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Tell HN: The problem with BangWithFriends - it's not anonymous

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Re: Tell HN: The problem with BangWithFriends - it's not anonymous

#51

Post by Zimahl »

colkassad wrote: post #5

Ask HN: What is BangWithFriends? Edit: a Facebook app that where you can click on friends you want to sleep with. If they have the app, they are notified. I would think this would be more cool if both of you are only notified if you both signify that you want to sleep with each other. This could also be toned down to just signify romantic interest to get more engagement.

BangWithFriends seems like a new implementation of something I've seen a couple times in the last few decades. This is the first time I've seen it on FB.

I ran into this years ago in it's email incarnation. I think it was something like you'd get an email that said someone had a crush on you and then you are supposed to put in emails of other people and if there was a match you'd be notified. The problem was you didn't know who sent the email so you'd probably put in the emails of all your female contacts (or vice versa, etc) and then all of them would get emails. Logically it was an email ponzi scheme where if you didn't see the inherent problem from the beginning you probably ended up really confusing a bunch of your friends.

Re: Tell HN: The problem with BangWithFriends - it's not anonymous

#52

Post by gailees »

The problem with BangWithFriends is that there are no females on there that are down to bang. Every person I've ever seen login has a multitude of male friends "using this app" and little to no female friends using it.

This kind of app is completely fucked from the start bc of the gender disparity.

Re: Tell HN: The problem with BangWithFriends - it's not anonymous

#53

Post by kremdela »

Great find. I had a similar issue with a dumb app I built a long time ago that was more of a learning experiment / sick joke than anything real.

It was called Rubbed Out and the point was to list all of your friends you had thought about while masterbating.

With bad permissions, or a small sample size, it gets really scary.

Re: Tell HN: The problem with BangWithFriends - it's not anonymous

#54

Post by alanctgardner2 »

ovoxo wrote: post #34

Interesting. Here's another problem I just discovered: "Men who live in Toronto, Ontario and who use BangWithFriends" - 65 "Females who live in Toronto, Ontario and who use BangWithFriends" - 6

Well, you have to do some refractory period math, but it's doable. The bigger problem is trying to partition the graph so everyone is willing to sleep with everyone in their partition, and the partitions are evenly sized. I'm willing to bet this is an NP-hard problem.

Re: Tell HN: The problem with BangWithFriends - it's not anonymous

#55

Post by xbigdanx »

fatbird wrote: post #50
SkyMarshal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fatal flaw or working as intended?

The premise of the app is that with a contrived double-blind method, you can turbo past the awkward stage of signalling interest in someone. It's flawed because if I click all my friends just to see who clicked me, then find friends X, Y and Z clicked me, I still don't know if they actually want to have sex with me, or were just doing the same thing I did. We haven't skipped an awkward step at all. In a way, it's wor…

Yeah but if you are clicking on everyone to see who clicks on you, you don't have to pursue anything.

If someone clicks on you and you don't want to sleep with them, you wouldn't reach out to them about it, no? So you don't reach out to anyone, waiting for them to reach out to you to express their interest.

And now you get to the point where both are waiting forever for the other to make the first move to avoid embarrassment.

Re: Tell HN: The problem with BangWithFriends - it's not anonymous

#56

Post by fatbird »

xbigdanx wrote: post #55
fatbird wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise of the app is that with a contrived double-blind method, you can turbo past the awkward stage of signalling interest in someone. It's flawed because if I click all my friends just to see who clicked me, then find friends X, Y and Z clicked me, I still don't know if they actually want to have sex with me, or were just doing the same thing I did. We haven't skipped an awkward step at all. In a way, it's wor…

Yeah but if you are clicking on everyone to see who clicks on you, you don't have to pursue anything. If someone clicks on you and you don't want to sleep with them, you wouldn't reach out to them about it, no? So you don't reach out to anyone, waiting for them to reach out to you to express their interest. And now you get to the point where both are waiting forever for the other to make the first move to avoid embar…

Well, exactly. This is why the app fails in its basic model: it doesn't help you past that awkward first step of signalling interest. Even after getting a mutual thumbs up, you still don't know if there's a real hookup there.

Re: Tell HN: The problem with BangWithFriends - it's not anonymous

#58

Post by meta »

alanctgardner2 wrote: post #54
ovoxo wrote: post #34

Interesting. Here's another problem I just discovered: "Men who live in Toronto, Ontario and who use BangWithFriends" - 65 "Females who live in Toronto, Ontario and who use BangWithFriends" - 6

Well, you have to do some refractory period math, but it's doable. The bigger problem is trying to partition the graph so everyone is willing to sleep with everyone in their partition, and the partitions are evenly sized. I'm willing to bet this is an NP-hard problem.

Reminds me of Stable Matching[1] but the groups aren't the same size. I guess if we can relax the "opposite sex" requirement then we reduce the problem to a Stable Roommates Problem[2] ;)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_matching [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_roommates_problem

Re: Tell HN: The problem with BangWithFriends - it's not anonymous

#59

Post by blacksqr »

fatbird wrote: post #38
colkassad wrote: post #5

Ask HN: What is BangWithFriends? Edit: a Facebook app that where you can click on friends you want to sleep with. If they have the app, they are notified. I would think this would be more cool if both of you are only notified if you both signify that you want to sleep with each other. This could also be toned down to just signify romantic interest to get more engagement.

The fatal flaw in the model is "I'm going to click on all my friends to see who signals interest in me".

That's not the fatal flaw. The fatal flaw is that all the men in a social circle will click on every friend to see who signals interest. All the women will click on the same one or two individuals. In other words, the fatal flaw is that it will simply replicate the dynamics and frustrations of high school.

Re: Tell HN: The problem with BangWithFriends - it's not anonymous

#60

Post by gonehome »

btilly wrote: post #46
gonehome wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does work only work based on mutual notifications. I know it's bad form to link to your own website, but I wrote at length about this here: http://www.zacharyalberico.net/blog/dating-websites/

You are looking at it from the point of view of the user if the system is working as desired. From the point of view of the website, you're not driving clicks. You're not making money. You're not driving growth. It is also bad for users. You do not drive clicks. Cannot pay for marketing. So your site gains no traction. And with no traction, actual users show up, can't find the people that they know, and then leave th…

Interesting points, the chicken/egg issue is a real problem and something I think starting with a targeted community (college is the example in the post) would help alleviate.

You can't tell people that X people like them because it creates a perverse incentive to click on everyone to find out who.

Driving clicks shouldn't be the foundation of the idea, the partnering with local places to meet could help with the value side of things. This is how you also keep people using it (giving them a reason to check in to places) that I talked about toward the end of the post.

The not making money/driving growth part reminded me a little of a meeting Page and Brin had when they were originally trying to sell their algorithm before deciding to start google. They were showing off to a current search engine how page rank returned results that were magnitudes better than the contextual search (which the other site was using). The guy they were showing it to said something along the lines of "This is too good, too fast and the results returned are too relevant. We want people to stay on the engine page as long as possible to click on ads". Sometimes the value of something isn't immediately obvious.

It's more about just solving the problem first and the money would be a means to do that. I think if you can solve a common problem in a better way there is probably a way to create value out of that. For example it'd also probably work well for people meeting each other within a company, but I'd doubt any companies would go for that.

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