Ryan's e-mail

Genuine email, I got a response when I queried it, also if you haven't already you should be getting follow up email: "I want to apologize for my email this morning. I received a lot of replies from you all (thank you for taking time to respond!) saying that you felt like my request was creepy and un-Treehouse-like. I think it was a mistake and I'm sorry. Thank you so much for being one of our Students. I truly value you and I'm sorry again for shaking your trust in us. As always, just hit reply if you'd like to chat. All the best, Ryan"

It's a real email. As he's mentioned in a later email a lot of people though of it to be a little odd, and privacy evading and so I'm not sure the whole data collection through a chrome plugin thing is happening anymore.

I didn't think it was so bad if they're actually offering money incentive for it. No ones forcing you to do anything! However I think it'd of probably been best to get data through a one time survey collection than a real-time internet tracking plugin :-)

Yeah, I was thinking of doing it as well. But I definity would have checked out the code to see if I could spot any spyware. I agree no one was forcing, but it does sound a bit better than just a survey.

Really bad PR Treehouse... who ever came up with it should be sacked. With everything going on in the news about spying, why would you even think of asking your customer base to install, let's face it.... a "spying plugin" sorry "data collection app"? I agree with Sam that they aren't forcing people, but still come on! I subconsciously deleted it as spam first time around, before my friends starting reading and discovered it was genuine. Did anyone install it? I think not. why? common sense..

LOL. In programming your going to get code wrong. It how we learn that code is working porperly. So it's not the end of the world, plus it sounds like Ryan learnt from the feedback as to what is important to the Treehouse community. So some good did come out of it. :)

Ditto with everyone in here

That was one awfully awkward emails

Ryan sent that email without telling anyone else at Treehouse. :(

I think he sent that email at 6am and I got to work at 9am – no one had a chance.

He's very sorry about it.

As soon as we read the email we all pretty much lost our minds. He immediately recognized how weird/terrible it looked, which is why he wrote the apology follow-up email. He's been answering emails all day and responding to everyone on twitter because of it.

WOW! 6am. That's crazy why would anybody be up at that hour doing work? I think I was still partying last night/this morning at 6am. LOL.

See guys, everything fine and some good info came out of it, exactly like programming. Except the working at 6am part.

Rails Rumble sounds like the Ruby equivalent of the WWF.

I installed it, it's a 3rd party app that Treehouse are signed up to to collect data relating to us, their users.

Plus, you'll make some cash for browsing the net.

Well, IMHO it's just democracy. You don't have to install the extention if you don't want. A survey as an alternative? Maybe, but it is still collecting your information, even in a more restricted way. We all get scared by such requests, because they may sound intrusive, but Facebook, Twitter, Google are always collecting our information, and we do not complain about it. I think he was just honest asking before collecting it.

The only real thought about the email was about the whole money incentive. How would anyone have known who to issue money to if it was supposed to be anonymous? Wouldn't you need some sort of actual personal information to forward the money, and it would be based on the number of hours/clicks/whatever, or just by the sheer fact that you downloaded the plugin?

I feel like I'm posting rather late, but I'm still left wondering. xP