The technology of billing at Badoo | Hacker News Reader

The technology of billing at Badoo

techblog.badoo.com

11 pointsdmitri19817 comments

If Badoo reads HN: it would be great if you had "The technology of filtering fake accounts". Simply running a Google Image search on uploaded pictures would rule out a lot of fake accounts.

I suppose they have a awful lot of images. Google would not be happy.

Maybe. Although it was mostly an example, I guess quite a few users do the search themselves, possibly for the same pictures over and over again.

Some accounts also use exactly the same pictures; I guess that recognizing those cases without resorting to a third party solution would be possible too.

TinEye would be happy to service them, I think. http://services.tineye.com

dude, the entire business model of dating sites is predicated on fake profiles. there would be no badoo otherwise

I hear about this first-hand from a Badoo support 'insider': Besides the occasional obscenity, which one might expect from such a site, the constant fake profiles used by scammers -- which are always almost exactly the same -- is a real problem.

I understand that naively blocking by IP, or something else attempting to associate rogue users uniquely, is never going to work, but how about some heuristic approach? Or -- even easier -- do it like StackOverflow: only allow certain privileges after the user has garnered an appropriate degree of trust.

People obviously still have a romanticized image of dating sites. Having worked for 2 years at an adult dating/advertisement company, let me wake you people up. Badoo's billing struck me as ingenious, but still a sham, like 95% of the online dating world. However, my line of work was in adult-dating so that's a whole different ballgame of faking and scamming. They hired me for doing "billing" . I was like "ok" yeah I have experience with implementing payment modules and such in e-commerce, been doing that forever... Like to these people, it was magic. And what they considered "billing" was basically acquisition or conversion through on-page shams and tricks. It had little to do with connecting API's:

A lot of fine print and cross-selling, up-selling. The same biller allowed to use different descriptors on the creditcard statement to reduce chargebacks.... API's in (adult)dating, like anything else seem to have come back from time in Marty McFly's Delorean.

Still, the majority of dating sites are just a sham. Most of them copies (or.. "white labels" as they like to call them). Don't you guys know "Twoo.com" ? iz like exactly the same as Badoo..

Actually, on-site scammers - they usually give you a phone number from the Philippines - are great because they provide the only "real" (as in human) interaction with the users.

Still Badoo relies heavily on fake profiles and automated actions. I myself have been implementing such "angel" features in an adult-dating platform. Morally abject, didn't really like it except I took it on to learn NodeJS and hopefully get something out of the equity deal and use my money for something good.

Badoo (and any other of such) basically pleads with you when you're not a subscriber: They start mailing you profile visits ("someone is checking you out") or you get random "likes you" from cute 18-19 y old girls. Intermediately you get spammed with what we call the "special offers". Discount ledgers or "sign up before dd/mm and get x% off" e-mails. Yes you're a real popular guy at Badoo if you don't have any cash. You will even get some replies on your messages if you don't pay.

Become a subscriber and bamboozle, all the mailings stop, interaction basically dies down. Now you're such unpopular wow?? such amaze.. how did that happen. Now that they've made billing convenient for you, you start doing micro payments for popularity.

Alright, enough of this... I put $100 in this site, and not giving me any ROI. I get better ROI at the titty bar.... better unsubscribe... Oh wow, why did I do that, seems like all the girls are checking me out just now that I stopped billing. wtf??? seriously :P

The only real real dating site I've encountered in this age, is OkCupid! And i'm pretty darn sure that they also juice up their listings (as far as activity goes). although they do not need it as much, and I've actually had some real interactions on OkCupid!

So who's getting laid? It's basically a threesome between the sites, PSP's and Creditcard company's. They all hang out at some trusted mansion on Cyprus and have sweet phone-sex with their bank in Zurich.

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