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I implemented this functionality for a certain SaaS with many large customers. I made sure to have a scalable way to measure unique viewers across different tim

I implemented this functionality for a certain SaaS with many large customers. I made sure to have a scalable way to measure unique viewers across different time frames. Only after we launched it, we realized all our competitors just put a random number that looked nice.

drclau 5y ago
> competitors just put a random number that looked nice Is this even legal? It seems this is used to mislead the customer.
- rsstack 5y ago
  I am an engineer, not a lawyer, but I expect that from a criminal perspective it doesn't count as fraud because it isn't material information, and the consumer rights differ vastly between countries and probably don't cover "dishonest but immaterial information" - there weren't lies on the price, on availability, etc. If a company asks me to implement something I believe is illegal I ask for clarifications from a lawyer. Since I wasn't asked to implement this in a "wrong" way, I never looked into it further.
  - drclau 5y ago
    I’m not a lawyer either. I was thinking that this may fall under false advertising [0]. That is, claiming N people are interested in the product/service while that information is clearly made up. To be clear, I’m referring to an implementation that just uses a number that looks good, disconnected from any sort of metrics. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising
    - rsstack 5y ago
      False advertising is narrower than some people would like it to be.
      - techcode 5y ago
        Indeed it's both not ethical not legal in most parts of the world. My educated guess it that only reason it happens anywhere at all - is within "smaller" websites/companies which: a) don't know better because they are mostly just tech people that didn't heave to deal with big company bureaucracy, they have no legal/ethics team - or (hopefully not big chunk) they do know it's not legal, but count on ... b) they are small enough that no one bothers to deal with until amount of money company is making suddenly makes it go over whatever amount makes it worth the effort
  - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
    > it isn't material information Why not? The SEC doesn't take that attitude when they catch people artificially manipulating the frequency at which something is trading.
    - rsstack 5y ago
      Shirts aren't securities :)
      - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
        Why should the law be any different? Selling cheap products doesn't entitle you to lie, or otherwise break the law, to close the sale. Counterfeit goods are taken seriously by the law despite being cheap. In the case of holiday and hotel websites, they're selling expensive packages.
azatris 5y ago
How did that turn out in the end? I presume having a real number is long-term optimal in terms of keeping customers compared to showing a fake number.
- rsstack 5y ago
  No one ever really cared either way, except when we rarely had issues and the number came back as 0.
- dudul 5y ago
  When would customers ever know that the number was fake?
- throwaway47292 5y ago
  Hmm, I think the fake number will bring more money, both short and long term. If you are selling 10_000 items, with uniform demand (just toy example), you need like 3 million unique visitors per day in order to show 'one other person is looking at this item in the last 5 minutes, (24*7) If I show 1 + random(5) are looking at each item, my competitor has to have enormous amount of visitors to compete. Sadly, unless its illegal to lie, organizations are disincentivized to do the right thing.
  - techcode 5y ago
    Traffic distribution is basically never uniform. Unless maybe if you've only got very very few products/pages (like just 1-5), though that definitely changes long before you reach 10_000 items. And for the majority of mid to big websites - visitors/buyers will look only at minority of products/pages. Let's say it's like Pareto 80/20 percent principle. Though if not 90/10 - for tourism/travel/flights - because places like London, Paris [France, not dozens of them in USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_(disambiguation)], Rome, Las Vegas, Ibiza ...etc are much, much more interesting/visited than say Anchorage/Alaska. And unless you've got uniform spread of visitors/customers around the world - which I'm thinking that even Facebook/Google/Amazon don't really have (because Flipkart/WeChat/etc are used more in India/Chrina/etc). You're likely to see a daily (per hour), weekly (per work vs weekend days) pattern /where west is different than Israel and predominantly Muslim countries/ - the min/max difference even within one day/week is easily 2 to 5 times. All of that is to say that by far majority of your revenue will likely be during workday afternoon in your target audiences time-zone, and from those 10_000 items it will probably be <=100 that are seen/bought by majority of your visitors.

drclau 5y ago

> competitors just put a random number that looked nice Is this even legal? It seems this is used to mislead the customer.

rsstack 5y ago
I am an engineer, not a lawyer, but I expect that from a criminal perspective it doesn't count as fraud because it isn't material information, and the consumer rights differ vastly between countries and probably don't cover "dishonest but immaterial information" - there weren't lies on the price, on availability, etc. If a company asks me to implement something I believe is illegal I ask for clarifications from a lawyer. Since I wasn't asked to implement this in a "wrong" way, I never looked into it further.
- drclau 5y ago
  I’m not a lawyer either. I was thinking that this may fall under false advertising [0]. That is, claiming N people are interested in the product/service while that information is clearly made up. To be clear, I’m referring to an implementation that just uses a number that looks good, disconnected from any sort of metrics. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising
  - rsstack 5y ago
    False advertising is narrower than some people would like it to be.
    - techcode 5y ago
      Indeed it's both not ethical not legal in most parts of the world. My educated guess it that only reason it happens anywhere at all - is within "smaller" websites/companies which: a) don't know better because they are mostly just tech people that didn't heave to deal with big company bureaucracy, they have no legal/ethics team - or (hopefully not big chunk) they do know it's not legal, but count on ... b) they are small enough that no one bothers to deal with until amount of money company is making suddenly makes it go over whatever amount makes it worth the effort
- MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  > it isn't material information Why not? The SEC doesn't take that attitude when they catch people artificially manipulating the frequency at which something is trading.
  - rsstack 5y ago
    Shirts aren't securities :)
    - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
      Why should the law be any different? Selling cheap products doesn't entitle you to lie, or otherwise break the law, to close the sale. Counterfeit goods are taken seriously by the law despite being cheap. In the case of holiday and hotel websites, they're selling expensive packages.

azatris 5y ago

How did that turn out in the end? I presume having a real number is long-term optimal in terms of keeping customers compared to showing a fake number.

rsstack 5y ago
No one ever really cared either way, except when we rarely had issues and the number came back as 0.
dudul 5y ago
When would customers ever know that the number was fake?
throwaway47292 5y ago
Hmm, I think the fake number will bring more money, both short and long term. If you are selling 10_000 items, with uniform demand (just toy example), you need like 3 million unique visitors per day in order to show 'one other person is looking at this item in the last 5 minutes, (24*7) If I show 1 + random(5) are looking at each item, my competitor has to have enormous amount of visitors to compete. Sadly, unless its illegal to lie, organizations are disincentivized to do the right thing.
- techcode 5y ago
  Traffic distribution is basically never uniform. Unless maybe if you've only got very very few products/pages (like just 1-5), though that definitely changes long before you reach 10_000 items. And for the majority of mid to big websites - visitors/buyers will look only at minority of products/pages. Let's say it's like Pareto 80/20 percent principle. Though if not 90/10 - for tourism/travel/flights - because places like London, Paris [France, not dozens of them in USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_(disambiguation)], Rome, Las Vegas, Ibiza ...etc are much, much more interesting/visited than say Anchorage/Alaska. And unless you've got uniform spread of visitors/customers around the world - which I'm thinking that even Facebook/Google/Amazon don't really have (because Flipkart/WeChat/etc are used more in India/Chrina/etc). You're likely to see a daily (per hour), weekly (per work vs weekend days) pattern /where west is different than Israel and predominantly Muslim countries/ - the min/max difference even within one day/week is easily 2 to 5 times. All of that is to say that by far majority of your revenue will likely be during workday afternoon in your target audiences time-zone, and from those 10_000 items it will probably be <=100 that are seen/bought by majority of your visitors.