I can't wait until the term "growth hacker" goes out of style.

HN is so averse to anything related to marketing, conversion optimization, or anything else similar to such practices that a whole new title has emerged simply so no one has to grimace when saying they need to hire a "marketer".

Call a spade a spade: growth hacker == marketer. Yes, they use data to lead their decision making process and are more empirical than traditional mad men style marketers, but that by no means warrants a whole new job title.

Growth hackers are just good marketers using the data and tools available to them.

Actually they are not just "marketing people". They top growth hackers are often full-stack developers (Jesse Farmer, Matt Humphrey, Jim Young, Mike Greenfield, Dan Martell, Danielle Morrill, Ivan Kirgin etc).

This is not inbound marketing but building product that, at its core, is focused on growth. LinkedIn, Zynga, Quora, Twitter, and Facebook all have growth teams.

Do you know Dropbox's brilliant referral strategy? That was the brainchild of Sean Ellis (growth hacker), Ivan Kirigin (growth hacker), and Dropbox leadership.

The goal of a marketer is to grow a customer base. That's what these growth hackers are doing, they're just doing it in a more technically advanced way via data confirmation and split testing.

Referral strategies have been around for decades, the Dropbox guys didn't hack anything they just applied an old principle to a new technology.

Growth hacker and marketer are synonymous titles.

OK, now somebody tell me how "growth hacker" is, specifically, different than just saying "marketer" or "marketing strategist?" Not to take anything away from the growth hackers, but I'm curious if this is just a meme, or if there's some actual substance to what a "growth hacker" does that's unique compared to other positions.

Here is what I think after interviewing 20+ GHs and doing it myself for the past two years.

growth hacker (noun) - one who’s passion and focus is growth through use of a testable, empirical, and scalable methodology.

Basically, a growth hacker is the blend of a product, marketing, and data. They sort of operate as R&D within a startup.

Resources: http://www.quora.com/Growth-Hacking/What-is-growth-hacking/a... http://startup-marketing.com/where-are-all-the-growth-hacker... http://www.vlaskovits.com/2012/07/youre-a-growth-rookie-not-... http://www.aginnt.com/growth-hacker#.UDvRGmPlWPI

Check these threads

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4309345 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4436034 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4069417 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4059580 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4104510 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4297857 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4069417 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4104510

OK, so a marketer who uses scripts to automate things, and is very data focused. Got it. Not sure this justifies creating a new title, but these are marketing people we're talking about...

Just updated my profile to include "Growth Hacker". Curious to see how long it takes before I'm officially the Top one here.

Just nobody ask me what the term means, ok?

Growth Hacker == A person who use's growth hacks to increase the distribution of their product or service.

http://www.quora.com/growth-hacks

Ditto. Sorry ;-)

haha, Thank you for doing it so. These days I have been going through the jobs section at HN, its kind of frustrating to see all the time some job openings with 'Growth Hacker' title listed for days. But isn't it true every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution.

I take first! Well.. that was pointless :-) Now I just need edw519 to give it a go ;-)

I'll be at least 2nd place!

Maybe it's just chance that two meta-HN posts (Top HN ...) show up on the front page today, but it seems like a lot all of a sudden...

I propose a new law: An observation of the form "Maybe <counter-argument>, but <observation>" can probably be adequately dismissed with <counter-argument>.