.
He's a 28-year-old kid with a marketing degree, that's about it. I know a fair number of people in the Baltimore tech/startup scene and no one has ever heard of him before.
Ross presented BetaPunch at the Baltimore TechBreakfast (you should come if you're in town - it's pretty awesome). Here's the video of his presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAdI5mhpKsA
As an added data point, I am sort of plugged in to the Baltimore tech scene, and I have never heard of him, but as I said, I'm only sort of plugged in.
Personally, when I see a blog post like this I make a mental note about the author and the accused. I generally avoid both of them in the future. Yes, it says all of the bad things about the accused that the author lays out, but it also tells me the the author likes to stir up drama. When I do business, I like to do business with those companies that you often don't here about, positive or negative. The ones that just "do work". Companies like Mixpanel, for example. You only hear about them when they're offering some new feature. They don't blog about how somebody on Twitter did something dumb. And I just realized that this was dmor's personal blog, but hey guess what, I only have ever seen her picture on her blog associated with her company, so those are now linked and that's enough for me.
I couldn't disagree with this more. When people do something you find shady, you should complain! Loudly! This "keep your head down and don't stir up trouble" attitude is a huge part of why so many things never get fixed. And pointing out that a business has poor practices isn't drama; it's more like a review.
Personally, when I see a comment like this I make a mental note about the commenter. I generally avoid them in the future. Yes, the OP did in fact cause some drama, but it also tells me the commenter reacts irrationally. When I do business, I like to do business with those companies that you don't here [sic] about, acting rationally or irrationally. They don't comment about how someone was stirring up drama. And I just realized this was a comment on Hacker News, but hey guess what, that's enough for me.
You're certainly entitled to your personal opinion, but really? You're saying that it reflects poorly on someone to relay a story of poor treatment toward them? You don't find any value in knowing this? Have the experiences of others never influenced your own decisions?
The author let the other party's tweets speak for themselves. There was no unnecessary or subjective sensationalization. Personally, I found this an informative (and weighty) data point.
A company she'd had a bad experience with in the past tried to, in a tacky manner, engage her again by dismissing their competitor. She clearly cites why she does't use them anymore (because the company publicly tweeted she was using them, which anyone would be bent over), and the kid had the gall to say that she lacked class for not thanking him for a free trial. A. Free. Trial. And his biggest issue is that she never gave him free publicity for a service that she was trialing. Not "We're sorry about the previous confusion, we'd love to have you back," not "This was a misstep for us, how can we do better?" not "We took your feedback to heart and no longer announce this publicly."
We're talking about a personal Twitter account vs. a business one. Unless you're dealing with an absolute troll, you don't engage potential customers like this - especially when they have a completely valid point. Companies tweeting on your behalf or trying to use your likeness for publicity purposes is an issue that has come up multiple times here with much dismay. Why is it any different here?
This attitude is why I don't blog; I have a lot ideas for posts but a lot of them are how X can improve Y, and I tend to write with a "charged/enthusiastic" tone because, surprise, I'm passionate about this stuff.
I agree with Jeremy Bee on that comment page, her so-called attitude (which I'm failing to see at all here) in these tweets would be a non-issue if Danielle were male. Back-and-forths like this happen every day on Twitter; this is what the platform is best at. I'm honestly astounded that people are trying to shift any of the blame here on her for calling the guy out. She couldn't have been more indifferent about stating the truth of the matter, but apparently that makes her a drama bomb, "not a queen herself" and other ridiculously gender-charged labels.
So I'm not allowed to talk about bad experiences? This seems vastly overly reductionary and "nice" to a weird fault. If I eat at a restaurant and the service is bad, I'll tell my friends to avoid it. If someone representing a company offers poor customer service and acts like a jerk, I'm going to warn my friends.
Fascinating. A bit of digging suggests the founder, Ross Nochumowitz[1], has a second business as well: Big Boyz Bail Bonds[2] (note the identical avatars). He was CEO of the latter as recently as October[3].
Never having utilized the services of a bondsperson, I'm not qualified to comment on the similarity of the two businesses. Perhaps Ross can comment here!
Ouch, from your third link: "Paul Nochumowitz used a racial slur during the confrontation and, at one point, asked if Stansbury, who is African-American, 'wanted a banana.'"
You're right, just saying that the particular offensive quote was attributed to another member of that family. Still, I see what you are saying about birds of a feather.
I was like both of them. I was unable to solve a single problem without arguing. Emotions were the main motive behind every single exchange of arguments.
But I wasn't a CEO. I was just a teenager programmer unable to resolve disputes and prone to let ego guide my actions. I got better by maturing, studying and I even took a mediation course.
That said. Danielle, this is NOT how a CEO solve problems. Betapunch, what happened? I'm a client and never had a problem, I actually have been recommending your service to a lot of people.
Danielle and the betapunch employee who replied to her are unable to run serious businesses right now. God, I remember being called SOB by customers over the phone and replying 'Please, I'm sorry' even when the fault was not even close to ours.
> That said. Danielle, this is NOT how a CEO solve problems.
I'm obviously missing something here... what exactly did the author of the blog post do wrong?
A person who trialled a free service was asked why she no longer used the service, and she provided free feedback on why. They didn't like the answer and got mean (publicly).
In what universe is she even remotely in the wrong here?
Conflict can always be avoided and, when you lead people, this is your daily job. The blog post serves no purpose to Danielle. It might kill betapunch, but it will die the same. Why would you do that? You just found an opportunity to make something better!!! How great it would be if Danielle used her skills as a CEO to make betapunch understand how f'up their twitter tactics are.
As a CTO/COO (not a startup, large company) it actually makes me HAPPY when I turn _bad_ into something better. Changes do not come from sheer force, influence or conflict, it usually comes from understanding.
There is pure evil, where changes are impossible and there is nothing you can do, but this is not the case.
Edit: Read how jorde reacted to betapunch wrongdoing and, after that, a direct insult. That's a CEO.
A CEO's job is not to avoid conflict. In fact, I think it is probably quite the opposite. The startups that avoid conflict are usually full of yes men and they usually end up dead, from my experience. Writing this post was probably 10x more helpful to BetaPunch than anything else I could have done, although they seem so belligerent and willfully ignorant of their mistake that I am not sure it will have any impact.
Just some advice. It's not about "not being a yes man". It's about just laying low. There's no reason not to, and all you've done with your responses is make me want to avoid whatever you do, as well. No good can come from this type of crap.
>all you've done with your responses is make me want to avoid whatever you do
I guess you're going to avoid me for wanting to have a dialog about this. But you're right, only your opinion is valid, everyone is equally guilty and no one is allowed to dispute it, else they fear the wrath of Skywing avoiding them.
There's nothing to be gained from following him around and badgering him because he won't talk to you. You're stooping to his level, which is satisfyingly ironic given the topic.
He disengaged you pretty unabashedly, so do the rest of us a favor and stop beating him up over something mindlessly stupid. It reflects more on you than him. Remember how I called you a troll in the past? Bingo.
I was wondering if I knew the rest of your username. Nice of you to continue to stalk and harass me and call me names.
I made two whole comments in this thread (I didn't even realize they were the same person until you said something. I don't keep a black book of users to berate as you do). You just saw an opportunity to harass me some more. Leave me alone. For the third or fourth time. Maybe you wouldn't need so many accounts.
You literally contributed nothing except for to try to harass me more. How childish can you continue to be? Your little episode was like 7 months ago before you rage quit HN, it's time to let it go and get over your petty grudge, jsprinkles.
I have no way of contacting him out of band and he follows me around calling me names about something that upset him months ago. I guess I should be turn the cheek and ignore him.
Wait, you didn't realize it was the same person, but you said "I guess you're going to avoid me" since he didn't bite at your first confrontation? That doesn't add up.
I don't follow you around. Don't flatter yourself. You just contribute to a lot of threads (I'm hesitant to use the word contribute in this case). I didn't even realize I was replying to you until the end, when I added the last two sentences, and I would have said the same thing up until then to anybody.
You have a bit of a victim complex. I wasn't even harassing you.
Actually, I switch accounts when my karma gets too high, so I keep perspective and don't make "a name" for myself in the Hacker News comments. This one is due. I was hellbanned on jspthrowaway, I believe, for something on a thread regarding Gittip and it's not that important to me anyway. If I deserve a hellban, I deserve a hellban.
Just relax, I'm trying to be nice to you this time around and point out how you're being needlessly confrontational, which makes it sad that you're being needlessly confrontational with me in response.
I don't have it out for you, guy. I'm being entirely honest with you when I say that my response was completely user-agnostic until I looked at the username and put two and two together. The points talking to you directly were an edit, not in the initial comment. My time is a smidge too valuable to "stalk" you around Hacker News, harassing you at every whim, and it's awfully presumptuous to assume I do. That's just silly. If I had known you were going to react like this, I probably wouldn't have said anything.
I'm not hiding my identity, either, so congratulations on knowing it, I'd just prefer to not directly tie my identity to everything that I say here. It gives me a bit more freedom to be honest in cases that would otherwise hurt me indirectly. If I'm posting under my name continuously, I can't say some things.
This conversation isn't going to go anywhere (and it's disrespectful to Hacker News as a medium), and I'm sorry that you react to everything I say with such acidity. I'm going to bow out now, since it's just pointless to continue. You really need to get some perspective and stop treating the world with such hostility, or you're heading for an episode of your own creation. I'm sorry that you and I don't see eye to eye, and that you loathe me so much; if I could change that, I would.
I'm not sure why you keep bring the title 'CEO' or her job into this. What has that got to do with the price of fish?
In this instance she is merely a customer who had a bad experience and chose to blog about it.
> As a CTO/COO (not a startup, large company) it actually makes me HAPPY when I turn _bad_ into something better. Changes do not come from sheer force, influence or conflict, it usually comes from understanding.
Good for you, but you're just plain wrong here. You think change won't come out of this? Your solution might have been different, but the end result would be that _maybe_ betapinch would improve their communication online. Danielle's approach turned it into a learning opportunity for not just betapinch, but for thousands of other startups that follow HN.
While I definitely see and agree with your general point, I disagree with the specifics. I'm grateful to Danielle for calling BetaPunch out, so I can avoid them in the future. She did me a service.
A CEO should avoid conflict, when that conflict will serve nothing. Customers email me and call me an idiot, immoral, etc etc for not canceling their subscriptions when I have no way to do that (they're handled by PayPal), and I tell them I'm sorry, even though I want to call them on it, because that won't solve anything.
BetaPunch deserved to be called out, so people will know and avoid them in the future. I would like it if more bad actors were shamed, as keeping silent only encourages their behaviour.
Well, Danielle isn't really trying to solve problems here. They're not getting her business, and that's that. She's simply calling them out on their Twitter BS, because eventually somebody had to.
Please stop mythologising Chief Executives. They're just people that run businesses for shareholders. There's no magic "CEO" approach to disagreement. Danielle is just unhappy with the approach of another company and is talking about it.
Being pragmatic is fine, but being open and forthright about others is sometimes part of it.
Wow, 'ungrateful'? What do they expect exactly if I were to use their one free test today? A thank-you card, or just attribution somewhere if I were to release the product one day? Could they put that up front please, so I don't get surprised later on by a grudge held by their social media intern?
Actually, having now gone through some twitter history, @betapunch says "The public test was posted for less than 1 hour then deleted / apologized and sent 2 additional tests as a make-up and not a single thanks.."
So they actually wanted her to say thanks for trying to make up for the way they screwed up in the first place. I guess at least I'm clear if I were to just use their service and they don't screw up?
Rule number 1 of business: No matter what, regardless of who is right or wrong, never, ever antagonize or nurture a conflict with anyone. Especially not a potential customer.
If you can't get someone onboard as a customer, work on figuring out why and building a relationship so maybe you can get them onboard later.
Edit: Also wanted to add that if someone uses your beta product you should be thanking them for taking the time to try out your new product (and hopefully giving you feedback) rather than expecting them to thank you.
That is rule number 1 of business like "be nice" is rule number 1 of dating.
Many great personal brands and businesses are launched and made with antagonism. Steve Jobs, Donald Trump, Richard Branson, Larry Flynt, Steve Ballmer, Rush Limbaugh, George W Bush, ... the list goes on of characters who have used antagonism successfully for personal and corporate marketing, and to divide the world between strong followers and detractors instead of a sea of disinterest.
If you are right or interesting, there is nothing wrong with being a little antagonistic. Intelligently picking a fight can bring much needed attention.
That said, this is not a case of being right or interesting - only immature and asinine. They did successfully get a major influencer to write about them, and if the old adage about any press applies, then it was a success. This is not the way I would want to appear or conduct business, but it may actually be better than being ignored.
Does anyone see the irony here? The whole point of the BetaPunch service is to elicit critical feedback.
I kid you not, the quote below is taken directly from their site as instructions for site testers:
"Be as critical as possible when reviewing a website. It's ok to be positive but don't just talk about how great you think their site is. These websites sign up for BetaPunch because they know they have things that can be improved upon. They want you to be as honest as possible with them as to your feelings about their website. Figure out what makes sense to you and what doesn't. And be sure to VOICE your opinions as you navigate the site."
BetaPunch is a funny company. They have web recording software they've licensed and find 'testers' exclusively from reddit.com/r/beermoney. Danielle mentions that she 'hopes this is a social media intern' - BetaPunch is certainly a one-man shop, and you can see some of the guy's postings here: http://www.reddit.com/user/betapunch
You can see for yourself Ross Nochumowitz pitching BetaPunch at the Baltimore TechBreakfast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAdI5mhpKsA. This is from just a month and a half ago.
I am going to play devils advocate here, as I loved the book, "Trust Me, Im Lying", and a lot of what is written in there pertains to this "drama". The person controlling that twitter account is probably a little too emotionally invested, and probably a little immature. I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing, its passion, just misdirected (not everyone is passionate about their product, no matter what gets said on these types of forums). I would be curious about the internet habits of people who do not want their tests shared (a TOS/Disclaimer should have been listed on the site), but I would guess between gmail/facebook etc, betapunch is the least of their worries. I just assumed that a tech-savvy audience assumes that anything they put online is fair game...because...well, it is. On the other hand, its better to be emotionally invested in something you have built, but never reveal those emotions I would think.
tldr; if you can raise ANY doubt about who is in the right, and who is in the wrong, and get a shit load of hits, controversy may not be such a bad thing.
I have mixed feelings on this. One the free video test revealed a gaping bug that I was only made aware of through the video. And I'm thankful for that. But I didn't know these tests were promoted to the public! Not cool Betapunch. And anyways, checkout http://criticue.com for their free service. I'm getting 3-5 helpful reviews a nite. They only reqiuire you to test other sites for a one to one return.
I found it interesting when an unrelated twitter user posted that they shouldn't insult a "influencer" as it would just hurt their reputation. For some reason this struck a wrong chord with me, while the BetaPunch guys handled this entirely the wrong way, if they were in the right and a "influencer" didn't like what they had to say I wonder what would happen.
Hi - I'm said twitter user; guess I said it wrong! Really anyone with a Twitter account and/or blog is an "influencer". The point is being in a netwide pissing match with customers is (obviously?) a bad idea.
I think it strikes the wrong chord because it shouldn't matter whether the person is an "influencer" or not — that's just not the way to talk to anybody when you're trying to build a brand, unless your brand is built on public spats
Exactly, treat every one of your customers with respect and if they choose a competing product, attempt to understand why instead of demanding, in a very passive aggressive way, that they become your customer or are grateful/thank you for some free service which you unilaterally provided.
Tech has a small but noticeable celebrity culture to it. Danielle has a decent number of twitter followers and has had articles at the top of HN at least a few times. I don't find it too surprising that she has some fans willing to defend her with a "You don't know who you're messing with!" message to the BetaPunch people.
I felt the same way. It's like celebrities who yell "don't you know who I am?!", but instead of being an A-lister, it's just someone with a few thousand Twitter followers.
BetaPunch needs to revoke the access of whoever is responsible for writing tweets and have a PR focused person handle tweeting. They were too emotionally invested, and it just made them look petty. Definitely not the sort of discussion you want potential customers to read when researching about you.
Wow... speechless. I was geared up for an unfair dismissal of a very–early–stage product, but this made me cringe. Saved with a hint of irony in my Social Media Ideas folder
Don't blame you for shining a light on them. A top post on Hacker News is a tough way, but if they are to have any future success, this is a lesson they need to learn.
I think everyone agrees - never say anything nasty to any potential customer, but if you do this mistake, at least don't do that publicly on a social network or anything that can be recorded.
On the other hand, there is no such thing as bad publicity, maybe it's their weird way to get recognition, by treating their customers like they owe them something.
After all I'm sure most of the readers will go to their website, just to see what it is, and even try their service.
So in the end, the bad customer service led to a blog post by the customer that was being badly treated, which might give them more traffic than if they were just nice, ironic.
They're not in a position of power. They're offering a commodity service, and they're positioning themselves as "the option with poor customer service."
I don't think that's going to attract much in the way of customers, or investment.
I don't wish them ill; but they really need to stop digging, and they haven't figured that out yet.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm curious: if this is a "commodity service", what competitors of BP would you recommend? I don't mean just some consultant: where can I go where the process will be similar, in that I don't have to talk to anyone and I don't have to hire anyone but I just have to enter my particulars and pay for what I want?
This list may contain errors, but UsabilitySciences, BugPub, Testlio, UserTesting, UserZoom, RemoteResearch, and uTest all look to offer related value propositions. Craigslist, CrowdFlower, ClickWorker, CloudCrowd, Reddit's /r/forhire and Amazon's Mechanical Turk can probably be used similarly.
When I've done UX testing, I've gone out, located the real target market of the specific product we were testing, and tested in-person. A couple times this process included a Craigslist post, but generally it was fully in-person. As such, I'm not qualified to recommend a specific service.
Are we only supposed to share positive experiences on our blogs and social media accounts?
User testing is a service I see myself using quite often over the next year. I'm always grateful for reviews or comments on the services that exist out there.
No, sharing negative experiences is ok. But reading the exchange between them I see some snarky comments back and forth. Its not the reporting that irks me but the choice of language.
"i'm annoyed"
"that's something you should think but probably not actually say"
"And BetaPunch, you’re welcome for the traffic… enjoy the SEO, too."
It feels a bit too vindictive and that isn't a flattering quality. Some people like that image and it works for them professionally. Personally, it turns me away.
I don't think its a stretch to say that it could have been handled more professionally. Dmor took an opportunity to showcase her professionalism and instead sunk to their level. That's my impression at least.
> I don't think its a stretch to say that it could have been handled more professionally. Dmor took an opportunity to showcase her professionalism and instead sunk to their level. That's my impression at least.
Of course it could be handled more 'professionally', but I much prefer an honest, human expression of annoyance than putting some bullshit corporate 'professional' facade on things.
This wasn't a press release by a department of some faceless corp, this is a blog post by a human being.
Well, I suppose this is where we respectfully disagree.
To the person who flagged my response--if I'm asked to clarify my position and I take the time to do so respectfully then a flag is inappropriate. Flags are not downvotes.
Now when you google "betapunch", the blog post ranks high for the keyword. People might forget, but Google won't. They've made their life very difficult. It never pays to be a righteous *hole.
We used BetaPunch extensively whilst testing our latest Decal CMS tour/on-boarding process[1] and I have nothing but good things to say about the service and Ross himself who was very pleasant and responsive. I've recommended the service to everyone I've met since. For the type of user testing you get, you just can't beat the price.
Although some of the testers weren't exactly in the "target market", by having some people that weren't designers or developers muddle through our demo, we were able to fix some really critical bugs.
I even met some people through the service (testers) that were willing to jump on Skype with me to discuss the product and who were interested in taking the beta process further.
I'd highly recommend you try them out. The social strategy Ross is going for here may be a little misguided, but the product itself, and indeed Ross (as far as I've dealt with him) are hard to fault.
While it's useful to know he was nice to you (and I also had good interactions with him), it's still only one data point. That there are more than a few data points showing a profound inability to play nicely with others is far more enlightening. We all make mistakes, but I'm guessing most of us here seldom make very public, mean-spirited mistakes like his.
Yes, mine is one data point, as is Danielle's, as are a few others' stories on this page. I wanted to add my data point to the list to provide some balance, I think it's a great service and I never had any problems with him.
I dunno, could just be that he's antagonistic by nature but also could just be that he wanted to get a lot of publicity for betapunch. I'd assume a lot of people who have never heard of betapunch, have heard of it now and he'll probably get a few users out of it.
You're getting downvoted but you are correct and he could very possibly have used this as a strategy. Anyone who doesn't recognize or even consider that possibility doesn't fully understand the nuances of PR.
The idea is that there is a net gain. People will remember the name and forget the bad rep. The amount of people who remember or stop doing business is less than the amount gained by the bad publicity.
One satisfied customer is enough to offset roughly 0.0000000001% of a public tweet from the official company Twitter account calling another customer a "silicon valley douche".
You guys must have seen something other than I did, all I saw was childish bickering from both sides in public for all to see. Here's what I saw:
D: Company A is awesome.
B: Company B is better and cheaper, use us! (Spam)
(Could have ended here!! I can not emphasize this enough!!)
D: You suck Company B, go away and die!
B: Wut?? You used our service FOR FREE to improve your product, you ungrateful nincompoop.
D: Correct, you suck and now everyone knows you suck because I said so, hahaha. Now I will write blog post, everyone else will agree with me and Google search will say you suck too. lol, I F'd your public image yo. BAM!
Hacker news: Yay! Go D, B sucks ass, thanks for letting us know.
Actually, it seemed to be more like this:
D: Company A is awesome.
B: Why not use our product? It's cheaper! [Spam]
[Certainly, it could have ended here. But they asked the question - why is it wrong to answer them why you don't use it? Perhaps they don't realize their public posts are alienating customers, and the feedback would be helpful. Perhaps she might want to give them another chance if they 'fess up and apologize (Perhaps not, she has no obligation to do so). At this point, she is not being mean at all (not that she is later, either). At this point, there is no argument to end. It's still just a conversation.]
D: I did use your product. You inappropriately and publicly broadcast private information. [Answering the question they asked, honestly and without pulling punches - something advocated constantly by popular and applauded posts on HN, I might add.]
B: Yeah? Well you didn't thank us for the free trial of a service we were trying to sell you. whine whine whine [Completely inappropriate and rude. This is the first sign of actual hostility, as opposed to honesty.]
D: This is why I'm not using you [Again, answering their question. Rhetorical or not, they asked it.] You probably should not say that publicly. [Helpful and useful criticism. Again, something recommended by HN on a public basis.]
Now, I'm not saying she wasn't pissed by the end. She probably was (I would be). But she never said anything rude or explicitly hostile. In addition, she didn't escalate it to public status. Twitter is a public forum, and they started accusing her of... not thanking them for their sales pitch? Her response on Twitter was entirely appropriate.
As to the blog post, this is the exact same thing that something like Amazon reviews does - publicly states the quality (in this case, in regards to courtesy) of a company or product. She is the customer. This has no bearing on her relationship with her customers (which I will not comment on, having never experienced it). This only affects her relationship with someone trying to sell her something - and the onus of making the interaction positive is entirely on the salesman, who completely screwed up.
She was never rude. Since she is not the seller in this situation, common courtesy (as you'd give a stranger you were talking to) is the only obligation she has, and she meets it.
Oh the irony: I went to the homepage of betapunch.com, where they proudly promote their "raw unbiased user" testing, and some text on their home page renders incorrectly. Even more ironically, the problematic rendering includes this text: "Receive feedback and discover problems."
Even if the "all publicity is good publicity" concept applies here, they are wasting that publicity, at least on me, with their site problems.
It's relevant as many here are entrepreneurs. There is a very good lesson here about proper social media etiquette for companies. There are an incredible multitude of ways this situation could have been handled better, especially on a forum as public as Twitter.
Maybe this is off topic, but Referly looks suspiciously similar in design to Fab. Even down to similar image overlays. Perhaps I could write a blog explaining why I won't be using Referly due to a pretty unoriginal design and equally uninspiring concept. But, I've been up all night with a crying baby, so perhaps I'm being unnecessarily hostile.
The unfortunate tragedy of this is that BetaPunch is getting attention out of this, for better or for worse. I would err to say they likely got at least a few parties to test them out. It's definitely undeserved attention. Professionalism is everything when it comes to social networks.
This poster is using bad service she received into SEO juice for herself, while robbing another company of further business. Because I find this practise distasteful, I won't be using refer.ly. On the other hand, I would wait and see if Betapunch learned their lesson, and will use them. The person who posted this is too clever for her own good.
[1]: https://twitter.com/jorilallo/status/261977607757778944