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for the record, robin wauters didn't approach us to verify anything in the story and the accusations are untrue and misleading. we focus very hard on getting p

for the record, robin wauters didn't approach us to verify anything in the story and the accusations are untrue and misleading. we focus very hard on getting people to talk to each other and interact and we have a number of features on the site, driven by users, that make that happen. Ironically, the user featured in the pic is one of the longest standing and most active on WooMe.

robryan 16y ago
So your saying that every message received came from a real user of the website?
- nicferrier 16y ago
  I don't know what he received so I can't say. But our tools promote real users interacting with real users. Maybe Robin could talk to us if he has a problem. Horses for courses not withstanding.
  - redthrowaway 16y ago
    "I don't know what he received so I can't say." Speak straight. Do you or do you not send automated messages or messages from fake accounts in an effort to entice visitors to sign up?
    - nicferrier 16y ago
      we do not.
      - redthrowaway 16y ago
        Is it your belief that the messages in question are genuine?
      - tptacek 16y ago
        Are you aware of any process by which new users are sent automated messages from accounts, valid or not?
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
        jorgeortiz85 16y ago
        They might be paying commission to users that get other users to pay for membership. That would generate very bot-like behavior even if the users are "real".
      - qeorge 16y ago
        Bullshit. http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/woome.png http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/woome.png Yeah, that's a "real" dater.
        nicferrier 16y ago
        that's not a message from a user.
        tluyben2 16y ago
        It however looks like a user and people will think it's a user. So it's a fake user.
        dolinsky 16y ago
        http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170185 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170185
      - lolgjkje 16y ago
        Do you purposefully allow spammers (affiliates maybe?) to generate large numbers of fake messages that result in conversions from your fake free, to paid accounts? Yes you do. I have less than zero respect for you, and for everything you do.
  - robinwauters 16y ago
    Stop pretending I'm not engaging in a conversation.
  - robinwauters 16y ago
    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 the opportunity to meet a horse in such a short time period.
    - metageek 16y ago
      You're doing this for work, right? Why not go ahead and pay the $25 and see what the messages say?
      - marcusEting 16y ago
        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.
      - rayval 16y ago
        Because it could be one of those services that is hard to cancel without cancelling the credit card.
dolinsky 16y ago
You, sir, sound like a snake oil salesman of the worst kind. Either that or you have no clue how your site operates. edit but apparently 'Jen' does. Screencast here -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOtBmqqKVcc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOtBmqqKVcc (Thanks to my Appsumo purchase of Screenflow which saved me 50%!)
- nicferrier 16y ago
  right. I'm the CTO. I'm not sure what I can do to combat the perception that I sell snake oil. I don't sell snake oil. I help people meet each other. If you really WANT snake oil I guess I could find some and get it to you.
  - dolinsky 16y ago
    You're right, that was totally unprofessional of me to lay such an ad hominem attack and run away...so let me expand upon my thought some more. Your site either uses fake accounts to trick legitimate users into paying to view messages from these supposed hot women looking for dates with horses and guys who have just signed up yet haven't provided any personal details...or you have a very serious spam problem where bots are running rampant across your site with hordes of fake accounts trolling for new profiles to scam (or a combination therein). As evidence, I just logged in to my woome account, which I haven't logged into in maybe 3 years, and immediately I got a request for a video chat from http://www.woome.com/sallyl3462/ http://www.woome.com/sallyl3462/ . Who wants to get laid tonight? Sally does!
    - nicferrier 16y ago
      I can't say there aren't spammers using our site. that problem waxes and wanes and we try to deal with it as best we can. The user quoted is most definitely a spammer and I'll look into why we haven't caught that. I don't think that's what robin is trying to say tho. We are simply trying to make introductions happen as much as possible because that's what people use woome for. To meet new people. It seems to work, to my knowledge our users are generally happy we have good time on site, repeat vistits and viping.
tomh- 16y ago
I've not yet signed up, but I will later today to check out how this services tries to trick people into paying money with the promise of good looking girls waiting to talk to you. From TC: " After a user "friends" someone, we pop up 6 "other people like him" and the user can select up to 6 people to "say hi" to. Again, we try to focus on 1) relevance and 2) online now in populating those suggestions." Does that mean that a user has to pay for his curiosity just to see a bunch of "say hi" messages?
- getsat 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure they'll have disabled that functionality until this incident blows over.
swombat 16y ago
http://www.woome.com/ 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 probably increases conversions, but you shouldn't pursue conversions at the expense of basic ethics. Would you shoot a puppy to increase conversions too? So, at the moment, I'd evaluate as 80% likely the claims in the TC blog post. Still waiting to read nicferrier's responses to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170210 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170210 though.
- po 16y ago
  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 appearance of activity and photos they can dangle in front of other users. What do they call that again… bait for the lobster trap? http://www.woome.com/woome/privacy/ http://www.woome.com/woome/privacy/ Use of Information Obtained by WooMe When you register with WooMe, you create your own profile and privacy settings. Your profile information, as well as your name, email and photo, are displayed to people in the networks specified in your privacy settings to enable you to connect with people on WooMe. ... Profile information is used by WooMe primarily to be presented back to and edited by you when you access the service and to be presented to others permitted to view that information by your privacy settings. You know, it is certainly possible that those messages are all either spam accounts or real people trying to make the money they paid worthwhile by meeting someone. Then again, pyramid schemes are perpetuated by real people trying hard to make their investment worth it too.
  - hinathan 16y ago
    "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
robinwauters 16y ago
I did contact WooMe. The accusations are not misleading, see also the update to my post. Also, the user featured in the top picture personally contacted me, and while I never claimed her profile was fake (but mine obviously was), it turns out she's pretending to be someone else on there (confirmed). It's easy to say I fabricated the story, much harder to prove, isn't it? I wouldn't be calling you out if I didn't think you really need to take a good look of how what kind of shady business you're running.
- nicferrier 16y ago
  I didn't say you fabricated the story, I am taking issue with you claiming they are fake users, made by us. They are not, they're real users of the site. Could be there was a lot of spam on the site at that time - but we weren't sending you fake activity. You acknowledge that the lady in the picture was real. We didn't do anything to stop these getting to you, as you say elsewhere in this thread. Since you weren't top online anymore (and if you're not engaging you also drop off the top of the 'online now' list) you just didn't get these messages anymore. As for contacting us... well, I'm sorry, I guessed we dropped it. I've been trying to track down your email and I can't find it.
  - jeffmould 16y ago
    The statement of "I've been trying to track down your email and I can't find it" falls right into the problem with the site. It is obvious you did not try to hard or at all. Robin is active on Twitter, has his own domain name with links to among other things an email address, and if all else fails, reaching out directly to TechCrunch for contact to a writer is fairly simple.

robryan 16y ago

So your saying that every message received came from a real user of the website?

nicferrier 16y ago
I don't know what he received so I can't say. But our tools promote real users interacting with real users. Maybe Robin could talk to us if he has a problem. Horses for courses not withstanding.
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  "I don't know what he received so I can't say." Speak straight. Do you or do you not send automated messages or messages from fake accounts in an effort to entice visitors to sign up?
  - nicferrier 16y ago
    we do not.
    - redthrowaway 16y ago
      Is it your belief that the messages in question are genuine?
    - tptacek 16y ago
      Are you aware of any process by which new users are sent automated messages from accounts, valid or not?
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - jorgeortiz85 16y ago
        They might be paying commission to users that get other users to pay for membership. That would generate very bot-like behavior even if the users are "real".
    - qeorge 16y ago
      Bullshit. http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/woome.png http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/woome.png Yeah, that's a "real" dater.
      - nicferrier 16y ago
        that's not a message from a user.
        tluyben2 16y ago
        It however looks like a user and people will think it's a user. So it's a fake user.
      - dolinsky 16y ago
        http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170185 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170185
    - lolgjkje 16y ago
      Do you purposefully allow spammers (affiliates maybe?) to generate large numbers of fake messages that result in conversions from your fake free, to paid accounts? Yes you do. I have less than zero respect for you, and for everything you do.
- robinwauters 16y ago
  Stop pretending I'm not engaging in a conversation.
- robinwauters 16y ago
  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 the opportunity to meet a horse in such a short time period.
  - metageek 16y ago
    You're doing this for work, right? Why not go ahead and pay the $25 and see what the messages say?
    - marcusEting 16y ago
      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.
    - rayval 16y ago
      Because it could be one of those services that is hard to cancel without cancelling the credit card.

dolinsky 16y ago

You, sir, sound like a snake oil salesman of the worst kind. Either that or you have no clue how your site operates. edit but apparently 'Jen' does. Screencast here -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOtBmqqKVcc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOtBmqqKVcc (Thanks to my Appsumo purchase of Screenflow which saved me 50%!)

nicferrier 16y ago
right. I'm the CTO. I'm not sure what I can do to combat the perception that I sell snake oil. I don't sell snake oil. I help people meet each other. If you really WANT snake oil I guess I could find some and get it to you.
- dolinsky 16y ago
  You're right, that was totally unprofessional of me to lay such an ad hominem attack and run away...so let me expand upon my thought some more. Your site either uses fake accounts to trick legitimate users into paying to view messages from these supposed hot women looking for dates with horses and guys who have just signed up yet haven't provided any personal details...or you have a very serious spam problem where bots are running rampant across your site with hordes of fake accounts trolling for new profiles to scam (or a combination therein). As evidence, I just logged in to my woome account, which I haven't logged into in maybe 3 years, and immediately I got a request for a video chat from http://www.woome.com/sallyl3462/ http://www.woome.com/sallyl3462/ . Who wants to get laid tonight? Sally does!
  - nicferrier 16y ago
    I can't say there aren't spammers using our site. that problem waxes and wanes and we try to deal with it as best we can. The user quoted is most definitely a spammer and I'll look into why we haven't caught that. I don't think that's what robin is trying to say tho. We are simply trying to make introductions happen as much as possible because that's what people use woome for. To meet new people. It seems to work, to my knowledge our users are generally happy we have good time on site, repeat vistits and viping.

tomh- 16y ago

I've not yet signed up, but I will later today to check out how this services tries to trick people into paying money with the promise of good looking girls waiting to talk to you. From TC: " After a user "friends" someone, we pop up 6 "other people like him" and the user can select up to 6 people to "say hi" to. Again, we try to focus on 1) relevance and 2) online now in populating those suggestions." Does that mean that a user has to pay for his curiosity just to see a bunch of "say hi" messages?

getsat 16y ago
I'm pretty sure they'll have disabled that functionality until this incident blows over.

swombat 16y ago

http://www.woome.com/ 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 probably increases conversions, but you shouldn't pursue conversions at the expense of basic ethics. Would you shoot a puppy to increase conversions too? So, at the moment, I'd evaluate as 80% likely the claims in the TC blog post. Still waiting to read nicferrier's responses to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170210 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170210 though.

po 16y ago
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 appearance of activity and photos they can dangle in front of other users. What do they call that again… bait for the lobster trap? http://www.woome.com/woome/privacy/ http://www.woome.com/woome/privacy/ Use of Information Obtained by WooMe When you register with WooMe, you create your own profile and privacy settings. Your profile information, as well as your name, email and photo, are displayed to people in the networks specified in your privacy settings to enable you to connect with people on WooMe. ... Profile information is used by WooMe primarily to be presented back to and edited by you when you access the service and to be presented to others permitted to view that information by your privacy settings. You know, it is certainly possible that those messages are all either spam accounts or real people trying to make the money they paid worthwhile by meeting someone. Then again, pyramid schemes are perpetuated by real people trying hard to make their investment worth it too.
- hinathan 16y ago
  "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

robinwauters 16y ago

I did contact WooMe. The accusations are not misleading, see also the update to my post. Also, the user featured in the top picture personally contacted me, and while I never claimed her profile was fake (but mine obviously was), it turns out she's pretending to be someone else on there (confirmed). It's easy to say I fabricated the story, much harder to prove, isn't it? I wouldn't be calling you out if I didn't think you really need to take a good look of how what kind of shady business you're running.

nicferrier 16y ago
I didn't say you fabricated the story, I am taking issue with you claiming they are fake users, made by us. They are not, they're real users of the site. Could be there was a lot of spam on the site at that time - but we weren't sending you fake activity. You acknowledge that the lady in the picture was real. We didn't do anything to stop these getting to you, as you say elsewhere in this thread. Since you weren't top online anymore (and if you're not engaging you also drop off the top of the 'online now' list) you just didn't get these messages anymore. As for contacting us... well, I'm sorry, I guessed we dropped it. I've been trying to track down your email and I can't find it.
- jeffmould 16y ago
  The statement of "I've been trying to track down your email and I can't find it" falls right into the problem with the site. It is obvious you did not try to hard or at all. Robin is active on Twitter, has his own domain name with links to among other things an email address, and if all else fails, reaching out directly to TechCrunch for contact to a writer is fairly simple.