Here is one improvement to OKcupid, which we might even be able to implement as a third party:
OKcupid has bad match algorithms, but it can still be useful as searchable classified adds. However, when you find a legitimate match, you need to have a way to signal to the other person that you believe the match could work.
Most messages on OKcupid are from men to women, so women already have a way to do this: send a message, however men do not.
Men spam messages, by glancing over profiles, and sending cookie cutter messages that mention something in the profile. Women are used to this spam, and may reject legitimate interest, because they do not have a good enough spam filter.
Our service would be to provide an I am not spamming commitment. A flag that can be put in a message which signals “This is the only flagged message I have sent this week”
It would be a link, you put in your message, which sends you to a site that basically says. Yes, Bob(profile link) has only sent this flag to Alice(profile link) in the week of 2/20/14-2/26/14, with an explanation of how this works.
Do you think that would be a useful service to implement? Do you think people would actually use it, and receive it well?
I wonder if a per-message fee for a certain kind of message would be a good business model for this. My suspicion is that it would work very well if all your users had that reluctance to ever spend anything online (people are much more willing to buy utilions that involve getting a physical product than to pay for things like apps)), but it breaks down as soon as someone with some unused disposable income realizes that spamming $1 notes isn’t that expensive.
Only being able to send a certain number of messages per week of a special type might be enough for indicating non-spam, as long as you could solve the problem of people making multiple profiles to get around it. Having a small fee attached to the service might help with tracking that down, since it would keep people from abusing it too extremely, and cover the cost of having someone investigate suspicious accounts (if more than one is paid for by the same credit card at around the same time, for example).
OKcupid solves the multiple account problem for us. It is probably better to not send a virtual rose than to make an account that you then have to answer all the questions to.
Our service would be to provide an I am not spamming commitment. A flag that can be put in a message which signals “This is the only flagged message I have sent this week”
Where will your credibility come from?
Alice receives a message from Bob. It says “You’re amazing, we’re nothing but mammals, let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel”, and it also says “I, Mallory, hereby certify that Bob only talked about mammals once this week—to you”.
Why should Alice believe you?
Things like that are technically possible (e.g. cryptographic proofs-of-work) but Alice is unlikely to verify your proofs herself and why should she trust Mallory, anyway?
I think if we had a nice professional website, with a link to a long description of how it all works that people won’t read anyway, they will tend to trust us.
Seconded—once you get as far as people trusting you enough to post their personal information and possibly pay you for the service, they’re not still suspecting you of letting people spam you with “certified” non-spam.
Here is one improvement to OKcupid, which we might even be able to implement as a third party:
OKcupid has bad match algorithms, but it can still be useful as searchable classified adds. However, when you find a legitimate match, you need to have a way to signal to the other person that you believe the match could work.
Most messages on OKcupid are from men to women, so women already have a way to do this: send a message, however men do not.
Men spam messages, by glancing over profiles, and sending cookie cutter messages that mention something in the profile. Women are used to this spam, and may reject legitimate interest, because they do not have a good enough spam filter.
Our service would be to provide an I am not spamming commitment. A flag that can be put in a message which signals “This is the only flagged message I have sent this week”
It would be a link, you put in your message, which sends you to a site that basically says. Yes, Bob(profile link) has only sent this flag to Alice(profile link) in the week of 2/20/14-2/26/14, with an explanation of how this works.
Do you think that would be a useful service to implement? Do you think people would actually use it, and receive it well?
Scarce signals do increase willingness to go on dates, based on a field experiment of online dating in South Korea.
I wonder if a per-message fee for a certain kind of message would be a good business model for this. My suspicion is that it would work very well if all your users had that reluctance to ever spend anything online (people are much more willing to buy utilions that involve getting a physical product than to pay for things like apps)), but it breaks down as soon as someone with some unused disposable income realizes that spamming $1 notes isn’t that expensive.
Only being able to send a certain number of messages per week of a special type might be enough for indicating non-spam, as long as you could solve the problem of people making multiple profiles to get around it. Having a small fee attached to the service might help with tracking that down, since it would keep people from abusing it too extremely, and cover the cost of having someone investigate suspicious accounts (if more than one is paid for by the same credit card at around the same time, for example).
OKcupid solves the multiple account problem for us. It is probably better to not send a virtual rose than to make an account that you then have to answer all the questions to.
Where will your credibility come from?
Alice receives a message from Bob. It says “You’re amazing, we’re nothing but mammals, let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel”, and it also says “I, Mallory, hereby certify that Bob only talked about mammals once this week—to you”.
Why should Alice believe you?
Things like that are technically possible (e.g. cryptographic proofs-of-work) but Alice is unlikely to verify your proofs herself and why should she trust Mallory, anyway?
I think if we had a nice professional website, with a link to a long description of how it all works that people won’t read anyway, they will tend to trust us.
Especially if we use math.
Seconded—once you get as far as people trusting you enough to post their personal information and possibly pay you for the service, they’re not still suspecting you of letting people spam you with “certified” non-spam.