8 ms·
Sex in the Bathroom and the Problem of Offline Data
- huggyface 14y agoThis seems deeply fictional to me: a group of adults appear in a bar. Why would a manager ever contact a matching agency? Maybe the internet has made me too cynical, but the bar for truthiness has fallen rather low. That seems bizarre, but of course is to imply a certain opportunity and efficacy in the product in a very salacious, shareable fashion. I don't buy it.
- PStamatiou 14y agoThey prepay for their first round of drinks through Grouper. It's on the "how it works" section: https://www.joingrouper.com/ https://www.joingrouper.com/
- huggyface 14y agoOkay I suppose that makes sense. I've been with groups where some of the more brash have gone off and covorted in the bathrooms, and when the establishment has a problem it has never been a big deal. I still can't envision managers actually calling the parents on them.
- shuzchen 14y agoThat's because if you guys just show up at the establishment, they have no idea who your "parents" are or where to contact them. If, however, your group arrived there through some arrangement (between grouper and the establishment in this case), they do have a place to complain if you do something they don't approve of.
- gwern 14y agoThe managers are probably assuming that this 'Grouper' may be a prostitution front, and naturally would prefer it not be using their premises.
- mindstab 14y agoalso they might be getting repeated business through this "new" client called grouper and then notice some of those people having sec in the bathroom. It's probably more than a one time thing so they realize it's a business and then don't want to get associated with certain kinds of businesses which the law is really hard on. It's illegal to make profit from or take any more from money made from prostitution so it's in their interest to make sure everything ok and they aren't being turned into some poorman's brothel and don't have to worry about the cops shutting them down next week.
- waxman 14y agoFrankly, the first time it happened we didn't believe it either. But you can't make this stuff up :-)
- shasta 14y agoYes you can.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- carbocation 14y agoBut he's not.
- nessus42 14y agoBoy, both of you have led sheltered lives if you think either that one has to make up stuff like this, or that stuff like this is hard to believe!
- huggyface 14y agoI am very much aware that people have sex in bathrooms (in restaurants, in bars, on planes). It is actually not a big deal, and one that most establishments treat as a mere nuisance: One restaurant in my area actually had a promotion that hinted that they were open to this. Filter down to places where you send adults for drinks and the likelihood that anyone is going to treat it as a big deal falls even lower. THAT is what is unbelievable, your laughable notion that we are sheltered notwithstanding.
- ErrantX 14y agoand one that most establishments treat as a mere nuisance I'm skeptical of this... I'm struggling to think of any reasonable bar in my area (i.e. anything below, say, nightclub level) where, if someone caught you having sex in the bathroom, you wouldn't be asked (politely) to take it elsewhere.
- joshfraser 14y agoSince they are startup, I assume they have a pretty close relationship with a lot of the bars they are working with. I wouldn't be surprised if the founders visited the bar and set things up themselves. In this scenario, it's much more likely that word would get back to them about sex in the bathroom.
- redwood 14y agoThis is brilliant marketing... subtext "you will get laid if you use our site!"
- AznHisoka 14y agoPut 2 rats of the opposite sex in a cage and chances are they're gonna get it on. Same can be said for for humans. We just animals!
- bitwize 14y agoYou know, back in my day, sharp signs preceded channel names, and at signs let you know who the channel ops were. The encroachment of Twitterspeak and Twittersigils into everyday English is a bad moon rising.
- Dylan16807 14y agoOkay, either I'm missing something glaring about the article or you posted this comment on the wrong thing. Which is it?
- Jacquass12321 14y agoNothing glaring, but he's probably referencing the (#awkward) comment in the blog.
- ImprovedSilence 14y agomeh, I enjoy it, I understand it's meaning, and it's crept into emails between my friends and I as well. Just another mannerism creeping into casual electronic communication to convey meaning whilst not face to face isn't a bad thing. Go find someone else to kick off your lawn.
- robotresearcher 14y agoMeh; its; my friends and me. Three mistakes of grammar in a paragraph about relaxed written communication. A self-evidencing post!
- ImprovedSilence 14y agohaha touche. I've also noticed I've become completely unable to spell words with more than five letters, as spell checkers have been doing it for me for so long that I forgets my wurdz. #grammersux
- yew 14y agoAre you sure 'between my friends and me' is actually incorrect? It is a prepositional phrase, unless I'm mistaken. I admit to having little familiarity with the relevant grammar. (Boy is this off topic!)
- harryf 14y agoGreat hook but then... "Apply Privately with Facebook" Instafail. That's never gonna happen. Ever. Please take a read of http://dickbrouwer.com/post/16748664071/facebook-perils http://dickbrouwer.com/post/16748664071/facebook-perils
- Dylan16807 14y agoThat's not really relevant here because this is a rare site that actually needs facebook data like the friend graph. They're not using it as a lazy login mechanism.
- harryf 14y agoEven so that facebook button is sitting there acting as the gateway to investigating further, with very little information provided so far. To me it's almost like a site that says "Give us your credit card information now. We promise only to do nice things with it. Later we'll tell you what we did"
- ErrantX 14y agoThe process is really simple; and they explain it with a nice graphical flow if you click the "how does it work" link (prior to signing in). Did you see/click that and still have the same concern? And if you did see it, what sort of assurances/explanations would you want to see? (I'm not being facetious, I'm genuinely curious :)).
- MaxGabriel 14y agoIs it different for real-world meetups though? I think Ridejoy did a great job with this http://ridejoy.com/signup?redirect_url=%2F http://ridejoy.com/signup?redirect_url=%2F
- mindstab 14y agoTheir entire product is based off of taking your facebook data and friends graph and arranging these meetups. It's not some instafail slapped on at the last moment because they thought it was a good idea, its a core peice of how they work. If that doesn't work for you fine, but in this case then their site isn't for you but oh well
- MaxGabriel 14y agoThis is such an awesome problem. Have you made any changes based on the FB friends data? Do you feel like the data has been more valuable than personal experience?
- yahelc 14y agoHoping that someone from Grouper happens to be reading this: The unsubscribe link in your emails is broken. I got so tired of unsubscribing unsuccessfully that I've now been marking you as spam every time I get an email. Obviously, this is bad for your deliverability. You should fix your unsub links.
- waxman 14y agoI just unsubscribed you. Sorry for the hassle. If anyone else is having problems, we send all of our e-mails from addresses that you can respond to. The one-click unsubscribe links seem to be working fine, but if they're not, you can just respond to the e-mail and we'll take care of it.
- vukk 14y agoI was expecting this to be about tapping on your phone's accelerometer to gather the data.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoMaybe they could partner with Target [1] to see if someone gets pregnant after their meetup. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&hp http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.h...
- RockyMcNuts 14y agoha! a Groupon for bathroom hookups... should have called it...Grope-On
- sciurus 14y agoJust put the stress on the O rather than the U in Grouper.
- par 14y agoGood way to get new members Grouper. :)
- rosstafarian 14y agoTheres this trendy little bar/lounge in philadelphia's old city section called paradigm which has these unisex bathrooms with doors that are clear when unlocked and fog up as soon as you lock them[1]. Once in a while it makes for a usually not quite desirable show when some one(or two) is drunk enough to shut the door without locking it and not notice the opacity. [1] http://s3-media3.ak.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/I7ICPsQ45YVbLzKEBiHNDQ/l.jpg http://s3-media3.ak.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/I7ICPsQ45YVbLzKEBiHND... left locked, right unlocked
- a-priori 14y agoIn downtown Lausanne, Switzerland (in this plaza, if you're in the area: http://g.co/maps/tupbn http://g.co/maps/tupbn), there's an outdoor washroom that's enclosed in that sort of glass. When you walk up to it, all the walls are clear. When you lock the door, the walls go opaque. Not really sure how it works, to be honest... Edit: This is the stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_glass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_glass
- deepakprakash 14y ago"Also, while I can't promise you sex in the bathroom (if that's what you're looking for), I can say that it happens. We just don't know how often." Haha, nice pitch - wonder if VCs would buy it! ;) Hilarious story btw. :)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- timthorn 14y ago> I don't care if a user says they like a feature; I care if they actually use it That's a mildly dangerous position for a product owner to take (though I accept in the particular scenario described it makes sense). In a customer's mind, having a facility available - even if never used - may be a key feature of the service.
- _delirium 14y agoOne example that comes up now and then in the offline world is late-night public transit. If you go by measured ridership, it's a no-brainer to cut most trips, because empirically people rarely actually ride late at night (in most U.S. cities, anyway). But when you do, in most cases ridership at other times of day falls also, because people suddenly are worried about the possibility of getting stranded. Even if 98% of the time they never actually use the 2am bus, they like knowing that it's available just in case.
- psyconn 14y agoYou can solve the problem easily if you get hold of the cellphone data of the involved parties. If cellphones get together after date, it was successful. If cellphones spend the night in the same location, I'll call it a 5 star. The cherry on top would be that if you have GPS on both phones you can also get the bathroom moment. Say hello to the new age of not so much privacy.
- capsule_toy 14y agoNot surprised and the lesson here is actually something very important and common: user surveys aren't always accurate. Ask a bunch of people if they're interested in learning new things and almost every one is going to say yes, but that doesn't mean they'll actually put in the work, however minimal, to do so.