Sex in the Bathroom and the Problem of Offline Data

http://blog.joingrouper.com/sex-in-the-bathroom-and-the-problem-of-data-g

by waxman • 14 years ago

112 58 14 years ago

blog.joingrouper.com

huggyface3• 14 years ago

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.

PStamatiou• 14 years ago

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

huggyface3• 14 years ago

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.

waxman2• 14 years ago

Frankly, the first time it happened we didn't believe it either. But you can't make this stuff up :-)

shasta• 14 years ago

Yes you can.

joshfraser• 14 years ago

Since 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• 14 years ago

This is brilliant marketing... subtext "you will get laid if you use our site!"

AznHisoka• 14 years ago

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!

bitwize2• 14 years ago

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.

Dylan168072• 14 years ago

Okay, either I'm missing something glaring about the article or you posted this comment on the wrong thing. Which is it?

Jacquass12321• 14 years ago

Nothing glaring, but he's probably referencing the (#awkward) comment in the blog.

ImprovedSilence2• 14 years ago

meh, 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.

robotresearcher2• 14 years ago

Meh; its; my friends and me.

Three mistakes of grammar in a paragraph about relaxed written communication. A self-evidencing post!

ErrantX5• 14 years ago

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.

bitwize2• 14 years ago

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

It was, and for that reason people who say "lol", or use it in blog posts, are difficult for me to take seriously.

sopooneo• 14 years ago

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.

WildUtah• 14 years ago

Back in my day, plus signs preceded channel names. Take your newfangled octothorpe channel names and go have your so-called nineteen-nineties.

swang2• 14 years ago

Huh? You mean an ampersand? #/& were the original channel prefixes. The plus channel prefix (which means an unmoderated channel) did not come till later. Even then & prefixes have a different connotation from # channel prefix.

harryf2• 14 years ago

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

Dylan168072• 14 years ago

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.

harryf2• 14 years ago

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"

MaxGabriel2• 14 years ago

Is it different for real-world meetups though? I think Ridejoy did a great job with this http://ridejoy.com/signup?redirect_url=%2F

mindstab2• 14 years ago

Their 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

MaxGabriel2• 14 years ago

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?

yahelc• 14 years ago

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.

waxman2• 14 years ago

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.

vukk• 14 years ago

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

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

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...

RockyMcNuts• 14 years ago

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

sciurus• 14 years ago

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

par• 14 years ago

Good way to get new members Grouper. :)

rosstafarian• 14 years ago

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... left locked, right unlocked

a-priori• 14 years ago

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

deepakprakash• 14 years 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. :)

timthorn• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

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.

psyconn• 14 years ago

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.

capsule_toy• 14 years ago

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.

Sex in the Bathroom and the Problem of Offline Data

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