
Show HN: I have no friends so I created Strangers for Dinner to make friends - chewxy
http://strangersfordinner.com
======
pwim
When I go to your site, I feel like no one is using it, because I can't see
any other users information. As a potential user, I want to see that other
people are using the site (in my area) before I actually start using it.

~~~
chewxy
Most excellent suggestion! I've always thought a Google Maps with pins showing
the number of people in cities would be a cool idea.

Hmm, who knows, if I have the time tomorrow I shall implement it

------
roycyang
Overall I like it. I do agree that hosting it at your house is going to be a
big barrier of entry. I WOULD do a dinner with random people but NOT in my
house! Also after I signed up and added a party, there was really no clear
indication of where to go next. I didn't get any confirmation or messaging or
next steps. I had to go back to the dashboard and figure out that I might get
an email by the 15th of the month. Is it fully functionally? Am I going to get
an email tomorrow with up to five people? And what about couples ? How are you
appealing to them? Couples might be more likely to do this (for example if a
new couple moved to a new town), might get rid of the 'brave' factor.

~~~
chewxy
Hey Roy, good questions. Let me answer you now:

1) You don't have to have it in your house. It is very free form. After you
have been matched up to your 5 strangers, you are shown a communications box,
where you communicate with them as a host, on where and when you want to have
the dinner party. It can be a lunch, it can be brekkie at the top of the hill,
or it can even be a night out at the pub. That's where you describe it in the
party description.

2\. Not knowing where to go? That's a usability problem and it's our onus to
fix it. We'll do that. The flash message that says your dinner party has been
saved is clearly not doing enough. We WILL fix it.

3\. Yes it is fully functional. You might get an email IF within your vicinty
there are more than 10 people.

4\. Couples. That's what the Plus One button is for. When you get a list of
people to rank, you'll be notified if the potential attendee is bringing a
Plus One.

~~~
roycyang
1) So after I signed up to host or join, it's really a waiting game until the
15th, right? Is there a way to make it stickier that would encourage me to
come back? Some kind of game dynamics?

2) Great!

3) What happens if there are no matches? I would expect an email anyway to let
me know it's still working on finding matches.

4) Okay great. Maybe it's just based on personal experience but I'd like you
to flesh that out more. My wife and I throw dinner parties for our friends all
the time but they are always "guests" and not "hosts" so the lack of
reciprocation can be tiresome. Depending on how you figure out the secret
sauce, I think people like us would be some of the early adopters/evangelists.

Have you guys thought about "ratings"? I guess you wouldn't want to introduce
the idea of negatively rating someone but I think there's something to be
learned from Facebook ( _gasp_ ). After an event, can I like some of the other
participants or something similar (+1 good dinner convo dude, etc) to rise
those people to the top of the next matches and to start cultivating a
community of leaders, etc.

~~~
chewxy
1) We will email you when you have potential matches to rank, and the
subsequent matches. We designed the system to work around the lives of busy
people (think young urban professionals). The whole point is for you to do
your stuff and get you OUT of the site. Game dynamics would defeat the
purpose. I've actually written a blog post about designing the user flow [1].
Is this a wrong decision? Probability says it is very likely that we're wrong.
When the tests show so, we will pivot so.

3) We've given that some thought and we've decided against sending emails
saying you're FOREVER ALONE (btw if you DO want to see it, head over to /rank-
people to see how many potential matches you have. However, your insight has
shown us that thought alone is not useful in making decisions. On this, I'd
like a show of hands who think that it's a good idea to send update emails to
tell you that the system is working on finding matches for you?

4) Haha, we've actually ran into this problem in our 2 week beta test. We're
currently working on a system to incentivize users to host dinners.

5) Yes we have a post-facto rating system in place. It has questions about
security, friendliness, our match qualities... In fact I can tell you there is
a system that is pretty much like Xbox's TruSkill that is powering the rating
system, except with more fun stuff.

[1][http://blog.strangersfordinner.com/2012/05/out-of-the-
way-1-...](http://blog.strangersfordinner.com/2012/05/out-of-the-way-1-user-
flow/)

~~~
sophacles
Regarding 3:

I live in a smaller city, and it regularly takes a while for location based
web stuff to catch on around here. I sign up for them, but since thresholds of
usefulness take a while to be met, I completely forget about the service --
then one day I'll hear about it from someone local, decide to give it a try,
and rediscover my existing account. As such I like the occasional email
reminding me of the existence of these things. Preferably something in the
form of:

Hey, thanks for signing up. We are still waiting for more people in your area
to sign up, currently there are only n users, which doesn't quite meet our
threshold[1]. We just wanted you to know we haven't forgotten about you. If
you have any suggestions on how to get more users near you, let us know!

[1] _alternately: n other people are using it, spread the word and get even
more!_

A frequency of once a week on that seems pretty reasonable, rather than once a
day. In this particular situation I think a balance between "forever alone"
spam and "hey, we still got your back" emails is a nice goal.

~~~
chewxy
I like this. It is a good suggestion. I'll look into it and discuss with the
team on how to integrate something like that

------
manmal
I just wondered why it is that so many people complain about the app wanting a
FB login - now here's a hypothesis: (Some?) People who are interested in this
service don't like Facebook and look for other ways of finding other people to
have fun with. I don't think anything is wrong with Facebook login only, but
in this demographic it's obviously a bad approach.

~~~
chewxy
Oh, normally I hate facebook logins too. There are apps out there who want you
to login via facebook so they can spam your wall and your friends' feed.

Strangers for Dinner won't do that. The main reason we use facebook is as I
mentioned below: authentication and a not-too-good verification system

~~~
manmal
Well if you really hate it, then I wonder why you did it. Stand by your
preferences ;) As an enduser I do like FB login for apps which I trust (like
Spotify) because I don't have to use a password manager for logging in. If an
app asks only for conservative permissions this outweighs all the privacy
could-bes and ifs for me.

~~~
whimsy
LastPass is free, you know...

~~~
manmal
I don't get it - there are some free password managers, but what's that to do
with me not wanting to constantly type in my (long) master password on a soft
keyboard, clicking through, and copying username and password to and fro?

------
basicallydan
One little thing: the ordering for "how far you are willing to travel" is a
bit messed up. It goes 10, 5, 20, 30, 50.

~~~
chewxy
This was actually a usability thing. We've started with 5,10,20,30,50
kilometres, and it turned out our initial beta bunch would typically select
10km as the distance they're willing to travel, so we've rearranged it.

~~~
webignition
In terms of usability, how does this compare to leaving the ordering unchanged
and instead setting 10 as the initially-selected choice?

------
vidocha
Yes grubwithus is doing something similar, nobody really owns this space yet
though. I would reconsider the name, the word "strangers" doesn't help with
people's anxiety towards meeting new people or hosting dinners. One thing is
for sure, most people like to eat and most people like good company, good
stuff.

~~~
chewxy
Haha, that was one of the feedback we've received. A very good advisor of mine
even suggested New Friends for Dinner. Ultimately though we hope the morbid
humour of the phrase "Strangers for Dinner" or even worse: "Strangers for
Donner "[1] would pull through.

[1] <http://xkcd.com/30/>

------
jnorthrop
This is a bit off-topic but I would encourage everyone to read Strangers for
Dinner's privacy policy[1]. It is a fantastic example of being fully
transparent about what they are collecting and why, and doing it with plain
language. I like this example so much not only because of the execution but
also because they are collecting some very sensitive information (gender,
political preferences, etc.) and not hiding the fact.

The only nit I would make to improve it is to not bury the privacy policy link
in the footer but say something like "We collect some sensitive data, please
read our privacy policy for details." To make sure people see it up front.

Don't underestimate the power of building trust with new users.

[1] <http://strangersfordinner.com/privacy>

~~~
chewxy
Sorry. HN crashed the VPS. Trying to call the VPS hosting solution to get the
server rebooted. This is the full text:

Our Privacy Policy

Your privacy is of utmost importance to us, and we would like to inform you
about our policy for protecting your privacy online. As a business, we DO
collect information from you, and we do it in two ways: Information we get
from your usage of the system (see Google Analytics) and information you give
us (see Facebook)

Google Analytics

We collect data using Google Analytics. We use it to analyze how users use
this site, and make decisions to improve the website. Google Analytics uses
'cookies', which are not food, unfortunately. Cookies are text files placed on
your computer to collect standard information about users in an anonymous
form. The information collected from site will then be transmitted to Google,
which then compiles statistical reports based on user activity for Strangers
for Dinner

We will never share this data with any third party. Google does not associate
your information with any other data held by Google. Neither will we nor
Google link or seek to link the collected anonymized information with the
identity of the user. More information about Google's stance on privacy can be
found here.

Facebook

We use Facebook to authenticate users. Asides from authentication, we also
request some specific information about users. They are: Name, Age, Sex,
Location, Political view, Religious View, Relationship Status, and Interests.
As part of the terms of use, we require these basic information from users as
those data are required for security purposes. These data are pulled from
Facebook to reduce the need for users to fill in forms.

We will never share any of these information to any third party except for law
enforcement, should the need arise. Your data is safe with us.

A Note on Personally Identifiable Information

We realize that we are storing personally identifiable information by virtue
of you providing us those data. We work hard to protect them. Nobody has, and
will have access to your name or your relationship status, even as part of the
matching processes. In the place for names and personally identifiable
information, we require nicknames, which serves a dual purpose of preventing
personally identifiable information from being shared, as well as a barrier to
lower discrimination. However, these data may be used for analytical purposes
to improve performance of the site.

Last Modified: 30th April 2012

------
angry-hacker
I can't test it because when trying to register I get "internal server error".

What I would like from a startup like that would be following:

1) Post an invitation that you are interesting in meeting (x day, x time) 2)
Choose a place 3) Choose a topic you want to have a conversation about 4) Meet
up

So if you are in other city for an example and have a spare time, you would
have a chance to meet new people to have a coffee with... maybe there are
startups like that already but I guess it's always a chicken/egg problem when
it comes to finding people to use the site.

~~~
chewxy
Sorry if I perpetuated your anger, it turns out that I have limited number of
processes that I'm allowed to use on the VPS so as a stopgap measure until I
can move SfD somewhere else, I've written a chaosmonkey like script to
randomly kill processes to throttle users. I'm going to bed soonish though,
so, again, sorry.

------
makethetick
'Host' and 'join' are identical apart from 'Tell us your dinner party idea'.

Why not just give one simpler option to 'attend' a dinner party? Each attendee
can then submit an idea/vote on the best.

------
epaga
Similar idea is Tastytum (<http://www.tastytum.com/>), though not much has
happened there lately.

I was a "beta tester" host last year, and it worked really well and was a very
fun evening. The idea works if you're brave enough to try.

But Tastytum's site also seems a lot friendlier to me, has a less scary name
;) and it doesn't require a FB account. "connecting travellers with locals"
just sounds safer than having "strangers" come to your house. :)

~~~
chewxy
Cool idea. Guess we're not original afterall.

------
chewxy
Watching traffic live now. It seems many people drop out at How It Works.
Anyone care to share some insights as to why?

~~~
ohyes
I was hoping for another way to sign in.

I killed my Facebook account a couple weeks ago and would rather not
reactivate. Also 'strangers for dinner' makes me think of cannibalism. Not
something I particularly want to be thinking about when getting the
opportunity to meet new people in my own home.

It also doesn't seem particularly safe.

~~~
chewxy
I've always felt dark humour works. :P

As for safety, we've actually fretted over it for a few weeks before finally
writing it. Facebook as it turns out, can be quite useful in terms of safety.

We've put in place a system where we will work with authorities should
security and safety be an issue (for example, if someone gets robbed). This is
where we figured Facebook information would be quite useful.

It's a debate we constantly have internally though, and we aren't quite clear
about how far is too far yet

~~~
basicallydan
Yeah, Facebook does make it quite safe. Personally, and I know that this is a
bit silly, but the thought of all my actual Facebook friends seeing that I
have signed up to this put me off at first. Then I was like "fuck it, I'm
curious!" - but it doesn't mean that others will come to the same conclusion.
It's similar to announcing on Facebook that you've just signed up to a dating
site. Lots of people do it these days, even talk about it quite a lot, but
it's not something you'd make a status update about.

~~~
chewxy
Nope, your friends won't know about it. Facebook is used for authentication
and verification only.

~~~
basicallydan
Great!

------
hajrice
Here's what you want to do:

Host these dinners at some local sushi place. Have the owner give you 10% off
given that you're giving them 6-7 new customers. Maybe even do something where
you collect some $$ from the restaurant as you're bringing them, say, 10 new
customers every month...

Love the idea btw!

~~~
BvS
www.grubwithus.com is doing this.

------
kghose
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perfect_Host>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieT3dMT7Xzo>

~~~
chewxy
Strangers for Donner anyone? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_party>

------
wushupork
Overall I agree with comments here - the site feels rather lonely. Take a look
at GrubWithUs and see how they've solved this problem. Theirs is much more
inviting - there's activity, social proof etc.

------
capex
I got an "internal server error" when I tried to sign up.

~~~
chewxy
I'm so sorry. HN crashed the VPS

------
swah
I recently realized I have the same problem.

------
klr
Sign in with facebook

kthxbye

------
jdrake3
Facebook login only... will avoid.

~~~
rudiger
Except for this app, it kind of makes sense. Strangers meeting for dinner can
be vetted by their profiles.

~~~
nhebb
If they don't have any friends, what would they be using Facebook for? The
Facebook login might filter out a good portion of the prospective market.

------
cfcosta
I really liked the idea, too bad I'm too paranoid to host strangers at my home
:(

~~~
com
I have had really great experiences inviting strangers into my home during the
Eyjafjallajökull eruptions when they were stranded at my local airport, credit
cards maxed out and with young kids in tow.

Then I tried Couchsurfing, where vetted strangers sleep in the spare room, and
hang out and chat. Awesome, awesome, awesome - I have made new friends for
life, people I never would have met otherwise, with different life stories and
views on the world.

Even in São Paulo, a rather dangerous sort of city, I've made new and
unexpected friends by visiting after a casual invitation, after assessing the
risks and discussing it with local friends.

I suspect that most people, in most societies, are good and nice. There are
some bad people though, and it is sensible to take reasonable precautions, but
do try to ask yourself "what are the real chances of something going wrong?"
and compare that to the risk of a car accident during your daily commute.

