Show HN: I have no friends so I created Strangers for Dinner to make friends
strangersfordinner.com
strangersfordinner.com
Hmm, who knows, if I have the time tomorrow I shall implement it
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.
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.
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-...
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
Why not just give one simpler option to 'attend' a dinner party? Each attendee can then submit an idea/vote on the best.
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. :)
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.
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
But, thinking of a website where people literally sign up to consume each other is not my first inclination at the website's name. As with the roughly equivalent 'friends for dinner', my first notion was exactly what the site intends to deliver.
How simple can you make this?
Oh, and there's a whole bunch of periods missing (sorry).
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!
kthxbye
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.