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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 re

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.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    They appear to be spamming for the express purpose of converting free woome users to paid ones. Come on.
  - dannyr 16y ago
    Dude, do you seriously think the people here at HN are stupid?
  - bluelu 16y ago
    The same game as google plays with the adsense spam sites. As long as they make money, allow them to stay even though in public you say taht you will do everything to ban them. It's not that hard to spot users messaging new users during the first few minutes. If one user does this multiple times, just ban him.
- mikero23 16y ago
  Thanks - I've cancelled that account. Some of these buggers are a pain to catch automatically
lolgjkje 16y ago
> If you really WANT snake oil I guess I could find some and get it to you. You certainly have enough of it in stock. Let's get real: you're either generating, or allowing spams because they result in upsells. You have no financial incentive to stop the problem, and you lack the ethics to do it because it's right. Not to mention that your investors would wonder why the cash spigot dried up, once you converted your site from an unethical cesspool of deception to a legitimate, value-adding business. You're everything that's wrong with business in a neat little bun. Here's to hoping that someday you stop scamming people, and start creating value.
nikcub 16y ago
> I'm not sure what I can do to combat the perception that I sell snake oil. 1. Delete the fake bot accounts 2. Re-word your homepage so that it is clear to users that you need to pay money to do anything useful 3. Come out and say 'in an effort to ramp up user engagement we went too far and made a mistake. apologies' I signed up for your site years ago. I have slowly watched it progress from something useful to a totally degenerate spam and bait site. (Edit: I will add that if it is your affiliates who are doing the spamming, then ban them and put in better controls. I just logged into my account and got 3 messages in less than a second)

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.
- tptacek 16y ago
  They appear to be spamming for the express purpose of converting free woome users to paid ones. Come on.
- dannyr 16y ago
  Dude, do you seriously think the people here at HN are stupid?
- bluelu 16y ago
  The same game as google plays with the adsense spam sites. As long as they make money, allow them to stay even though in public you say taht you will do everything to ban them. It's not that hard to spot users messaging new users during the first few minutes. If one user does this multiple times, just ban him.
mikero23 16y ago
Thanks - I've cancelled that account. Some of these buggers are a pain to catch automatically

lolgjkje 16y ago

> If you really WANT snake oil I guess I could find some and get it to you. You certainly have enough of it in stock. Let's get real: you're either generating, or allowing spams because they result in upsells. You have no financial incentive to stop the problem, and you lack the ethics to do it because it's right. Not to mention that your investors would wonder why the cash spigot dried up, once you converted your site from an unethical cesspool of deception to a legitimate, value-adding business. You're everything that's wrong with business in a neat little bun. Here's to hoping that someday you stop scamming people, and start creating value.

nikcub 16y ago

> I'm not sure what I can do to combat the perception that I sell snake oil. 1. Delete the fake bot accounts 2. Re-word your homepage so that it is clear to users that you need to pay money to do anything useful 3. Come out and say 'in an effort to ramp up user engagement we went too far and made a mistake. apologies' I signed up for your site years ago. I have slowly watched it progress from something useful to a totally degenerate spam and bait site. (Edit: I will add that if it is your affiliates who are doing the spamming, then ban them and put in better controls. I just logged into my account and got 3 messages in less than a second)