Subscribe
Sign in
Start A FIRE — Promote your brand and content with every link you share
127
Replies
Best
I see the value in this and the execution is great but as a recipient, I'm annoyed by these embedded popups. Tbh, if you're sharing links on Twitter that inject an "ad", I'll unfollow you.
@rrhoover I agree, it's got to be used selectively and intentionally — not broadly and as much as possible (which is likely how most will)
@rrhoover Agreed. It's a bit irksome to click the 'x' to close the popup in order to have the actual URL saved to Pocket/Pinboard.in/etc. On mobile, the tiny 'x' doesn't seem to even redirect to the embedded page. I think I'd like this more in the context of the experience of viewing an email digest but in the browser - something where part of the user value is keeping the sharer in mind.
I have used StartaFire on my own curated content and to promote client content for months now, and it has been a win on both counts. I've never been a fan of the alternative "brand your curated content" options because they often slow down your page load (NOOooooooooO!) or block the content on mobile (Why???). StartaFire has confusing capitalization issues, but that's really the only bad thing. PROtop: use SAF to pre-test titles before promoting a major content installation.
I had the pleasure of interviewing @orenbarzilai for my podcast in October. http://stfi.re/pjednl Since then, I've been using (and loving) Start A Fire. Congratulations on being hunted by the awesome @bramk
@paul_s_kemp Thank you Paul 🙏 - So glad to hear your enjoying start A FIRE! We truly appreciate all your support :)
This is really smart, and probably very effective.
That being said, I would completely and utterly despise clicking a link, landing on a proxy, and seeing a branded page. It will make me dislike the brand. Luckily, most internet users aren't like me!
The most important question here hasn't been asked: how are you going to deal with people who don't want you being a proxy to their site?
I've read the about page and it seems like you are trying to ease the original content owners, and for good reason.
Do you provide a mechanism for me as a site owner to prevent the proxy from working on my site? What happens if i decide to block traffic from you? you might say "your loss" and it probably somehow, but imagine google decided all clicks on search results go through their inner proxy site? doesn't sound very cool does it?
How are links from inside the site handled? are users being kept inside the 'startafire' sandbox? do they have to close tab/manually change url to get out?
Good luck! from the comments seems like a really good execution - 80 comments is quite a feat on PH.
@danr_4 Hi Dan and thank you for bringing this up.
The attribution given to the one that shared the link comes to fix the broken situation in which the content sharer is actually generating traffic for the content owner but gets nothing in return. With start A FIRE what the sharer gets in return is a small and very non-intrusive badge added for attribution. It's very far from being a "branded page".
If content owners wish to have their site blocked on start A FIRE all they need to do is send us an email. However in this case the site will lose traffic due to that. Some publishers approached us in the past and after we explained we don't copy the content but act as a proxy, all decided to opt-in. This is why we've put up the About page (as you noted) to explain this better: http://startafire.com/about/
start A FIRE does not act as a sandbox, it is applied only to the content being shared. Every click on any link on the page will take you to the source site. Attribution is only given where it is deserved.
As with every changing ecosystem, it takes time until everyone is at ease and get used to the new situation. If once most of the content discovery was driven by home pages and editors - it is now driven more and more by social and our friends finding the best content for us.
@odedgolan @danr_4 I'm not sure it's as broken as you say. Actually, I think your product will make it even more "broken". This celebrates the clickbait generation of the internet. You say it isn't intrusive, but the product is forcing the users to unknowingly browse content owners' website through your proxy.
This might not be intrusive for users, but it is extremely intrusive for content owners, even if, as your About page says, it is all transparent.
You could have gone the other way - embedding the product on the actual content owners site with their collaboration, so the sharer will get his attribution, but the site will keep it's users. Then what is the content owners motivation? they can now have their badge displayed on your network of publishers. Just a thought nothing more.
It will probably be less effective, but certainly more fair, and less broken.
In an ideal world, the majority of people are well educated about the internet. I am assuming that educated people will never except this as a plausible situation - surfing the internet through proxies for the sake of marketers.
Again, I think this product is brilliant! I really do. But as my title says, I try to be honest, and I honestly think these kind of products do more harm than good for internet experience.
on a more positive note, it's great to hear that links take you to the source. What about dynamic pages? (Ajax/SPA)
I'm having thoughts of phishing attempts and problems with https, but can't think of anything concrete. can to share your thought about the issue?
@danr_4 Dynamic pages and SPA still have href tags and those are directed to the source site. It was a great challenge (and still is) building this system and maintaining the right behavior for each case, both on the technical and user aspect of it.
See their site; they shut down.
Pros:Free and worked on all web pages (it did not use the iFrame solution)
Cons:They ended the service months ago.
@dredurr Thanks Deandre! We completely agree 😄 Really appreciate all the support 👊
@gerbz Hi Greg! Yes, every link (we don't use iframes). You can read about it here: http://startafire.com/about
@yuvals Wowzers - so you scrape the content and rewrite all the links and then "stream" the content?
I've built an iframe version of of this before and the UX sucked. I tinkered with what you're doing and couldn't get over the endless amount of permutations of things to debug on every type of site. Props for getting this to work.
@orenbarzilai This is really cool! I especially like the feature of connecting to Buffer in order to seamlessly add the badge to shared links.
Will this remain a free product for individual users or do you plan to monetize it at some point?
@alikafridi Thanks Ali!
The product will remain free, but in the future we hope to add premium features.
I just realized you're creating a subdomain that matches the source domain after clicking this link to @stevesi's blog: http://blog.learningbyshipping.s...
Very clever, @orenbarzilai. 👏
We soft launched an invite only version of Start A FIRE about 5 months ago, and spent the time to learn about our users and optimize the product.
Today, with zero marketing budget, over 600 brands are using Start A FIRE. Those brands includes small companies and fortune 100 companies, and we feel Start A FIRE is mature enough to remove the invite only barrier.
We built Start A FIRE to address the primary challenges that have become major pain points on the social web: attribution and content distribution.
Start A FIRE enables you to seamlessly promote your brand and content over any link you share, get the attribution for sharing great content while increasing discovery for your content.
Would love to get your feedback and answer any question
@orenbarzilai Great to see this launched :)
Have seen many people use it and had signed up but I don't spend enough time curating articles to share to make use of it just yet.
Think it's a great product.
What is the most common piece of feedback you have received?
At what point in the onboarding/first uses does it usually stick for your users? I know I used it once of twice but didnt again, but this has a lot to do with my content situation and not so much your process :)
@bentossell @orenbarzilai Hi Ben! Thanks for the kind words :)
The most common feedback is about the product's seamless experience, and how we can make it better.
For example, the big advantage of the product is that it's fully integrated with services such as Buffer, HubSpot and Oktopost, so we get ton of integration requests with more services.
Regarding to the onboarding, usually it takes a few mins to finish the flow and in the last step most of the users connect a social media service, and that's it - you don't need to come back every day to our product to use it.
@yuvals @orenbarzilai awesome :) definitely key for a product like this to be seamless and integrate easily.
You should speak with @danielkempe to look at an integration with Quuu ;)
@orenbarzilai Congrats on the official launch, guys! StartAFire is such a fantastic tool, it's great that even more folks in the tech industry will have the opportunity to use it!
Wow this looks like a great way to do viral social media promotion. I just wonder what happens when someone else who uses SAF shares a link that I shared?
@hexsprite that's when things get interesting their followers will also see your badge! so if thanks to your share it got viral you will get the attribution.
I run a social media agency and love the product-- perfect for clients who want to link out to other sources on social, but still want to get some backlink benefit.
What would make this even more useful would be the option to pull X number of latest posts from an RSS feed, versus hand updating.
@mikeorren Hi Mike! Thanks for the kind words.
Regarding the RSS idea - would you like to use it for the Promoted Content or just to add a badge to links based on RSS feed?
@yuvals @mikeorren I think that's what I was actually expecting when I first saw it. RSS or "related articles" but that would be REALLY hard LOL. But yea, RSS maybe for either other startAFire links already posted or RSS from my blog would be awesome choices
@planetmitch @mikeorren Nice idea :) Actually you can get RSS feed of your links / create RSS feed of existing RSS feed. Check out our tools page: http://startafire.com/tools
@yuvals I meant to add to the promoted content. So the promoted content could always be "last 3 blog posts" instead of having to manually update all the time.
@mikeorren Thanks Mike. That's a great idea and we got some similar requests in the past, so there is a good chance we'll build it in the near future :)
I use it since the soft launch I think, @odedgolan will correct me if I'm wrong.
Love that it's integrated with buffer, love that my face appears and people have no idea how.
The thing is, I'm not 100% sure of when it works and when it doesn't.
I mean maybe I'm confusing something, but it doesn't happen for 100% of my shares? Only specific sites?
Hey @altryne,
Indeed you were with us from the beginning :)
Once you integrate start A FIRE with a service like Buffer, Hubspot etc. it will work on every share you make for your *external* content. It will not be applied to your own domain alexw.me but to content you share from other sources.
I was invited a few months ago to use Start A FIRE. I was a bit reluctant because I was already using similar tools. There are features I miss but the simplicity and effectiveness of Start A FIRE got me soon. Congrats to the team.
@mordodemaru Thank you Mordo! What features are you missing? We're always working on improving start A FIRE for you guys so we'd love to know :)
@nataylor24 @mordodemaru What about some detailed analytics on how it performed?
@mordodemaru That's a great suggestions and we hope to add in more analytics later in the future :) We'd love to hear what kind of analytics you're looking for - could you share :)?
A personal plug for @startafirecom. I started using with my mailing list, Education Hunt. I grew my subscription list from a little less than 70 users, to 348. This is a roughly 8 week time span. The previous 8 is where the first 70 came from. Super Simple to use. Education Hunt link with startafire is below. Im a big fan. http://stfi.re/pxzna
@greaterthan1000 That's awesome Sam 👊! Thank you sharing those insights :)
Congrats @orenbarzilai - looks awesome. I've been using snip.ly and another WordPress plugin to do similar things, but I love the buffer integration of your tool. Any thoughts of adding some functionality for those of us using WordPress to automatically share with a startafire link when a post is published? I'm using nextscripts SNAP tool to autoshare, but would love some integration with startAFire maybe.
@planetmitch Thank you for the feedback, that's an interesting idea. Can you please email me the plugin name and your WordPress blog and I'll find a solution? yuval@startafire.com
I have been using Start A Fire for some months now. It's an amazing tool and I highly recommend it. However, Oren, when can we expect to enable different promoted content for different types of links? For ex: If sharing a blog content, I want the product to show my blog piece but when I am sharing a news article, I want it to show a news article as promoted content.
It'd be great if we can enable the same. Nevertheless, Start A Fire sits right at the top in my list of favorite tools.
I have been using it for about a month now and I really like it. I also have to say that the cx has been very good from on boarding to helpful suggestions. Great product nice to see you on the hunt today!
I used this a few months ago and couldn't get it to fit in my workflow. Re-evaluating now... With the Buffer integration, will the SAF links get added to everything I schedule? (I use Buffer for multiple brands and wouldn't want SAF links on everything.)
@nichediver Once you connect your Buffer account to start A FIRE you can manage which profiles from your Buffer account you want to turn on/off to include your start A FIRE badge. All your scheduled links will automatically include your badge (except for the profile you didn't turn on). If you run into issues while setting it up just let us know :)
Idea Stash