I thought Referly was pretty cool and decided to sign up and created my own link for the new Apple MBP.

But when I click on the claim rewards link: http://refer.ly/claim

It's telling me a different story (compared to on their main page - Earn rewards like whoa.)about getting the rewards.

"During the beta period we are not yet able to redeem your rewards, but we are saving them for you.

We'll let you know as soon as you can claim them."

I really felt like being Bait and Switch'ed.... Totally not whoa at this point.

Sorry to hear that - your rewards won't disappear, we just have been going a little faster than planned and need to build the redemption process. In the meantime, feel free to email me at [email protected] if you earn more than $10 and want to claim your rewards and we can do that via PayPal.

I'll add that to the site too. We're not cool with the bait and switch, so I'm glad you gave me that feedback

Danielle - everyone supposed to email you if they need "more than $10" from Referly to cash out?

Seriously, you are damn too smart of a businesswoman not to know that by not putting this disclaimer on, you will get much less signups. At its best, I take it as deceiving marketing strategy.

We are placing a bet we can get this feature built before 99% of people reach that point. We are proactively reaching out to users whose earning are nearing $10

You're betting other people's time on your business. And you even openly admit it. That's unexpected, and wrong.

Better to have a feature that became too popular before you could handle it than to have a finished feature no-one uses.

Thanks for the response. I think a disclaimer on the main page about claims during beta would have alleviated my disappointment.

Noted, will update. Thanks

Upvote for quick reaction.

Meh. I just want to shorten and share links. goo.gl does the job for me.

I haven't read the referenced, Techcrunch article, but I can't get from A to B on the competitor claim. From dmor's article, she wants me to try her product, but when I did, I would have no idea they are competing in the same space as bitly. I was presented a registration wall to what sounds like a text-based Pinterest; not at all a link-shortening nor analytics product.

We took the link to this out because it didn't really work (at least according to our stats) but here is our how it works page: http://refer.ly/getting-started

Sounds like we need to do a better job showing you what you'll get before asking you to click the big orange button

Buried at the bottom of this link, the "How You Earn Rewards" section goes a long way towards depicting the product, more than any other memory I had retained from the existing and this landing page. Even still, I'm kept from using yet-another-link-shortener and an analytics dashboard without providing you with credentials. How about a limited-time experience without authenticating, if it's not within fiscal interest to offer "unlimited" features that "competitors" offer?

I think we just need to make it work when you are logged out - maybe set a cookie so you can claim all your links if/when you sign up if the cookie is still set. We're working on it, literally around the clock

Danielle is the marketing and PR genius behind Twilio. So yes, this blog post was sort of clever PR campaign designed to make the HN home page.

I thought there was something in Facebook's terms that you can't sell Like's etc. in exchange for any form of currency? Not to sure though.

We don't sell likes, we only reward people if an actual purchase occurs as the result of someone clicking on a link

this is what i want to do: shorten links, share products and earn rewards. the current ui is beginning to feel like a shopping site. kinda like amazon divorced ebay, married bitly and is having an affair with pinterest.

Who are these customers you're talking to? Seems like everyone and their mom is a 'customer'.

TLDR: completely content-less post just tells us how unknown Referly is positioning itself as Bit.ly's competition and how they're better than the rest of the crowd, with quips. No insights other than that.

Call-out to my homeys in the downvote brigade, you still know I'm right. Sensationalist story leading to an underwhelming climax of "we're catching up to Bit.ly" written and submitted to gain publicity, at the cost of the quality of HN's new front page. What's the return on the investment of 5 minutes of my time? None.

The total innovative content of this story could've been fit in two tweets:

Our (Referly) competitor Bit.ly has launched, we're nearly done catching up

and

no, actually I can't think of a second tweet.

This sensationalist, blog-us-at-all-cost attitude glued together with khangtoh's remark (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4097202) about the bait and switch business model... well, compare khangtoh's complaint:

> It's telling me a different story (compared to on their main page - Earn rewards like whoa.)about getting the rewards. > > "During the beta period we are not yet able to redeem your rewards, but we are saving them for you. > > We'll let you know as soon as you can claim them." > > I really felt like being Bait and Switch'ed.... Totally not whoa at this point.

with:

> Unlike a lot of other beautiful social sharing sites out there, we are revealling our business model from day one. You refer stuff, you earn rewards. No shenanigans (Hat tip: Twilio). While in beta we are passing through 100% of commissions to Referly users

Not only completely incorrect information ("we are passing" vs "we are not passing"), but additionally what I can only understand as a quip at Twilio.

Someone more to the point would just say "attention-whoring Bit.ly's limelight". You'll probably hate me, but I thought I'd give you a good ruffling since you seem new to the whole business communications thing. I only hit you cause I love you, baby.