

Sex in the Bathroom and the Problem of Offline Data - waxman
http://blog.joingrouper.com/sex-in-the-bathroom-and-the-problem-of-data-g

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yahelc
Hoping 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.

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waxman
I 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.

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ChuckMcM
Maybe 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.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-
habits.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&hp)

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bitwize
You 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.

~~~
ErrantX
At some point in the past someone said "the encroachment of IRCspeak into
everyday English is a bad moon rising" :)

I kinda agree. But then again I do find it has utility; people can use it to
express emotion, which previously has been a sticking point for purely textual
communications. Consider:

 _And then they all died! #upset #crying_

versus:

 _And then they call died! #hellyeah_

I quite like this sort of hacking.

~~~
sopooneo
I am always disheartened by the notion that anything beyond text is needed to
express emotion or sarcasm. That's what writing _is_. By properly combining
words, good writers can express almost anything, and more fully than with
emoticons or tags.

However, the example you give is dark humor, so you win me over there.

~~~
basugasubaku
I like this interview with Nabokov in 1969.

Q: How do you rank yourself among writers (living) and of the immediate past?

Nabokov: I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a
smile – some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now
like to trace in reply to your question.

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timthorn
> 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
One 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.

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vukk
I was expecting this to be about tapping on your phone's accelerometer to
gather the data.

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harryf
Great 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>

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Dylan16807
That'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
Even 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
The 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 :)).

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deepakprakash
"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. :)

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rosstafarian
Theres 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/I7ICPsQ45YVbLzKEBiHND...](http://s3-media3.ak.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/I7ICPsQ45YVbLzKEBiHNDQ/l.jpg)
left locked, right unlocked

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a-priori
In downtown Lausanne, Switzerland (in this plaza, if you're in the area:
<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>

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MaxGabriel
This 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?

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psyconn
You 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.

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RockyMcNuts
ha! a Groupon for bathroom hookups... should have called it...Grope-On

~~~
sciurus
Just put the stress on the O rather than the U in Grouper.

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capsule_toy
Not 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.

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par
Good way to get new members Grouper. :)

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huggyface
This 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.

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PStamatiou
They prepay for their first round of drinks through Grouper. It's on the "how
it works" section: <https://www.joingrouper.com/>

~~~
huggyface
Okay 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.

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shuzchen
That'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.

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gwern
The managers are probably assuming that this 'Grouper' may be a prostitution
front, and naturally would prefer it not be using _their_ premises.

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AznHisoka
Put 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!

