introspective
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Imagine all your worst ideas poured into an app and you've basically got it.
If there is one thing that absolutely no one has been asking for, it is a social media app that lets you rate people as if they were products or restaurants. But a Calgary-based company isn’t letting that major issue get in the way. Instead, it’s developed an app called Peeple, which allows anyone age 21 or over who has your phone number to rate you on a scale from 1 to 5, and to give you a review.
Sounds like just what the Internet needs, right? Another way for people to voice their unfiltered and unsolicited opinions on something — or someone, in this case — just because!
Here’s how this awful, no-good idea, which cofounders Nicole McCullough and Julia Cordray say will launch in November, will work: Users will log into Peeple via Facebook and enter their phone numbers to demonstrate they aren’t bots and to verify their identity. Then, to rate a person, they’ll have to pick a category that defines the nature of their shared relationship: personal, professional or romantic. From there, they can issue a rating and write a review, the way you might on Yelp or Amazon, only about a flesh-and-blood human being.
But wait, there’s more! Even if you don’t sign up for the app, someone else can create a profile for you. According to the Peeple site, “f the person you are searching for is not in the app you can add their name, profile picture, and start their profile by rating them.” All you need is said person’s cell phone number. And once you have a profile in the Peeple app — even one you yourself didn’t create — it’s there for good.
Peeple co-founder Nicole McCullough, speaking to the Calgary Herald, said, “The aim of our platform is to showcase a person’s true character. I came up with this idea over a year and a half ago from wanting to find a good babysitter in my neighborhood. We tend to trust referrals and so we wanted to create a platform that allowed people to refer each other in several different ways.”
“People do so much research when they buy a car or make those kinds of decisions,” co-founder Julia Cordray told the Washington Post. “Why not do the same kind of research on other aspects of your life?”
The short answer is, because people are not cars or objects. Summing a person up on a scale of 1-5 seems irresponsible and overly simplistic, not to mention completely unnecessary. (You want to know what someone’s like? It sounds crazy, but you might try talking to that person.) If, as McCullough suggests, the company was simply interested in creating a means of vetting service providers — e.g., baby sitters — why not build a site like Healthgrades or Rate My Professor, which focus on rating a person in a capacity that it makes sense for a reviewer to comment on, or a potential customer to know? Why would anyone think that essentially inviting any acquaintance — from old lovers to former co-workers you mostly avoided — to weigh in with thoughts on a person is a good idea? Knowing what we know about the Internet, and how people behave online, who wouldn’t see this as a devolutionary step in social media? It’s all just so obviously made to go terribly awry.
What’s more, the Washington Post also notes that, even under the best of circumstances, rating sites and app users exhibit inevitable human biases:
[A]ll rating apps, from Yelp to Rate My Professor, have a demonstrated problem with self-selection. (The only people who leave reviews are the ones who love or hate the subject.) In fact, as repeat studies of Rate My Professor have shown, ratings typically reflect the biases of the reviewer more than they do the actual skills of the teacher: On RMP, professors whom students consider attractive are way more likely to be given high ratings, and men and women are evaluated on totally different traits.
McCullough and Cordray point to Peeple's terms and conditions, which rule out things like bullying, abuse, hateful content, sexism and more, but I think we’ve all seen how effective that is in practice on any number of sites. Still, there may be one way to avoid the inevitable downsides of this whole thing. Positive ratings will post on a profile the instant they’re submitted, but negative ratings will be withheld for 48 hours while the parties involved attempt to settle the issue. If you aren’t registered for the site, you can’t engage in that process, and your page will therefore only display positive comments. (You can also respond to negative comments, Yelp-style, but I say not registering seems like the best route for everyone.)
Until their launch, McCullough and Cordray are speaking with angel investors and venture capitalists to raise funds. The Post estimates the company is currently valued at $7.6 million.
“Peeple will revolutionize the way an individual is seen in this world through their relationships,” Cordray said to the Calgary Herald. “When social graces are becoming lost to the past, we want to revive this forgotten manner and bring attention to how a person appears to others.”
It's an ironic statement, considering the app seems to eschew the very social graces Cordray suggests it was created to promote.
-Kali Holloway/AlterNet
Source: http://www.alternet.org/media/awful-new-app-lets-you-rate-and-review-actual-human-beings
If there is one thing that absolutely no one has been asking for, it is a social media app that lets you rate people as if they were products or restaurants. But a Calgary-based company isn’t letting that major issue get in the way. Instead, it’s developed an app called Peeple, which allows anyone age 21 or over who has your phone number to rate you on a scale from 1 to 5, and to give you a review.
Sounds like just what the Internet needs, right? Another way for people to voice their unfiltered and unsolicited opinions on something — or someone, in this case — just because!
Here’s how this awful, no-good idea, which cofounders Nicole McCullough and Julia Cordray say will launch in November, will work: Users will log into Peeple via Facebook and enter their phone numbers to demonstrate they aren’t bots and to verify their identity. Then, to rate a person, they’ll have to pick a category that defines the nature of their shared relationship: personal, professional or romantic. From there, they can issue a rating and write a review, the way you might on Yelp or Amazon, only about a flesh-and-blood human being.
But wait, there’s more! Even if you don’t sign up for the app, someone else can create a profile for you. According to the Peeple site, “f the person you are searching for is not in the app you can add their name, profile picture, and start their profile by rating them.” All you need is said person’s cell phone number. And once you have a profile in the Peeple app — even one you yourself didn’t create — it’s there for good.
Peeple co-founder Nicole McCullough, speaking to the Calgary Herald, said, “The aim of our platform is to showcase a person’s true character. I came up with this idea over a year and a half ago from wanting to find a good babysitter in my neighborhood. We tend to trust referrals and so we wanted to create a platform that allowed people to refer each other in several different ways.”
“People do so much research when they buy a car or make those kinds of decisions,” co-founder Julia Cordray told the Washington Post. “Why not do the same kind of research on other aspects of your life?”
The short answer is, because people are not cars or objects. Summing a person up on a scale of 1-5 seems irresponsible and overly simplistic, not to mention completely unnecessary. (You want to know what someone’s like? It sounds crazy, but you might try talking to that person.) If, as McCullough suggests, the company was simply interested in creating a means of vetting service providers — e.g., baby sitters — why not build a site like Healthgrades or Rate My Professor, which focus on rating a person in a capacity that it makes sense for a reviewer to comment on, or a potential customer to know? Why would anyone think that essentially inviting any acquaintance — from old lovers to former co-workers you mostly avoided — to weigh in with thoughts on a person is a good idea? Knowing what we know about the Internet, and how people behave online, who wouldn’t see this as a devolutionary step in social media? It’s all just so obviously made to go terribly awry.
What’s more, the Washington Post also notes that, even under the best of circumstances, rating sites and app users exhibit inevitable human biases:
[A]ll rating apps, from Yelp to Rate My Professor, have a demonstrated problem with self-selection. (The only people who leave reviews are the ones who love or hate the subject.) In fact, as repeat studies of Rate My Professor have shown, ratings typically reflect the biases of the reviewer more than they do the actual skills of the teacher: On RMP, professors whom students consider attractive are way more likely to be given high ratings, and men and women are evaluated on totally different traits.
McCullough and Cordray point to Peeple's terms and conditions, which rule out things like bullying, abuse, hateful content, sexism and more, but I think we’ve all seen how effective that is in practice on any number of sites. Still, there may be one way to avoid the inevitable downsides of this whole thing. Positive ratings will post on a profile the instant they’re submitted, but negative ratings will be withheld for 48 hours while the parties involved attempt to settle the issue. If you aren’t registered for the site, you can’t engage in that process, and your page will therefore only display positive comments. (You can also respond to negative comments, Yelp-style, but I say not registering seems like the best route for everyone.)
Until their launch, McCullough and Cordray are speaking with angel investors and venture capitalists to raise funds. The Post estimates the company is currently valued at $7.6 million.
“Peeple will revolutionize the way an individual is seen in this world through their relationships,” Cordray said to the Calgary Herald. “When social graces are becoming lost to the past, we want to revive this forgotten manner and bring attention to how a person appears to others.”
It's an ironic statement, considering the app seems to eschew the very social graces Cordray suggests it was created to promote.
-Kali Holloway/AlterNet
Source: http://www.alternet.org/media/awful-new-app-lets-you-rate-and-review-actual-human-beings
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