
Crystal promises to help you understand how best to talk to any person - klunger
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/write-perfect-email-anyone-creepy-site/
======
easong
I'm extremely skeptical that this works a fraction as well as it claims.
Almost all of the information it provides is astrology-like well-meaning
doublespeak that applies to everyone at one point or another. There's even a
name for it -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect).

That probably won't stop businesses from wasting truckloads of money on their
own automated soothsayer, though.

Edit: Make sure you consult their physical terminal before emailing that big
VC! [http://imgur.com/UMIlcXz](http://imgur.com/UMIlcXz)

~~~
dchichkov
Yes... To make a generative model that can outperform humans in a social
setting? I think it is technically feasible to do basic sentiment analysis,
but the generative model... sorry, I think that NLP tech is just not there
yet.

On the other hand, I think _it is_ a good idea to have a sentiment analysis
system in place that advices users on overly negative sentiment in their
comments or e-mails. I wish there was one already integrated into YC comments
and into Gmail. Potentially can make life quite a bit nicer actually.

P.S. like your wording 'automated soothsayer'. Funny that the next logical
step would be wasting money on 'automated _soothslayers_ ' ;)

~~~
easong
Sentiment analysis to avoid overt negativity or rudeness is a great idea. It
might prevent people like me from commenting too often, and I could see some
perennially-depressed Reddit/OkCupid users getting a useful heads up from it
as well.

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khc
My immediate thought is applying this to okcupid messages. Okcupid can figure
out what kind of messages is likely to generate responses for each person, and
can probably charge the sender for the ideal writing style recommendation.

~~~
majormajor
I think that's against their long-term interest. For traffic to keep coming,
they need either new users from good word-of-mouth from people who had good
experiences, or repeat usage from people who were happy enough with their past
experience even if the relationship didn't last forever. Explicitly helping
people be manipulative in getting to an in-person meeting between probably-
not-actually-natural-matches seems counterproductive.

~~~
caseysoftware
I worked for a dating website years ago and you might be amazed about their
long-term interests..

If you join a dating site and fail, they lose one customer.

If you join a dating site and are successful, they lose _two_.

The goal became determining good but not _great_ matches and notify the user
regularly, especially if they hadn't logged in for a while. It was basically a
game of giving false hope to get them to keep their accounts active and the
dollars flowing.

I bailed a couple weeks after I realized this.

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mkmk
When you try it once or twice, it looks quite cool because you see a very
detailed description of exactly what the person wants to hear. Then you do it
a few more times and you realize that the detailed descriptions are actually a
nice piece of copywriting that is re-used over and over again. Some of the
magic is lost once you realize that the system is not really as precise as the
copywriting implies.

~~~
analog31
Like the Forer personality test?

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fchollet
Now is as good a time as any to link to this interesting essay by PG:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

~~~
bcoates
I don't get it: this doesn't seem like the sort of perennial advertisement-as-
trend-story that PG's complaining about at all.

Wired writing about new tech products isn't creepy PR infringing on
journalism, it's why people read it in the first place.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Wired's writing is fine, it's Crystal that's creepy. An unknown proprietary
algorithm tells us what to write to our friends? Soon they'll just write for
us. Does an advertiser want 1 million people to casually mention something to
their friends today? Have the algorithm work it in!

Crystal gives companies a new and more powerful tool for spreading their
messages. Of course the first use is always innocent, but if this tech caught
on (I can imagine in some form it will) then there is a lot of potential here
for PR firms to interject their messages.

EDIT: I should add, I don't see Crystal as bad. I see it as inevitable. People
have been blindly sharing private data on the web for a decade because no one
used it? People will start using it.

~~~
trhway
>it's Crystal that's creepy. An unknown proprietary algorithm tells us what to
write to our friends? Soon they'll just write for us. Does an advertiser want
1 million people to casually mention something to their friends today?

well, another, say Quartz, app would read the message and decide to write back
through for example the same Crystal. Complete automating of social life of
automatons. While they are at it, we can socialize on our own...

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
>Complete automating of social life of automatons

Considering the number of bots on Facebook, and the number of humans who
communicate with strangers in txspk, it's possible this has already happened.

I can see an inverse business opportunity - a tool to certify that your
communication is 100% brain-made and authentically genuine.

Maybe artisanalemail.com?

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ianstallings
I think I might make the lunatic version of this.

When you email ian cuss like a sailor and spit a lot. Challenge him to a fight
in the first three sentences. Tell him star wars > star trek to throw down the
gauntlet. As him about his mother.

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asifjamil
The only way this would be a killer feature in my book is if it analyses my
entire inbox to generate the result. It would be more realistic since it is
actually based on email and not published writing samples, which are not
always indicative of communication.

~~~
gopher2
I just signed up and it has the option to suck in your gmail/outlook and
provide you a "communication style" profile that's 1) definitely accurate at
least for me 2) kind of cool to see a la personality style quiz.

So if you email me or anyone else who has done that it will I assume
incorporate that.

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ses4j
Weird. I was just reading William Hertling's Avogadro Corp
([http://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Closer-
Appea...](http://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Closer-
Appears/dp/0984755705)) and the premise of that book is that someone builds
this product exactly. Unfortunately, it very quickly goes all Skynet/HAL on
the world.. oh well.

~~~
gotofritz
That's the problem with the increasing speed of technological advance, it
makes it impossibile to enjoy SF as by the time you are halfway through the
book it's already happened in real life!

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gopher2
This is neat. Reminds me of
[http://www.hemingwayapp.com](http://www.hemingwayapp.com)

Anyone aware of other stuff like this or want to shamelessly promote
something? I'm interested.

~~~
vilhelm_s
Heh, Hemingway is a cute idea, I had not seen that before.

It seems a bit miscalibrated though. I tried pasting in the current front-page
article from The Guardian
([http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/24/obama-drone-
str...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/24/obama-drone-strikes-
killed-hostages)), and it becomes almost completely red ("27 out of 37
sentences are very hard to read"). If it categorizes ordinary newspaper prose
as "very hard", I wonder what kind of audience it is aimed at.

~~~
jeorgun
I can't help but be reminded Mark Libermans's assessment of the app
([http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10416](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10416)).

~~~
cbd1984
> 1 adverbs. Aim for 0 or fewer.

Yes, the app is apparently quite insane.

It's classic Strunk & White nonsense, the idea that _simpler_ (even to the
point of being _simplistic_ ) is always, always, always better, founded on the
unfounded idea that _removing words_ is the only way to linguistic
correctness.

[http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-
Grammar/2549...](http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-
Grammar/25497)

------
slig
Direct link to the service:
[https://www.crystalknows.com/home](https://www.crystalknows.com/home)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Crashed my browser - FF 37.0.1 on Kubuntu.

~~~
codesuela
this, that page just causes FF to crash silently on Ubuntu FF

------
barbs
> _That of course is the dream implicit in all this: A button that sends the
> perfect email every time. Indeed, a number of artists have explored the
> contours of this queasy future in recent months. A browser extension by
> Joanne McNeil fills emails with exclamation points and smileys, automating
> the “emotional labor” required in today’s cheerful correspondence. Lauren
> McCarthy and Kyle McDonald took these ideas a step further with Pplkpr, an
> app that uses biometric signals sort the real life acquaintances that
> invigorate you from those that aren’t worth your time._

These are great. Anyone know of any other similar parody apps?

~~~
Terr_
You might enjoy this site... Keep clicking "Get Started" and scroll around.

[http://tiffzhang.com/startup/](http://tiffzhang.com/startup/)

------
notahacker
The sceptic in me says that what the _average person_ writes on the web that's
easily and accurately traceable to them says relatively little about their
preferred email communication style (if the algorithm had access to their
"inbox" and "sent items" it might be a different matter.)

I'm intrigued by whether the advice it offers focuses on mimicking their own
communication style of whether it gets a bit more clever and human, and
advises people (e.g.) to phrase things in a very deferential manner to
somebody who gives the appearance of pomposity.

------
nl
I'll just leave this here:
[http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercl...](http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercloud/message-
resonance.html)

Better docs:
[http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercl...](http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercloud/doc/mrapi/overview.shtml#overview)

Free while in beta....

------
ignoramous
I think this is an incredible idea. IMO, the next generation of high impact
startups are going to bring convenience and value to the billions of people
using smart but cheap computing devices (phones, for instance). And products
like Crystal are exactly in line where it comes to providing a degree of
convienience in inter-personal communication. Its all about starting on a
problem and continuing to perfecting the solution. If a computer can teach
itself to play a game (DeepMind), what's preventing it from learning about
other people and their behaviour?

This feels strange but in the movie Avengers, Ultron, an AI algorithm, is born
with extraordinary powers that can only be described as Palantir on steroids.
Palantir itself is doing amazing work and solving really hard real world
problems for Enterprises. Crystal (and others like refresh.io, bright.com,
relateIQ) are doing it for the end user. And its pretty evident that something
like this has a massive market potential (judging by acquisitions). With the
amount of data flowing in the emails, on the social networks, search
engines... it must be entirely possible to judge someone with unerring
accuracy (the proverbial holy-grail for advertising systems). Mining of
information from these signals could help solve a variety of problems-- like
helping you find a recruit, a co-founder, a roommate, a life-partner, a friend
that shares interests and likes, help create communities and then expand or
evolve them, teach you empathy, help you write better, help with thinking... I
can see something like this being central to social networking in general. I
think Palantir and other companies have demonstrated that these and other
similar problems are very much solvable.

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kelukelugames
This is not creepy. This is brilliant. We already tailer our face to face
communication for different people.

~~~
hellbanner
This is for people who can't remember who they're talking to?

~~~
astine
Or have not sent an email to that person before.

~~~
benologist
Or do a bad job of reading people.

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keithpeter
_" Add your name to the waiting list, and we'll send you an invite when we are
accepting more users."_

Looked interesting in an abstract kind of way, but can't be arsed to play hard
to get. Anyone got documentation on these "64 personality types" and the
underlying theory?

------
curo
> "The biggest improvement to email since spell-check."

Spell checking is an indexing and comparison task. Crystal is saying that
she's better than I am at social tasks.

Could that be true? Maybe the Turing test passes not by machines becoming more
socially intelligent but by humans becoming less so.

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chromanoid
It would be interesting to see what happens when everybody in a company starts
using this software (mails as only source of information). After some time it
would probably lead to very few dominant communication styles. Reminds me of
translation party.

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logicallee
I don't know about his boss, but when I read that he responded "Done.
Absolutely. It's taken care of." when offered the story, I knew I was reading
one juicy story! One he was super-excited to write!

I stopped reading shortly after he let the cat out of the bag that that wasn't
his actual response to the stated story.

so - worked on me!

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j4kp07
So, it's an article spinner for Gmail.

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squigs25
I believe this algorithm must (partially) base the sentiment decision on the
first name of the target. A couple of my friends with an unusual first name
did not get a result, even though I know they are on LinkedIn. Also, very
common names (Dan, Matt, etc.) come up with the same generic message.

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petenixey
I've been using this now for a few days and it's freakishly good at its
knowledge of people. You fear that it's going to be a bit astrological but
then you try it on some of the people you know and it's incredibly on point
(and the advice varies a lot).

Very impressed.

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rifung
Just tried this out and it seems to be pretty accurate for both me and one
friend of mine. Granted that's not a big sample size, but it also has
confidence levels.

I wonder how it works

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1337biz
Anyone having a working account and not just getting wait-listed? Would love
to see some examples for comparison, e.g. the same message tailored to
Horowitz vs PG?

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pippy
This market has a lot of potential. The place I work for spends a small
fortune every year on personal development focused on communication styles.

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klunger
I see this being picked up and adapted for use by recruiters and HR types.

