Given her experience at Twilio and the successful launch of referly (or do you think the press comes by itself?), I think your comment is one of those "why is everyone so negative on HN?" comments.
Please try to be nice. This is an announcement about a new blog. What did you expect besides an announcement?
But to give you the benefit of the doubt, I will say this: as someone who has used the title "Growth Hacker", I find it meaningful but cringe whenever I use it.
That's funny--I imagined this more as a "why is the signal to noise ratio so poor on HN?" post. To be frank, I've never heard of either Twilio or refer.ly. They appear similar to any number of generic tickets in the gigantic lottery that is the web.
I think it's a bit easy to lose perspective here on HN. The tough love: I see a bunch of inexperienced folks pimping themselves out in the HN circle jerk/echo chamber.
For my part, I'm wondering where all the power users went, and how I quickly I can follow them before their next high quality community gets blown open.
I too -- and perhaps those voting you down -- wish I had been "introduced" to your blog through an insightful article rather than a pitch.
Your response dismissively tells your consumer his opinion isn't valid because he's "just" a consumer. Speaking of "sour grapes" ...
"Trying to give an opinion on my wine, are you? Go buy your own land, plant your own grapes, come up with your own fermenting process, bottle your own wine, and serve it to see if you do better."
That's not constructive, it's snide, and not worthy of being given a break.
I think openly claiming to be a hacker, of any sort, is cringe worthy. My bet is that for the most legit hackers (like really good developers I know), this is especially true.
I think the cringiness is inversely proportional to the geek-cred of the discipline involved.
You're just another Perl hacker? Awesome.
You're a biochemistry hacker? Okay.
You're an "SEO hacker"? Ugh.
You're a (shudder) "brand hacker"? Die in a fire.
But you know what, why are we here on Hacker News? To expand hackers' borders from the inside out — not by recruiting others to call themselves hackers, but expanding the breadth of hacker culture.
And particularly, to validate the idea that got us here — hackers who are passionate about what they produce should seek to control the environment of production, and founding a startup is the best way to do that.
To bring that idea into reality, we need to ditch the idea that "business stuff" is to be sneered at. I personally held that opinion for ten years, mostly because my dad was in business, and so I bounced around "cool" programming jobs instead of pursuing the fullest expression of what I wanted to do.
So Hacker News is where "growth hacking" should live, so it benefits hackers instead of self-styled hotshot business consultants. Hackers should be able to jump into any field, stand on the shoulders of other hackers, and see this is just another place they can apply intelligence, knowledge and experimentation.
That's what bringing the "hacker" label to a new field should be about. And I truly believe that is what dmor is trying to do. So bring on the distribution hacks, let's analyze customer acquisition like hackers should, and long live the growth hacker.
Please try to be nice. This is an announcement about a new blog. What did you expect besides an announcement?
But to give you the benefit of the doubt, I will say this: as someone who has used the title "Growth Hacker", I find it meaningful but cringe whenever I use it.