

OKCupid stole FriendlyRank.com creator's idea with their "MyBestFace" release - adamhowell
http://friendlyrank.com/okstupid.html

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falsestprophet
from the OkCupid faq:

Are you interested in a “strategic partnership”?

    
    
      Not if it involves us paying you.
    

I have an idea. May I tell you?

    
    
      Sure! But you won’t get anything for it, and we’ll keep it
      to ourselves, and we’ll use it to make millions. Possibly. 
      You might want to keep your ideas to yourself.
    

(source <http://www.okcupid.com/faq> > Business)

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jacquesm
Wow, they stole a whole idea? Somebody call the cops, I can't believe it!

Seriously though, if you think your idea is that great, you should write it on
a little note and keep it in a shoebox. Then, within days, weeks but at most
years you'll find that somehow someone seems to have had magical access to
your shoebox and managed to read right through the cardboard.

How did they do that?

Don't tell anybody your ideas if they're that good, they'll run with it and
might even do a better job than you yourself ever will...

Especially somebody that is in a position to implement your idea overnight and
make a bundle while doing it, that's tying the proverbial cat to the bacon and
expecting the bacon to be there in the morning.

Nice story about ideas and how to make money of them:

Two gentlemen showed up at a notary public to see if he had a solution to
their dilemma.

The first was a well known businessman, the second an inventor.

The businessman made matchboxes and the inventor had come up with an idea to
save money on the production of the boxes, but realized that if he gave his
idea the businessman would implement it and not pay him.

So he named his price, asked the businessman to deposit the money with the
notary, and if the idea upon disclosure would be implemented within 5 years
the money would flow to the inventor, otherwise it would go back to the
businessman.

The idea was simple as can be: "only put the 'rubbing surface' on one side of
the box", instant savings.

The businessman immediately realized the potential and the money was released,
both parties happy.

So if you wish to 'sell your idea' use some kind of escrow to make sure that
you get what's due to you, and if you don't, don't bitch.

~~~
ekanes
>> So he named his price, asked the businessman to deposit the money with the
notary, and if the idea upon disclosure would be implemented within 5 years
the money would flow to the inventor, otherwise it would go back to the
businessman.

Great story. I wondered why we don't see more of this in the real world, then
realized that one of the scenarios doesn't end well.

If the businessman doesn't like the idea, he doesn't get his money back for 5
years. Ouch.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, that's the risk, you can express it in money by taking the going interest
rate multiplied by the amount and the duration.

A common way to do stuff like this is with a bank-guarantee, which means
you're good for the money but the money is not actually taken out of your
account until the transaction completes. Should you default on the payment the
bank will pay up.

Otoh it also is a matter of how big the amount is. If the price is reasonable
the businessman would likely take the risk.

Ideas are worth something, but by themselves not a whole lot, so the seller
and buyer would both be acting on the assumption that the deal would be good
for both of them if it went through. And the time could be shorter or longer,
there is quite a bit of play in the concept to allow adaptation.

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robrenaud
FWIW, the idea is obvious, and I actually made a journal post on okcupid about
doing this on my own profile (uploading a bunch of pictures to hotornot.com,
taking the highest rated couple to post onto okcupid) in January of 2008.

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hakan
I think every site out there needs to fully expect to have their ideas stolen
and operate as if their competitors could duplicate their functionality
tomorrow. If you have built anything worthwhile, it's going to happen.

A key to success is staying competitive and always improving on what's
available to your marketplace.

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jashmenn
Given their January study in profile pictures [1] I'm surprised they require
people to pick a picture manually in hot-or-not fashion.

A better idea would be to implement this feature as an A/B test Automatically
rotate through the pictures and see which picture gets the most responses.

They have the data to do this and it would avoid any idea origination
conflicts (with FriendlyRank anyway).

[1] [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/01/20/the-4-big-
myths...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/01/20/the-4-big-myths-of-
profile-pictures/)

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ig1
Frankly it's an obvious idea. I storyboarded up a dating site concept last
year and came up with the same thing.

People already use sites like hotornot for precisely this purpose. I'd be
surprised if there aren't already half a dozen sites out there doing exactly
this. Googling for "rate my photo" brings up an easy handful, I'm sure more
than a few have a rank your photos functionality.

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mattwdelong
Let me help you out with a 3 step plan.

1\. Cry. 2\. Learn. 3\. Move on.

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brm
So let me get this straight, they went to a business with the potential,
brains, and resources to steal their idea, had virtually no barriers to entry,
and told them about it freely?

There are several things you can cry poor sportsmanship for in business, this
would not be one of them.

That said, I can't tell if they're truly bitter or just running with an
opportunity for a marketing ploy that presented itself.

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i2pi
Hmm. Reading the descriptions of FriendlyRank + MyBestFace, I'm not sure they
are in any way the same thing. OKCupid's product uses their own data to
evaluate profile pictures. FriendlyRank explicitly asks users (which users?
does FriendlyRank have a user base?) to rate photos.

This is a big difference. If the purpose is to rate photos based on their
effectiveness in a social networking environment, I'd much rather use implicit
social network data rather than deal with low response rate & terribly biased
data from explicit surveys.

In short, OKCupid seems to have a much better source of data to achieve the
goals common to both FriendlyRank + MyBestFace.

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icodemyownshit
I noticed at the bottom it says, "Patent Pending." Hah! Much of this site's
concept was ripped off of hot or not.

~~~
jimboyoungblood
Maybe they are trying to patent the concept of "Whining about someone ripping
off obvious, non-novel idea."

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warp
Dutch dating site paiq.nl (aka nextlover.nl) has had a similar feature for
years. It's not a particularly novel idea.

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gte910h
I believe the word they're looking for is called "competing" not stealing.

They had nothing _to license_. They didn't have rights on any particular
technology, and they certainly didn't have rights to all "ways to pick a good
profile picture."

Even if this site _does_ file a patent and get it, they likely STILL won't
have the resources to then extract a licensing fee from anyone, as it isn't
even clearly the same idea.

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mikeleeorg
Someone should post a similar letter, but swap out OkCupid & FriendlyRank with
Microsoft & Apple. Or... gosh... so many examples, so little time to list them
all...

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Raphael
Maybe FriendlyRank shouldn't have been so easily reproducible.

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dmm
That which cannot be owned, cannot be stolen.

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zackola
omg, you invented a/b testing!? and they stole it? Call the REACT team.

