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WooMe: TechCrunch40 Finalist, $20 Million In Funding – And One Huge Scam

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Re: WooMe: TechCrunch40 Finalist, $20 Million In Funding – And One Huge Scam

#61

Post by yaakov34 »

noodle wrote: post #58
yaakov34 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your attempt to split the difference kind of reminds me of this: http://xkcd.com/690/ . Sorry. What does it matter if only 18 of the 20 messages were fakes intended to make him sign up, and 2 were real? Not that I'd think for a second that any of them were.

i'm not splitting the difference. if any messages were fake, its shady and legally liable. my point is, how can he know this for sure? all he's doing is saying that it is probably true, and not investigating. $30 from TC to sign up for a month and verify his assumption is just good journalism.

You're the one who said it's "conceivable" that one or two of the messages are real, e.g. "LOL." So it's inconceivable that 18 or so are real. How is that not splitting the difference in a funny way? The journo's point is that new profiles get sent fake messages to convert them. This is obviously true, even if there are real messages too.

Re: WooMe: TechCrunch40 Finalist, $20 Million In Funding – And One Huge Scam

#62

Post by robinwauters »

noodle wrote: post #57
robinwauters wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the messages from users, it's the whole concept of showing nothing unless you hand over your credit details, pretending hot women are dying to contact you even though you're obviously not date material (unless they're into horses), the unsolicited emails, the corny live chat box and pop-up message when you try to close it, and so on.

> it's the whole concept of showing nothing unless you hand over your credit details this is how a lot of dating sites work. no contact unless you pay, no receiving messages unless you pay. its also how classmates.com works, not just dating sites. and one of the reasons they were sued recently is due to business practices similar to this. > pretending hot women are dying to contact you even though you're obviously no…

There seems to be a notion that I shouldn't call out WooMe because other sites are doing it too. I don't know where that is coming from.

Re: WooMe: TechCrunch40 Finalist, $20 Million In Funding – And One Huge Scam

#63

Post by noodle »

robinwauters wrote: post #62
noodle wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's the whole concept of showing nothing unless you hand over your credit details this is how a lot of dating sites work. no contact unless you pay, no receiving messages unless you pay. its also how classmates.com works, not just dating sites. and one of the reasons they were sued recently is due to business practices similar to this. > pretending hot women are dying to contact you even though you're obviously no…

There seems to be a notion that I shouldn't call out WooMe because other sites are doing it too. I don't know where that is coming from.

call out woome. the situation looks bad. it probably is bad. but call out woome with facts, not speculation. that is the notion.

Re: WooMe: TechCrunch40 Finalist, $20 Million In Funding – And One Huge Scam

#64

Post by hinathan »

po wrote: post #60
swombat wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.woome.com/ "wooMe is the most fun you'll have online for FREE!" "get started now! it's 100% free and takes 30 secs to sign up" Doing a Bayesian update on the claims of automated bot messages, with the fact that the company is willing to make obviously untrue statements on its front page, it seems reasonably likely that they would be willing to lie in other places too. I realise that claiming to be free pro…

Getting started is 100% free. It seem's like it's the actual talking to other people that you have to pay for. If not bait-and-switch, these weasel words are certainly misleading. I can only imagine what the bounce rate is when you put the payment details after the signup for a nerfed account. You can't do much until you upload a photo of yourself and by then they have already gotten something from you: the appearanc…

"Profile information is used by WooMe primarily to be..." — that 'primarily' is plausible grounds for secondary uses, such as making up 'new' (new to you) 'real' (there is a user who has this profile image) profiles to be shown in different demo/geo segments

Re: WooMe: TechCrunch40 Finalist, $20 Million In Funding – And One Huge Scam

#65

Post by noodle »

yaakov34 wrote: post #61
noodle wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm not splitting the difference. if any messages were fake, its shady and legally liable. my point is, how can he know this for sure? all he's doing is saying that it is probably true, and not investigating. $30 from TC to sign up for a month and verify his assumption is just good journalism.

You're the one who said it's "conceivable" that one or two of the messages are real, e.g. "LOL." So it's inconceivable that 18 or so are real. How is that not splitting the difference in a funny way? The journo's point is that new profiles get sent fake messages to convert them. This is obviously true, even if there are real messages too.

it is conceivable. it is possible. it is, however, not at all likely.

like i said in another response, they're almost definitely doing shady business. call them out on it. but call them out on it with facts, not speculation. TC is supposed to be tech journalism (sometimes, at least). do due diligence, get some proof and report on it.

Re: WooMe: TechCrunch40 Finalist, $20 Million In Funding – And One Huge Scam

#66

Post by elliottcarlson »

There is a huge industry going on on these kinds of sites - not necessarily done by the site owners...

Generally there are two monitizations for a third party; first of all being an affiliate and sending traffic can be big bucks (I paid for my wedding as a referrer for SexSearch and AdultFriendFinder - I'm not ashamed because I didn't use necessarily shady practices to accomplished this). With big bucks, I mean an easy $45 (at the time) per signup, more if it were a female registering. Having a day making $2k wasn't unheard of.

The second, shadier method, is that there will be "service providers" posing or automating profiles on these sites. The "service providers" (escorts, phone sex, porn sites, rival "dating" sites or plain our scammers) attempt to get the people to use their service by enticing the end-user and making them believe they are a real person. This is generally overlooked because for these new unpaid accounts, their curiosity gets the best of them when they can't read these private messages they are getting, and they end up paying for an account. (It was even beneficial to me, even though I wasn't luring anyone in to paying for an account, these service providers would convert them for me).

The thing that backfires is that so many of these service providers will hurt the quality of a site by making users instantly see that something is wrong - just like in the parent article. It's in WooMe's interest (if they are indeed not doing it themselves) to take control over this kind of misuse, and not let it get out of control - they will just lose real users, and in the end money.

Re: WooMe: TechCrunch40 Finalist, $20 Million In Funding – And One Huge Scam

#67

Post by marcusEting »

metageek wrote: post #48
robinwauters wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got about 5 messages the first 2-3 minutes after signing up. A short while later, I had roughly 20 random women contacting me. Good thing I have screenshots, because they stopped coming as soon as WooMe noticed my post. I can only see what these supposedly real women are trying to tell or ask me until I pay up. That's all fine and dandy, but there's no point in pretending that real users were just all jumping on th…

You're doing this for work, right? Why not go ahead and pay the $25 and see what the messages say?

Yes, I'm curious to see how they deal with a response to the messages. Seems like it would be a lot of trouble for them to do anything besides send some fake messages and not reply to them (although I guess they could automate those, too).

It would really be interesting to create a second account, or even a second paid account, and see if any of the messages were exactly the same.

Re: WooMe: TechCrunch40 Finalist, $20 Million In Funding – And One Huge Scam

#68

Post by yaakov34 »

Here's a suggestion for WooMe, if it wants to cling to some credibility or at least plausible deniability: upgrade the journo's account for free, so that he can contact the senders of those messages. If the messages are offering dates, and insisting on upgraded levels of membership - case closed. If the messages are promoting some unrelated service - the site has a raging spam problem.

And if the messages are real, I'll be a monkey's uncle.

Re: WooMe: TechCrunch40 Finalist, $20 Million In Funding – And One Huge Scam

#69

Post by notahacker »

noodle wrote: post #58
yaakov34 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your attempt to split the difference kind of reminds me of this: http://xkcd.com/690/ . Sorry. What does it matter if only 18 of the 20 messages were fakes intended to make him sign up, and 2 were real? Not that I'd think for a second that any of them were.

i'm not splitting the difference. if any messages were fake, its shady and legally liable. my point is, how can he know this for sure? all he's doing is saying that it is probably true, and not investigating. $30 from TC to sign up for a month and verify his assumption is just good journalism.

Or paying scammers to "prove" the bleeding obvious. I'm not sure that getting no replies to private messages (happens all the time on legit sites) is any better a standard of proof than 16 hot girls sending generic messages of interest in dating a horse (doesn't happen).

For all I know, one of the Nigerians in my spam folder really is sitting on piles of cash, but I don't think it would be good investigative journalism to give them small sums of money to test how many of them aren't lying.

Re: WooMe: TechCrunch40 Finalist, $20 Million In Funding – And One Huge Scam

#70

Post by noodle »

notahacker wrote: post #69
noodle wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm not splitting the difference. if any messages were fake, its shady and legally liable. my point is, how can he know this for sure? all he's doing is saying that it is probably true, and not investigating. $30 from TC to sign up for a month and verify his assumption is just good journalism.

Or paying scammers to "prove" the bleeding obvious. I'm not sure that getting no replies to private messages (happens all the time on legit sites) is any better a standard of proof than 16 hot girls sending generic messages of interest in dating a horse (doesn't happen). For all I know, one of the Nigerians in my spam folder really is sitting on piles of cash, but I don't think it would be good investigative journali…

CC chargeback.

for the average consumer, obviously, you would want to avoid it. for TC doing some journalism on a company they once supported and gave praise, PR, traffic, and the buzz to get funding, i would've expected a bit more.

but maybe thats just me.

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