[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built a zero-cost, ad-free alternative to...
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Show HN: I built a zero-cost, ad-free alternative to LinkedIn
Author : 4sellff
Score : 187 points
Date : 2021-03-16 12:38 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sellff.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sellff.com)
| CognitiveLens wrote:
| Interesting take on the challenge of determining professional
| trust. Seeing pictures of 3 white/European males on the homepage
| might turn off a more diverse audience of users, however - even
| if it's representative of the early adopters, it's important to
| present the product more inclusively.
| 4sellff wrote:
| Agree and working on correcting a bug which is only selecting
| the first three users of the service. At this point, I am not
| comfortable picking images of our members without permission.
| Once have the permissions in place, we will update profile
| images [links] on each page load. Thx for your comment.
| AshleighBasil wrote:
| Does this work inverted? Would showing only brown people drive
| away white users, or are white people a special, universal race
| that doesn't need to be coddled?
|
| I'm not trying to troll or be obnoxious, I'm curious how people
| think about this. Does tokenism really make people feel
| included, or does it just give white people something to be
| moral and self-deprecatingly righteous about?
|
| I'm Mexican and when americans do the 'latinx' thing is makes
| me want to vomit, but I'm a mennonite so I guess I'm not a
| 'normal' Mexican, I'm not the one who they're trying to
| include. This is so interesting to me
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Would showing only brown people drive away white users
|
| It definitely would, but for different reasons. Black people
| seeing only white people would assume the platform will be
| racist, white people seeing only black people would assume
| that the platform is inferior.
| lvass wrote:
| A centralized proprietary service is exactly what we need to
| replace the other thousands of services who all do the same thing
| but look evil due to some mysterious coincidence, totally
| unrelated to being centralized and proprietary.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >I built a zero-cost, ad-free alternative to LinkedIn
|
| Zero-cost and ad-free _FOR NOW_ you mean. At some point you 're
| going to have make money and the only viable options are 1)
| charity/donations 2) subscription 3) ads and data selling. #2
| means you're not 'zero-cost' and #3 means you're not 'ad-free'.
| So you're going to rely on donations?
| 4sellff wrote:
| With all due respect, there are additional options to choose
| from. We are still very early in this, but I will "take the
| bait" since monetization seems to be an issue that people care
| about.
|
| A percentage of revenue is I think a fair option. I am not
| referring to the previous comment about 30% [or even 10%]. I
| hate fees as much as the next person and taking a giant cut of
| your customers income is not the way to grow a business.
|
| Also, as it relates to zero-cost, using your Visa card is free
| to you, but not the merchant. However, those fees are being
| included in the price you pay for the products/services.
|
| A question for you: If you are making $100 per month from a
| service, what is a "fair" price for you to pay to continue
| having usage of that service? - Are you OK to look at ads, so
| long as your cost is zero? - Are you OK to pay $5.00 per month,
| so you do not have to look at ads? - Or, do you prefer to have
| no ads and pay a % of your monthly income that you generate
| from using the service?
| arnaudsm wrote:
| Imagine if LinkedIn was administered like Wikipedia : non-
| profit, and ultra-optimized to cost $0.007/active_monthly_user
| (vs ~1$ for FB)
|
| It's hard for successful founders to turn down a multi-million
| acquisition offer, but they should never forget the cost for
| society.
| FlorinSays wrote:
| I believe you're on the right path. Exploring and displaying
| trust between people is one of the big missing pieces on the web.
|
| People are currently replacing the harder questions like "can I
| trust this person to do what he says he can" with simple or
| shallow ones based on status and image.
|
| Good luck with this!
| macspoofing wrote:
| >I believe you're on the right path.
|
| I'm not sure about that. I think any system that potentially
| brings value will be gamed quickly.
| paulcole wrote:
| > zero-cost | privacy-focused | ad-free
|
| Where does the money come from?
| ipaddr wrote:
| Next release.. zero cost moves to paid for anyone offering
| services.
|
| Which is the opposite model of linkedin. Sellers are free..
| buyers pay.. plus upselling to both groups as premium offerings
| 4sellff wrote:
| Your comment indicates one option for monetizing the
| platform. For now, we do not see that as ideal. We are
| focused on ways to increase the value provided to the buyers
| and sellers [members] on the platform. To the degree the
| solution is working and people value it, only then can we
| attempt to extract some of that value. If we over-reach,
| usage will drop. So, there is a fine balance needed here.
|
| We are adamant about exploring and discovering new models
| which do not involve traditional advertising or
| selling/sharing of member data.
|
| We are also realistic and realize there are expenses to
| providing this solution. So, monetization is a requirement to
| keep the doors open.
|
| A question for you, assuming this service becomes successful.
| [1] What would be a reasonable price to pay for promoting
| your services and being able to easily connect with
| trustworthy professionals?
|
| - Is $1.00 per year fair? - Is $10.00 per month reasonable? -
| Is a % of revenue you generate a better model?
| m348e912 wrote:
| Asking the real questions. How are expenses paid?
| 4sellff wrote:
| Currently, all expenses are paid from my personal savings and
| the day job. We are working on the next release which will
| offer two options [consult and promote] to monetize the
| service.
|
| As mentioned earlier, the focus is making it easier for
| buyers and sellers to interact, while maintaining privacy. I
| remain convinced that there are effective ways to monetize
| the service without going the traditional advertising route
| that is so common today.
|
| For sure, billion dollar businesses have been build on the
| current model. My hope is that we can advance to a new model,
| where we do not sacrifice personal privacy for the sake of
| accessing a useful service. To be determined if we can be
| part of that new solution.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Discussed upthread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26478054
| rsweeney21 wrote:
| Not directly related to the post, but developers should be aware
| that developer salaries will likely jump significantly this year.
|
| The VC market is super hot right now - VC firms are being flooded
| with cash, and they need to deploy it. Companies are raising
| massive amounts of money at unprecedented valuations. A large
| chunk of that money is going to hire developers. The recruiting
| industry is seeing a huge surge in hiring in the past couple of
| months (source: I run a technical recruiting company (1)).
|
| Because demand and cash available to hire developers has
| increased significantly in the past few months, but the supply is
| basically fixed, companies are offering higher salaries to
| attract talent. They have the cash for it.
|
| Keep in mind that new money raised from investors will raise the
| value of your stock options, but rarely translates to salary
| increases for existing employees.
|
| What a time to be a software engineer.
|
| (1) https://www.facet.net
| fireeyed wrote:
| Not likely. The work permit immigration spigots have opened up
| again with new administration relaxing previous constraints. My
| vendors Cognizant, Wipro and TCS are very excited for lots of
| contract work in SV. We can come back and revisit this comment
| at the end of the year. The wages will barely budge.
| afavour wrote:
| I don't disagree with what you're saying here but I don't
| think it contradicts the OP. Wipro etc. occupy a different
| corner of the tech jobs market than VC-funded startups do.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| It's not difficult to write better solutions than the people
| who works for the WICS companies write. No offense to those
| working there - but work conditions like what are usually
| described there are not helpful for writing good solutions.
| ragnarok451 wrote:
| do you think that these hot startups like Stripe etc are
| hiring consultants from the likes of Cognizant, Wipro, and
| TCS?
| flashgordon wrote:
| With Stripe's new RSU policy (almost looking like fixed TC
| but worse with delayed granting) I wonder who they _are_
| trying to attract.
| wombat-man wrote:
| yeah, plus they have sort of earned a reputation for
| being a bit of an intense place to work, quick to fire
| people who fall behind. Idk if that kind of stress is
| worth it.
| flashgordon wrote:
| So (sadly) in a way all companies wear that as a badge of
| honor and a way to filter for "culture fit"!
| wombat-man wrote:
| I mean, if I were in a slightly different point in my
| life, I might be willing to grind out long hours for a
| year or three if I thought I was going to come out the
| other end a multi millionaire.
|
| But the way they structure the RSUs makes that way
| harder, it kinda feels like I might as well wait for IPO
| and buy shares then.
|
| Lack of job security is big too, but I guess that's to be
| expected at any startup.
| [deleted]
| monkeynotes wrote:
| What's driving this new surge of cash?
| clairity wrote:
| corporate welfare in the form of immense cash injections,
| forgivable loans, immaterial interest rates, downright
| lovable tax policy, and an accelerating crap-ton of captured
| regulation (like lockdowns heavily favoring the largest
| businesses). all without any structural reform so that that
| excess isn't hoovered up by the already wealthy.
| loremipsium wrote:
| I suppose this https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/
| bst_recenttren...
| hiddencache wrote:
| Valuations are high. They're competing with SPACs, and no-one
| wants to miss out
| rsweeney21 wrote:
| Low interest rates means managers of pensions and other large
| money managers can't put their money in bonds. They would
| lose money because the interest rate is lower than inflation.
|
| So they need somewhere else to put it.
| Galanwe wrote:
| That's not true anymore, the reflation is underway since 2
| weeks.
| flurben wrote:
| Interest rates have been low for quite some time, though.
|
| Maybe it is also driven by perception of overvaluation
| among publicly traded equities?
| f430 wrote:
| well the 10-year treasuries along with other t-bills are
| rising in yields now ...
| tatskaari wrote:
| I wonder if it has something to do with how tech
| companies are relatively unaffected by the big sick.
| ngngngng wrote:
| Great ad. Excited to hear back from you.
| kulikalov wrote:
| What's the killer feature? How is it drastically different from
| LinkedIn or Angel.co?
| sharemywin wrote:
| I saw something about a trust score and some thing about
| investing on the site but I don't really understand how it
| works.
| 4sellff wrote:
| The TRU Score is the primary point of differentiation. The goal
| is to provide an independent way to measure reputation and
| trust, that uses community feedback.
|
| There are many ways to generate a score for a person. Our
| method involves the trading of of virtual shares, which are
| bought/sold just like stocks. Share price changes are reflected
| in that persons TRU Score. The investments you make in others
| is reflected in your TRU Score.
|
| https://sellff.com/about
| kulikalov wrote:
| I don't think this is how people's relationships work.
| Putting a number next to someone's name doesn't make this
| person more or less reliable. The only kind of recommendation
| that is trustworthy is the one made by someone you know.
| ravenstine wrote:
| To add to your point, different employers value different
| things in their employees. Some employers want a ton of
| reliability in their employees, whilst others obviously
| want a reasonable level of reliability but also employees
| who are creative and easy to get along with. And there are
| some where your personality doesn't matter so much as long
| as you get your work done.
|
| The idea is interesting, and it's good that people
| experiment with such ideas, but I'm skeptical that this
| scoring concept isn't going to make people miserable and
| possibly going to be gamed easily.
|
| A better way to compete with LinkedIn would be to simply
| get rid of the social media feed. I'd find LinkedIn much
| more pleasant if it wasn't full of trite platitudes,
| cringey corporate signaling, political grandstanding,
| dudebro philosophy around productivity, and so forth.
| vngzs wrote:
| I believed this, but watching the movie Parasite changed my
| perspective on personal recommendations more than a little
| bit.
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| I think there is a range to this being true. Take app
| review score aggregation. Anything 3 stars and up is
| probably acceptable. You score a 1 star and within reason
| nobody will use the app. You can say similar things about
| tv/movie reviews, car safety scores, and I'm sure many
| other trust metrics.
| 4sellff wrote:
| And that is part of the problem space we are addressing.
| How do you find and select people to work with? Whether
| that is a plumber, accountant or software developer. It's
| great if you have a referral from a trusted friend. But
| what if your trusted friend does not have a referral? Or,
| if the referral is busy at the moment. The need still
| exists and you need to find a provider.
|
| Perhaps the TRU Score is not the "perfect" solution, but
| I think it's far better than a simple star rating. How
| many times on HN do we see posts about people "buying"
| ratings or followers. As a result, people lose trust in
| the value of the rating system. So, we have created an
| alternative that we think people can trust.
|
| A future release has planned to use Stripe Identity.
| Whereby, you will have confidence in the profile you are
| viewing and can make an informed buying decision. As
| designed, manipulation of the TRU Score [when combined
| with Identity], will be difficult.
| monkeynotes wrote:
| This is a rather brittle concept. I certainly don't want
| someone judging me based off of my occasional use of a
| professional profile. I would feel very hesitant to allow a
| proprietary value algorithm to judge me in my professional
| life. And as a recruiter that value would essentially be
| mostly meaningless, I'd want to look at recommendations, and
| experience first. A score based on trading simply measures
| how good you are at trading, not how good you are at doing
| your job.
| 4sellff wrote:
| Thx for your comment. To be clear, the TRU Score is not
| limited to the trading of shares in your profile. It is an
| input, but not necessarily the one that weighs most heavily
| in the determination of a members TRU Score.
|
| SELLFF offers multiple ways to support other members. You
| can write a review and go into details of your connection
| with another member. Buying shares of another member is an
| additional, low-friction way to show support. It's fast,
| easy and provides the added benefit that your investment
| might increase in value. Any investments you make are an
| input to your TRU Score. So, if you make good investments
| in other members your TRU Score will increase...even if
| your profile shares are not being traded.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Very interesting! I'll be curious to see if the focus on privacy
| for something like this ends up being a differentiator. Lots of
| folks care about privacy, though sometimes it becomes a challenge
| due to some of the limitations you end up with as a result. The
| trade-off people are making is obvious to some, but not to
| others.
|
| Congrats! Launching a product is super hard, this is an
| impressive accomplishment. I'd imagine you would put this site on
| your profiles. :D
| 4sellff wrote:
| Yes, launching was a lot of work. My focus is on product. The
| real talent is a 3-person team in Croatia who I found via a HN
| "Who wants to be hired" post. We started April-2020. What you
| see today is the result of everyone working evenings and
| weekends, during the quarantine lockdown, while maintaining a
| full-time job.
|
| Much respect and love for: Bruno, Ivona and Kresho. They are an
| excellent representation of how the SELLFF platform can work.
| If you are looking for talented programmers, I can definitely
| recommend them.
| ivanche wrote:
| And yet, with JavaScript turned off your site shows
| completely blank page...
| meamin wrote:
| Congrats! Will make some time to sign-up.
|
| I like the vector. Looking forward to the progress. I think your
| solution space will give you other opportunities down the road
| even if sellff struggles.
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| I don't want a score associated with my name, so I wouldn't use
| your service. I wonder how many people would like to have an
| associated "trust" score; I mean if you are an average individual
| I imagine you would get an average score of, let's say, 5 over
| 10... you'll look ridiculously untrustworthy compared to someone
| who has a score of 9/10. At least in the real world you have a
| chance to prove that you could be as trustworthy as anyone; with
| a score that chance goes away.
| mleonhard wrote:
| Second. I want a LinkedIn that respects its users. Sellff
| doesn't need to make a product that is much different from
| LinkedIn.
|
| 1. Let me make an online resume, publicly connect with past
| colleagues, and give and receive recommendations and skills
| endorsements.
|
| 2. Sell job postings.
|
| 3. Sell search tools for jobs & candidates.
|
| 4. Don't trick people into uploading their contacts.
|
| 5. Don't provide an Invite All feature. Require users to state
| the relationship type for every invitation sent. Allow me to
| opt-out of connections by type: acquaintance, family, friend,
| school, work,etc.
|
| 6. Respect my communication preferences. For example, don't
| rename the preferences and re-enable them every few years.
|
| 7. Don't break core product functionality. For example, don't
| remove the email archive button for a year. Use functional
| integration tests.
|
| 8. Provide discussion Groups with useful moderation tools. This
| would draw users to your site every day. Don't provide useless
| moderation tools and let all groups flood with spam. Recruiters
| must pay for every message they post to a Group.
|
| New feature idea: Allow groups to curate comprehensive FAQs. It
| could be like Quora & Stack Overflow for professional
| questions. This could grow to be a very popular and bring a lot
| of daily traffic.
| mooreds wrote:
| > Allow me to opt-out of connections by type: acquaintance,
| family, friend, school, work,etc.
|
| I'd also love an 'age out' functionality.
|
| As far as LinkedIn shows, someone I work with at my current
| job shows up as the same strength of connection as a random
| person I chatted with once at a conference a decade ago. Time
| and number of interactions should play some role in the
| strength of connection as displayed in the UX (at least to
| me).
| INTPenis wrote:
| A Linkedin alternative is really something that should be self
| hosted and federated.
| 4sellff wrote:
| Agree and we are looking at options on doing just that. Do you
| think any existing platforms could work, or does something need
| to be purpose built? How would you architect a self-hosted,
| federated solution? I welcome your thoughts and suggestions on
| how that can be accomplished.
| INTPenis wrote:
| I can't help you on a low level. I just think that on a high
| level something like professional profiles, networking and
| assessments from colleagues should definitely be federated.
| And I'm also a strong believer in this whole federation wave
| that is sweeping over us.
|
| It doesn't work for all things but this is a perfect use
| case, in spirit of course. You always have to expect there to
| be two demographics, big tech and small tech.
|
| Federated linkedin would allow for Mastodon-like instances
| for people who don't want to host their own, and selfhosted
| instances for more technical people. While also allowing for
| Linkedin-style endorsements (not sure what they're called in
| English) over federation.
|
| So user@instance endorses user2@instance2 in skill:python for
| example. My hope would be to use ActivityPub to do that part.
|
| AP federation already works really well for social media imo.
| Linkedin is essentially social media with skill endorsements.
| desireco42 wrote:
| On positive note, I really think we need alternative to LinkedIn,
| wish you all the best. Some of the things and criticism are spot
| on but it is welcome to have people thinking on how to improve
| this area.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| very poor messaging here.
|
| this is like 99designs or toptal or any marketplace for
| providers. not like linkedin. ad-free is a lie as the entire
| platform is advertising. (syndicated ad-free more like it.)
|
| because the platform _depends_ on the TRU score, this form the
| social network between providers, and customers I suppose. This
| in and of itself is a privacy violation. The major problem with
| linkedin (from privacy perspective) is the information _they_
| have on you, which they monetise. They _are_ the privacy problem,
| not syndicated ads, and you are not fixing that.
|
| outside of the bubble, no one cares about the privacy angle, not
| in a real way. (they complain, a lot, but have no problem
| continuing to use privacy invasive services.) your pronouncement
| of being privacy focused, while not actually being so, is pretty
| bad.
|
| i think you _may_ have something here, you just need to pivot
| your messaging.
|
| FWIW I think the TRU score is a) not innovative, and b) should be
| abandoned in favor of familiar 5 star scale. (like amazon or
| ebay: #stars plus #ratings)
|
| If you really want to be "trustworthy", you will publish
| statistical data on ratings. Of course, everyone will have >4
| star rating, so you can't do that. I don't think that's a
| hindrance to marketing "trustworthiness" though, even if it's
| baloney.
| dutchbrit wrote:
| How do you plan to compete against LinkedIn & monetise?
| 4sellff wrote:
| We believe the platform is attractive to professionals who want
| an easy, privacy-focused way to promote the services they
| offer, with the ability to differentiate themselves from people
| offering the same/similar services.
|
| The platform is zero-cost, ad-free and includes direct
| messages. I hope the UI is more easy to navigate and
| understand, compared to LinkedIn.
|
| The TRU Score, while somewhat controversial, is more powerful
| than a star-rating system. Also, it works works for you as a
| buyer or seller.
|
| Monetization is planned in a future release and includes [1]
| selling blocks of time to people who want to consult with you,
| and [2] promotions, where you [as a seller] pays the buyer for
| considering your services.
|
| We believe it's a great time to build alternatives to the major
| networks that exist today. It should be easier for people to
| promote and sell their services. It should be easier for people
| to find trustworthy providers. And it should be easier to
| protect your personal privacy.
| entangledqubit wrote:
| If privacy is a core focus of your pitch, there should be a
| document with specifics about your promises around privacy,
| etc. There's nothing stating who you are and why I should
| trust you with my data.
|
| If you really want to sell _me_ on your privacy stance, you
| 'll convince me (with something structurally binding) that
| once successful you're not going to sell out and have my data
| subject to new rules I didn't sign up for.
|
| I this point I've been trained not to trust any company
| that's not charging me.
| 4sellff wrote:
| Thank you for your comment. I understand, agree and feel
| the same. This is absolutely something we need to address
| very soon. Nobody knows us, other than what we have
| published on our SELLFF profiles. We wanted to launch,
| knowing that there remain some very important obstacles
| that we still need to overcome. Credibility and
| communicating trust to the public is certainly one of them.
|
| Until we can get to the next step, we provide this: [1]
| https://sellff.com/terms [2] https://sellff.com/privacy
|
| Also, my assurance that our intentions are good and that we
| will try very hard not to screw things up. Additionally,
| would welcome any suggestions you have for how we could
| meet this higher standard of trust you are looking for.
| Thx.
| skellystudios wrote:
| > where you [as a seller] pays the buyer for considering your
| services
|
| Isn't this just ads?
| 4sellff wrote:
| Not advertising in the traditional sense. Today, many of
| the ad's you see are based on data collected about you.
| There is no "opt-in" and you are not compensated.
|
| We envision a model whereby you select which promotions to
| participate in, based on your needs/interest "and" how much
| you will receive in compensation.
|
| From the seller standpoint, we believe the costs to reach a
| consumer will be similar. Yet, the consumers they do reach
| will have a genuine interest in the offering. Thus the
| promotion has the potential to offer a better response. To
| be clear, the seller is able to select which members
| qualify for the promotion [Ex. based on location,
| occupation, TRU Score, etc].
|
| From the buyer standpoint, we view this an an improvement
| over the current model. There is no privacy violation or
| personal data sharing with strangers. You have the freedom
| and choice of which promotions to participate in. Assuming
| it works as planned, it would allow you to make a more
| informed buying decision.
| monkeynotes wrote:
| > selling blocks of time to people who want to consult with
| you
|
| What does this actually mean? Would you be selling my time to
| someone else?
|
| Do you have an import LinkedIn profile feature to reduce
| friction of adoption?
|
| Also why doesn't your sign up support Google auth or any
| other identity providers? Another friction reducer
| opportunity right there.
| 4sellff wrote:
| The consult feature is in development for the next release.
| You decide if you want to provide this service in your
| profile. The idea is to make it easy for you to turn-
| on/turn-off this feature. Initially, we see 30-minute and
| 60-minute blocks of time, where you determine the price.
|
| So, if for example you sell accounting services and I am
| looking for an accountant, I will pay you $xx amount of
| money to have an initial consultation.
|
| You may prices your services high or low, depending on
| supply demand. But, for me as a buyer, it's a transparent
| low-risk way for me to meet/evaluate a professional that I
| am considering to hire.
|
| The platform would take a % of the consult fee paid, which
| would take place off-platform [Ex. Stripe].
| [deleted]
| lmilcin wrote:
| Let's deconstruct this statement without even reading the page.
|
| "Alternative" -- it is not an alternative to LinkedIn. The major
| selling point of LinkedIn is ability to connect people and that
| doesn't work unless you have enough people on your platform.
| Functionality-wise LinkedIn is extremely simple. Most of the
| functionality of the platform is cruft.
|
| "Ad-free" -- it just means: I can't monetize it yet.
| Unfortunately, this will not work with subscription fee as I just
| can't imagine people would switch from LinkedIn to whatever you
| are proposing but also asked to pay for it when they don't need
| to pay for LI.
|
| "Zero-cost" -- obviously, a platform that only makes sense when
| majority of people you work with also use it, must be zero-cost.
| It is not a selling point, it is a necessity in today's world
| where people expect these things to be given out for free (or
| don't understand what the actual cost is).
|
| "zero-cost" + "ad-free" + "no backing" + "I need lots of users
| for this to make sense" is a deadly combination. How do you plan
| to cover running costs?
|
| "I built" -- no, you did not built it yet. Writing code to have a
| functionality is a trivial exercise for a newbie developer.
| Getting half of the planet to use it and scale it to meet the
| challenge is the tricky part.
|
| Don't get discouraged, but also don't be naive and don't treat
| people as if they are naive.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Tried to join, one second spinner, nothing.
| prionassembly wrote:
| Has everyone forgotten Klout?
| 4sellff wrote:
| As I recall, the Klout [and CRED] score was based on an
| aggregation of your off-platform social activities. This
| included, for example, your Twitter activity.
|
| The SELLFF TRU Score is based on your on-platform activities
| and is determined only by members of the SELLFF community.
| [deleted]
| MattGaiser wrote:
| There are a lot of objections on here to being "valued" and
| "commodified." I don't understand why.
|
| You are valued every time you go to an interview or ask for a
| raise. You can leverage your network in the same way as you can
| leverage "investment."
|
| To me this is already a more transparent version of what already
| happens.
| clairity wrote:
| points are a pretty poor proxy for the amazing variety of
| skills, proficiencies, and perceptions of humans (or even
| animals), no matter how sophisticated the point system might
| be. it also paints an illusory objective sheen (aka ass
| cover(tm)) over a highly subjective evaluation. you might
| believe in the point system if it favors you, but that doesn't
| make the point system any more transparent or "good".
|
| we're just not as fungible as nearly a century of mass
| industrialization would have us believe. we devalue humans by
| trying to bucketize a set of skills and buy only those skills
| on the labor market, despite the vast richness that each person
| brings to the table. that we allow the labor market to be
| commoditized this way is already a huge imbalance between
| worker and corporation. we need fair and transparent labor
| markets for people, not corporations.
| mdausmann wrote:
| I agree with this. Real networks are networks of people you
| respect and trust. Trying to reduce that to a point system is
| a poor proxy.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > the amazing variety of skills, proficiencies, and
| perceptions of humans
|
| Does this matter for the vast majority of jobs? I have lots
| of skills. I am a published writer. I have won innovation
| competitions. I can build large cities with high property
| values in SimCity.
|
| None of that matters for my employment. I am a software
| engineer. For the purposes of work I am a commodity. My past
| job replaced me fairly easily when I left. Companies are
| truly only buying a subset of skills on the labour market.
| jwozn wrote:
| Genuinely curious and not just trolling, but do you put
| this on your resume: "I can build large cities with high
| property values in SimCity."
|
| I do not play SimCity so am unaware of the difficulty of
| building cities of any size.
| clairity wrote:
| > "I am a software engineer.... Companies are truly only
| buying a subset of skills on the labour market."
|
| yeah, if you buy in wholesale and premise your argument
| that way, then of course arguing the premise seems
| ludicrous. i'm questioning that acceptance itself.
|
| when it comes to value creation, it's rarely the skills
| list that makes a person, a team, a company, effective, but
| rather an unquantifiable synergy of individualistic and
| combined abilities. on a basketball team, you can assume
| every forward is interchangable with every other one, but
| then you'd never win a championship and presumably would
| never understand why.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Reminds me of the Karmageddon episode of The Program:
| https://programaudioseries.com/3-four-ways-to-stop-your-syst...
| louis___ wrote:
| > There are a lot of objections on here to being "valued" and
| "commodified." I don't understand why.
|
| Because it is immoral. It is not because it is maybe
| commonplace, and valued in a capitalist society, that it is a
| good thing.
|
| And, the more you apply that mindset in the workplace, the more
| you will do it outside the workplace.
| grenoire wrote:
| But... it's not transparent? I have no idea what a 1-1000
| rating means, or how it's calculated. The function by which
| this number is generated might not suit my proxy for trust.
|
| And if I see someone with an outstanding score the first
| impression that it sparks won't be trust, but that this person
| must've successfully gamed it somehow.
| 4sellff wrote:
| We have tried to be very clear on how the TRU Score is
| determined [hover over the number and you will see a
| tooltip/modal that provides details]. Obviously, sharing the
| actual algorithm would most certainly allow people to game
| the system.
|
| A couple of other items to consider: [1] The TRU Score is
| updated 1x day [2] The TRU Score is a very slow moving value
| [3] As designed, it would likely take years for a member to
| make it above 900 [4] The TRU Score is primarily based on
| your activity on the platform and the community reaction to
| that activity [5] Outside of the algorithm used, we do not
| have any direct influence on the TRU Score
|
| Additionally, we are not suggesting that the TRU Score is the
| absolute measurement of trust or reputation of a person.
| Instead, it is an additional data point that you can take
| into consideration when deciding if you want to work with
| someone. Or, if they want to work with you [both parties have
| their own TRU Score].
|
| At time of registration, all members start with a TRU Score
| of 400. Therefore, even the most trustworthy/reputable person
| on earth will almost certainly have a lower score than you,
| if you have been on the platform for some time.
|
| I welcome all suggestions on how you think we could be more
| transparent in determining the TRU Score. We all benefit if
| it were easier to make better decisions about who we choose
| to work with.
| chris37879 wrote:
| > The TRU Score is primarily based on your activity on the
| platform and the community reaction to that activity
|
| This part alone makes me not interested in this platform.
| As a software engineer, I do not want to be forced into
| some social dance on a networking site just to make me
| eligible for jobs, but it seems like these days that's what
| everyone expects you to do. We can't all be professional
| social media users and be good at our jobs too.
| mleonhard wrote:
| You have built a social credit system [0]. Such systems
| harm individuals and society.
|
| I think you overestimate the willingness of people to
| participate in such a system.
|
| And if you succeed in manipulating enough users into
| joining, would your conscience make you miserable?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
| vector_spaces wrote:
| It makes sense to me that you'd need a way to regulate the
| platform's content to avoid it filling up with the spammy
| garbage that LinkedIn is known for, and I'm not sure what
| the right solution is. You've obviously spent more time
| thinking about this than I have, but my gut reaction is
| that this scoring approach would be super harmful for non-
| traditional or non-elite candidates.
|
| To use tech as an example, in the limit, regardless of how
| meritocratic we claim we are as an industry, my experience
| has been that folks hiring technical teams are more
| receptive to inquiries from someone with an Ivy League
| education in CS than they are from someone self-taught
| without a degree or who has a degree in something
| unrelated. I assume that reaching out to several hiring
| managers and getting zero response would hurt your TRU
| score, regardless of the quality of your messages.
| Meanwhile a traditional candidate with a higher response
| rate wouldn't see their score fall quite as much, even if
| they couldn't pass a simple fizzbuzz technical screen.
|
| Having to work harder than a traditional candidate to get a
| response is expected in this scenario, but it'd be a huge
| bummer if the platform itself acted as a gatekeeper in this
| way.
| dpeck wrote:
| Cory Doctorow's classic Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom as a
| service.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Ki...
| pk-r wrote:
| Has problems in authentication, ad-free, quite interesting.
| mouzogu wrote:
| Novel idea but won't something like this just end up being
| manipulated or gamed in one way or another.
| 4sellff wrote:
| I believe the trading feature helps to prevent manipulation.
| The investments you make in others counts towards the TRU Score
| for you and the other person. So, if you make "bad" investments
| in others, it will only serve to reduce your TRU Score. Of
| course, some people might be willing to sacrifice themselves
| for the benefit of others. But, that should be easy to
| identify.
|
| Example: If a high-reputation person vouches for someone, does
| it have more meaning compared to the endorsement from a person
| with no/low reputation?
|
| Which is why the TRU Score is more than just the share price
| and your investments. It also includes other platform
| activities [Ex. member reviews, review scores, number of
| investors, etc.]. Not claiming we have solved this problem.
| But, we think it is a step in the right direction.
| varispeed wrote:
| Does the platform give an opportunity for a group of people
| to "cancel" someone out of spite?
| 4sellff wrote:
| Not sure if I understand the question entirely. There is no
| "short selling" allowed. Thus, the only shares you could
| sell are the shares you own.
|
| A group of people that might deliberately attempt to
| manipulate the system would be relatively easy to identify.
| Obviously, that would not be acceptable behavior.
| tgv wrote:
| But the investment is directly proportional to the number of
| people you know and can coerce/bribe in some way. If you know
| many people, you can rig the numbers in your favor, at least
| temporarily, which might be long enough to get another
| position (or whatever it is you're after).
| 4sellff wrote:
| Not sure that manipulation can be entirely eliminated.
| Instead, we are trying to incentivize good behavior and
| make it easier to identify fakes.
|
| If you sell services and/or need to find a service
| provider, you need some method to perform [1] discovery,
| [2] evaluation, and [3] decision.
|
| This is what we tried to build, in a manner which we hope
| promotes trust and good behavior. That said, as the
| platform develops, we will no doubt need to make
| adjustments.
|
| But the focus will remain on maintaining an efficient
| marketplace for buyers and sellers to interact and
| transact.
| medell wrote:
| Black Mirror Nose Dive anyone? Nice concept but the "invest" idea
| introduces friction that could be too much to overcome. What
| about a PageRank system based on recommendation / testimonials
| and likes and connections?
| carabiner wrote:
| Dont know bout you but everyone is trading at $1. I'm just
| getting in on the ground floor.
| 4sellff wrote:
| The starting share price is 1.00 for all members at the time
| of registration.
|
| - When anyone BUYS shares in your profile, the price will
| increase by 0.01 - When anyone SELLS shares in your profile,
| the price will decrease by 0.01
|
| Each trade is fixed at 100 shares
|
| There are a few limits we placed for the launch: [1] A
| maximum of 1,000 shares in another member per day - So, if
| you wanted to BUY 5,000 shares, it would need to be spread
| across 5 different days - The same logic applies if want to
| SELL shares
|
| [2] A maximum of 100,000 shares total in another member
| carabiner wrote:
| When can I convert to USD?
| grenoire wrote:
| So it's not actually a market-making system, but rather a
| superficial point system disguised as 'dollars.'
| carabiner wrote:
| Yeah, the price goes up automatically when you buy. It's
| just like upvoting. They put a lot of work into making
| this fake interactive stock trading thing when it's
| really just imaginary internet points with no actual
| market dynamics.
| 4sellff wrote:
| Maybe a little harsh :-)
|
| At launch, all trades are 100% liquid and you are free to
| BUY/SELL as many shares within the limits indicated. Each
| trade moves the price up/down 0.01. I do not consider
| that to be necessarily worthless however.
|
| The share price and trades reflect actual member activity
| and sentiment. It's an indication of interest, that was
| not available before. Why would you buy shares of another
| members profile? Why would they buy shares of your
| profile?
|
| Until today, you could follow or like. Now, you have the
| option to invest. However, you are free to not invest any
| of your "trust tokens" [superficial points]. You could,
| if you like, only use SELLFF to perform discovery and
| direct communication of other members who may choose to
| participate in trades.
|
| We thought the trade feature would be an interesting
| experiment, to see how people would react if they "could"
| invest in each other, just like stocks. This is a first
| version and we will need to see how things develop.
|
| I appreciate you taking the time to comment. Is exactly
| the feedback I was hoping for as we work to build this
| marketplace solution.
| edoceo wrote:
| Looks like Empirecred and Klout merged?
| fundamental wrote:
| Turning personal trust in others into what looks like a stock
| market game strikes me as quite odd. I wouldn't find people
| trading internet points back and forth to determine my 'value' on
| a platform as something I would like. I like the trading of
| points even less considering the target of the website about
| people representing themselves in the scope of their professions.
| dvtrn wrote:
| _Turning personal trust in others into what looks like a stock
| market game strikes me as quite odd._
|
| Because it feels like turning the individual into a commodity?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| But that is what you are in the workplace.
|
| And you admit this every time you switch jobs or ask for a
| raise.
| tolbish wrote:
| Is it that common to switch jobs purely for the money? For
| the gigantic pay raises yes, but I think for the vast
| majority, you switch jobs for a variety of non-commodifying
| factors along with money.
| dvtrn wrote:
| No. I reject the premise that exchanging labor for
| compensation is the same as self-commidification parallel
| to having a simulacrum of "stocks" that are bought and sold
| based upon whims and sentiment like some kind of fungible,
| tradeable asset. 100% rejecting that.
|
| The former is a mutually beneficial exchange, not an
| ephemeral manifestation of trading chattel that masquerades
| as some indicator of competence or value in the job market
| as is the latter-IMO.
|
| I am not a commodity, I sell my skills and talents as
| services by virtue of career-based contributions to my
| employer. Are _those_ commodities? Arguably, probably so.
| Those are the table stakes.
| zendude213 wrote:
| What an insipid and silly assertion. Just because I can
| switch jobs or ask for a raise doesn't mean I'm nothing but
| a commodity in the labor market. Classic category error.
| But makes sense why you seem obsessed with a product that
| wants to reduce you to a number
| EGreg wrote:
| So what? That's what capitalism does. It cheapens and
| commodifies everything. Often, that's what you want, but when
| it comes to personal relationships, or welfare of people and
| animals, maybe it's not. Both parents working 10 hour days
| and neglecting their kids and quality time just so they can
| climb the corporate ladder is a more serious example. The
| other day I wrote about Facebook doing it to the words
| "friend" and "like":
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26456328
|
| I remember an acquaintance of mine, Siqi Chen, built Friends
| for Sale back in the day on Facebook and that was a great
| launch pad for his career, where he did a lot more
| interesting stuff later :)
| the__alchemist wrote:
| In the Charles Stross book Accelerondo, something much like you
| describe becomes official. Tongue in cheek, and on the edge
| between satire and plausible. Some people's reputations are
| gambled on or invested in, and are subject to bubbles,
| manipulation, swings from news etc.
| 4sellff wrote:
| Valid point. Yet millions of people each day make buying
| decisions based on a simple 5-star rating. Trading shares is a
| very pure way to represent market value, whether that is
| company stock or cryptocurrency. We see an opportunity to apply
| the concept to a professional digital reputation? Where the TRU
| Score can be used as a form of currency.
|
| Separate from the TRU Score, the platform provides the ability
| to connect with professionals across different service types,
| by "matching" services offered and services needed. So, you
| could offer your services and people could find/connect with
| you, independent of your TRU Score.
| adventured wrote:
| They're making purchase decisions on 5-star ratings for eg
| consumer goods, objects. You're talking about trading people
| virtually. It's going to be extraordinarily offensive and
| maybe worse.
|
| Prepare for an incredible wave of never-ending lawsuits from
| the large number of people who don't like 1) being traded at
| all or 2) don't like how they're trading / being represented.
| And the service will lose those lawsuits: it'll be
| demonstrated to cause reputational harm, and the service dies
| right there.
| 4sellff wrote:
| To be clear, the platform does not support "short selling"
| of the shares in another member. So, there is no effective
| way to deliberately drive down the reputation of another
| member.
|
| Shares are traded in a fixed size of 100. Each BUY
| transaction increases the share price by 0.01. Each SELL
| transaction, reduces the share price by 0.01.
|
| When you join the service, shares in your profile become
| available to trade by every other member. Members discover
| each other primarily based on services offered/needed.
| Today, if you like someone on a network, you might choose
| to "follow" or "like" them. We offer an alternative,
| whereby you "invest" in them.
|
| A follow or like from you to someone else makes the
| connection and allows you to view their network activity.
| An investment on SELLFF does the same "and" allows you to
| benefit from any upside in the value of that investment. As
| the person you invest in goes up in value, so do you. Not a
| bad situation really.
|
| Anytime you like, you can BUY or SELL more shares. The
| exchange is open for trading 24 x 7.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Sounds pretty complicated. It doesn't seem like something
| I would want to participate in. I don't participate on
| most social networks, though.
|
| I don't mean to boast, but make a point that such a
| service seemingly won't add any value to folk like me.
| Just from past work connections alone, I get 1 or 2 phone
| calls a year from direct acquaintances wondering if I
| want to join a serious startup from the start. I also get
| a handful of linkedin messages a week from recruiters
| despite not having even looked at my own profile in 5+
| years. It literally requires no effort on my part. All
| I've done through my career is find projects I'm
| inherently interested in, focus on the technical work
| with heart and conviction, and always try to be a
| friendly and helpful coworker.
|
| Likewise, if somebody's resume primarily featured a
| social credit score like this above hands-on domain
| relevant experience, it probably wouldn't stack up too
| well against other resumes, unless their high score was
| specifically due to them cleverly gaming the algorithms
| and documenting it or something. That would make them an
| interesting candidate!
| EGreg wrote:
| I remember an acquaintance of mine, Siqi Chen, built
| Friends for Sale back in the day on Facebook and that was a
| great launch pad for his career, where he did a lot more
| interesting stuff later :)
|
| Out of all the article about FFS, I don't remember ANYONE
| mentioning it was offensive back then:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_for_Sale
| adventured wrote:
| There are a lot of things that weren't considered
| offensive on the Internet 10 or 20 years ago, that are
| now offensive.
|
| It shouldn't take more than a brief amount of thought to
| realize what imagery trading humans conjures up, and what
| happens next in terms of outrage and scandal and what
| will inevitably plague the service accordingly. Hint:
| will the trading all be perfectly fair? Without bigotry,
| without bias, without racism, without any accusations,
| and so on. Of course not, so it's obvious what will
| happen.
| EGreg wrote:
| Expecting fairness in capitalism is like expecting the
| olympic games to feature random contestants drawn from a
| pool of the population at large.
| EGreg wrote:
| There are winners who go on to the next level
|
| And there are losers who drop out
|
| Takes money to make money
|
| In pure Capitalism you aren't supposed to rebalance
| things for "fairness". Bailing out the losers just makes
| the market competition weaker. It's survival of the
| fittest. What exactly is "fairness" in the context of
| Capitalism? Someone happened to be at the right place and
| make money. Now they are ahead. And why not?
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| I dont know a single 5 star rating system on the internet
| that I trust.
| mdausmann wrote:
| my detailed analysis (searching for dave and counting them... 5..
| and then multiplying by 50...2% of men are called Dave) tells me
| there are ~250 people on your service. I will join when you have
| 2.5 Million :)
| varispeed wrote:
| I wish there was a service I could simply pay for using, enough
| so that the operator wouldn't have to use invasive advertising
| where I could connect with other people who would want my
| services or vice-versa. Why such a simple thing seems to be not
| possible? Everyone looks to be only motivated by $$$ and turning
| potential customers into product. I also don't understand why
| should I value a network where the main selling point is zero-
| cost ad-free. If people on there don't want to pay for something
| that brings them value, are they going to want to pay me for my
| services? This is so contradictory. What's the goal here?
| toss1 wrote:
| Fully agree. Unfortunately, the networks that are built for pay
| are basically seeking extortionist-level payouts. One, which
| started out on a freemium model to connect makers and
| designers, seemed pretty good, the free plan did ok, and the
| others were tempting if I needed more. Then, somethign changed,
| and they reworked their site, and expected to take something
| like a 30% cut of all business done through link-ups made
| there. That might work for a few small one-off jobs where the
| total is small, but anything where you might work together for
| a competitive bid, their 30% cut demand will just force the
| cost right through the roof. So, nevermind now....
| macspoofing wrote:
| >I wish there was a service I could simply pay for using,
| enough so that the operator wouldn't have to use invasive
| advertising where I could connect with other people who would
| want my services or vice-versa.
|
| There are a lot of services that you can pay to use. The
| problem with social networks (which this is) is that though you
| are willing to pay, others are not, and social networks are
| worthless without the 'network' part.
| varispeed wrote:
| I don't mind being on a network without people who don't want
| to pay for it. Not sure why is that an issue?
| 4sellff wrote:
| Agree, that the messaging can be improved. However, for now
| it's easier to state "zero cost" than to use "revenue sharing."
|
| Also, at this time, the service is zero cost. We are launching
| so that people might interact with the service and provide the
| type of feedback you are giving us. Any startup is, in many
| ways, a giant experiment.
|
| We are looking at many different revenue models. However, we
| will not go with the traditional model we see today, where "we"
| are the product. We feel just as strongly about that as you do.
|
| We are confident that better revenue models exist, that can
| support our service, without spying on our members, selling out
| their personal information or placing arbitrary monthly fees
| that are inconsistent with the value provided.
|
| Not to "hate" on LinkedIn, but we are interested to explore
| other ways to build a marketplace that makes it easy for buyers
| and sellers to interact.
| random5634 wrote:
| I browse with ublock origin, and get an endless spinning circle
| in the tab.
| 4sellff wrote:
| Please...which tab are you referring to? Which member profile?
| Feel free to send an email to help@sellff.com with any details.
| Thx.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| As a rule of thumb, serve HTML on page load. All of these
| pages are remarkably free of meaningful markup.
| 4sellff wrote:
| Thank you for the feedback...the devs are reading your
| comments.
| KadeTheSpade wrote:
| This site is excellent, and I have made my account!
| Grustaf wrote:
| Free and ad-free sounds great, but will it be free of cheesy
| inspirational humble bragging? Then I'm in.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| I was raised by dwarves in a mountain and overcame the rare
| sverfneblin disease to go to Harvard and the make a million
| dollars from my app. Buy my newsletter.
| ducharmdev wrote:
| Please, anything to get rid of that. LinkedIn really has set
| the bar low.
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