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.
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.
> 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).
Thank you for your comments. We have similar thoughts it seems and both see the larger opportunity to provide value to professionals. Are you interested to discuss offline? Thx.
I hope to leverage my influence there to start a linkedin competitor, and will set up a nice basic for having a more trusting/open relationship with the users around their data.
Ironically I might be inclined to believe someone with too high a trust score is actually less trustworthy because they tried too hard to optimise for it.
As designed, there is no direct way to influence the TRU Score in any meaningful way. A person could theoretically make 100's of trades every day and post dozens of messages, reviews, etc. This would have some impact on the TRU Score, but nothing significant over a time period of less than 6 - 12 months.
As is true in the real world, when making decisions about the people to work with, we all use a variety of inputs.
We would consider SELLFF to be successful if it helps you to discover and connect with trustworthy people who meet your criteria for the person/people you want to meet. From there, the decision is yours. Use the TRU Score as an additional data point in your decision making, not as the final determination.
I would consider this to be accurate whether you are promoting/selling your services or if you are a buyer and looking to hire a service provider.
> As designed, there is no direct way to influence the TRU Score in any meaningful way
If I cannot influence my TRU Score, then it's not really a reflection of anything about me, is it?
The screenshots I've seen of your site suggest you give this score the most prominent position on info cards about people. This suggests to me you are designing the site to let people use this information first and foremost in making decisions.
Allow me to be more clear on my original response. When I used the word "influence" I should have instead stated "manipulate." I believe honesty and integrity is what people care about in a score or rating system.
So, there is no direct way for a member to "manipulate" the TRU Score:
- Your activities on the site contribute to your TRU Score
- The community reaction to your activities will contribute to your TRU Score
- If a member invests the time to develop their profile and is active on the site, those activties [if viewed positively by the community] will contribute to an increased value for the TRU Score
I believe this is a fair, appropriate and transparent way to derive a score. My belief is that our members will not only rely on the TRU Score in making decisions. Instead, they will also review other parts of the member profile. In the same way you might look at a Yelp or Amazon review.
Guessing that you do not make decisions based solely on the star ratings when buying a product or choosing a service. But that you might also read some of the reviews and look at images of the product/service. Thank you for taking the time to comment and share your thoughts.
Valid point and I understand the concern. However [at least in the USA] we are all scored in many different ways. This includes: credit scores, insurance scores, criminal scores, employer/employee scores, education scores, etc. Yes, these examples are private and only visible to certain people [unless hacked]. Whereas the SELLFF TRU Score is public and visible to everyone. We have been transparent about how the value is determined and what it means. It is an indicator of trust and reputation, not an absolute value.
For many of the reasons you stated, we chose a much larger range of values. So, instead of 1-10 or 1-100, we selected 100 - 1,000 with a starting value of 400.
In anything we do, there is the starting point from which you determine if adjustments are needed. If the TRU Score is deemed to be in error or unfair or inaccurate, we will make the needed changes.
It is also worth noting that people who are selling services and trying to reach new customers are looking for new/better ways to connect. It is our belief that SELLFF can become an additional, valuable option for these providers. Instead of having a reliance on the mega platforms that might have already lost out trust.
Thank you for your comment. Would you prefer to be rated by an authoritative source using inputs that are closed and unknown? Or, would you rather have your peers provide a rating in an open and transparent manner?
[I think] Crowdsourced opinions are an excellent way to make informed decisions about products/services. A great example is using Amazon.com for competing products:
Product A: 5.0 star rating | 32 reviews
Product B: 4.5 star rating | 5,264 reviews
Which product would you weigh more heavily when making a buying decision?
Keep in mind that SELLFF is positioned as a Professional Network. Any response or feedback will be relative to you, in a professional capacity. This might include the quality of the service you provide, your communication skills, did you finish the job on time, etc.
Also, any reputation you earn as a seller works in your benefit when you consult with others as a buyer. People want to work with other people who they have confidence in. This is true on Uber,Lyft and AirBnB, where both parties "rate" each other.
I think a digital reputation is a vital part of a healthy marketplace.
>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?
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?
I'm sure you mean well, but "we'll figure out sustainability later" has huge negative trust value to me. That's basically what LinkedIn did and it has not worked out well for me. The incentives for eternal revenue growth are incredibly strong, and I have no reason to think you're uniquely capable of resisting them for the next 20 years. I'm am unlikely to go through all the switching cost just to help create a different hegemon.
>We are still very early in this, but I will "take the bait" since monetization seems to be an issue that people care about.
There's no 'bait'. I don't have issues with ad-supported or subscription-supported services. I do think you should set realistic expectations, namely, today you are 'zero-cost' and 'ad-free' because you're starting out and need to get users for your social network. This is how every social network started as well. At some point, that will change because you have bills to pay.
>A percentage of revenue is I think a fair option.
Can you elaborate on that?
>A question for you:
I actually have no issue with the linkedin model: Free/ad-supported tier, and subscription tiers for those who want extra functionality. I'm not sure about taking a cut of revenues. That would be a logistical nightmare unless you're also the payment processor.
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.
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.
Also recommended reading (and much easier than Accellerando) is Quality Land by Marc-Uwe Kling. A satirical story about when trusting algorithms goes a bit too far.
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.
Absolutely agree. Treating people like stocks completely ignores individual agency and decision making. A stock cannot choose to be traded, but I sure as hell can choose to quit.
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.
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
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":
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 :)
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.
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.
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 :)
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.
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?
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.
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!
I can't help but attempt to apply Kant's categorical imperative to this approach. Is this something I would wish as a universal rule?
What about folks who have really bad luck and participate in organizations that are a bad fit for their personality? Their score immediately goes down, and then the odds of them finding a better fit plummet. There is no "fresh start," so to speak.
If everybody used this system to make a judgment about whether a person is worthy, it feels like we would immediately create a permanent caste system. There would be social outcasts that would only work with other outcasts, because, frankly who else would want to? They are, in a word, untouchable.
So, for me, it appears this system is unethical to the extreme.
if i work with outcasts that fit my personality i get positive points and get back to the top. No? (btw. is there a formula how that score works. maybe older votes expire)
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™) 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.
> 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.
> "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.
> but rather an unquantifiable synergy of individualistic and combined abilities.
Interesting. Basketball is an extremely team integrated sport. 100% of the time is spent playing as a team. Do you find workplace teams to be near that level of integration?
Maybe my thinking comes from not working on particularly integrated teams.
knowing nothing else, i'd bet that your workplace value creation encompasses a bigger team around you than you may perceive in your day-to-day. that is, unless you're designing, developing, testing, deploying, securing, marketing, documenting, supporting, accounting for, financing, and selling everything yourself. but even then, you'll often have others helping you, either on contract or in an advisory or support capacity. all of that stuff needs to be sync'ed up and holistically delivered to customers.
basketball is my go-to first-order microcosm of work life, but you can see the same representative dynamics in other facets of life, like a band. similarly, i think of pets as first-order humans, endlessly fascinating and instructive to observe and interact with. =)
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.
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.
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.
I do not agree that we are building a social credit system. There are some similarities to what is happening in China, but SELLFF is fundamentally different in almost every way.
To anyone who is interested in comparing the differences, you can find 100's of links from your favorite search engine.
If we step back a moment and look at this objectively, we are only focused on matching buyers and sellers. It's a marketplace for people who sell/offer services and people who buy/need services. For a marketplace to function, there needs to be access to information so that both parties [buyers and sellers] are on an equal footing. Else, one party would have an advantage over the other.
Everything we are doing is focused on making the buyer/seller interaction easier and more efficient. It seems the TRU Score is a concern evident in many of the comments. Yet, how is this different [or worse] than star ratings on Yelp, Amazon or any other rating service. Other than the initial calculations that comprise the score, all changes in the scores are based on the community of members.
I believe many members of SELLFF can obtain significant value if all they do is post "services offered" and "services needed." The application will "match" the parties so they can interact and decide if working together makes sense.
Is SELLFF different? Yes, in some ways [Ex. trading shares of people]. But isn't that part of the opportunity when creating something new? Why do the same thing as everyone else is doing? Do you really feel fulfilled when you follow or like someone? Does the opportunity to "invest" in someone appeal to you? Do you see any advantage?
Is SELLFF better than existing solutions? Maybe? Can SELLFF to iterate to meet the needs of buyers and sellers. For sure! Is SELLFF a social credit system. No, not even close.
>Everything we are doing is focused on making the buyer/seller interaction easier and more efficient. It seems the TRU Score is a concern evident in many of the comments. Yet, how is this different [or worse] than star ratings on Yelp, Amazon or any other rating service. Other than the initial calculations that comprise the score, all changes in the scores are based on the community of members.
And what's happening with Yelp and Amazon star ratings? There's abusive corruption within the community in these systems with the score-holders and/or score-takers gaming the system. Requests for 5 stars on packaging involving coupons that are practically bribery, enough corruption on Yelp to precipitate an entire South Park episode about it and many investigations, to the point people don't trust it anymore and comments on here talk about mentally adjusting google scores to equivalents that roughly fit to pre-corruption yelp scores. Government leaders of China and especially the citizens who report on each other or cooperate together in a high-visibility manner to gain status in the system are community members.
It's worse because it will affect the livelihoods of private citizens who cannot rebrand or close their store/seller account and start again somewhere else because web trackers will remember who they are by their face, ip, etc, and a history that starts mid-career might look too funny if this catches on. Please be part of the solution and take us a step away from an omni-corporate panopticon rather than closer. If a system like this is necessary for you to compete with linkedin because your potential corporate clients are requesting or suggesting it (because it adds value to them, extracted from workers who now have a direct, public, "employability credit score" to maintain), I urge you to reconsider if the field you're in is even truly ethical enough to be worth doing or if you have a personal, ethical imperative to get out, while you still can. God willing, you can remove the feature and create a decent platform that succeeds on merits without playing a handin further debasing the value of human labour in favour of our corporate masters (who already have so very much), for a new generation.
Mleonhard's is a very important post, right here. If adopted widely enough, I could easily see this becoming a somewhat decentralized corporate version of the government credit score system seen in China. Get publically punished with a low score for speaking up about wanting better conditions. Do extra overtime and attend corporate events with extra enthusiasm? Rewarded with a pittance of points instead of money. Maybe you'll become rich one day if you have a good score, but more realistically, you gain a minor buffer to keep you from hitting unemployability. We already have to deal with enough of this in meatspace without the the entire federated corporatocracy having access to a free panopticon so they know they know exactly how much to exploitatively nickle-and-dime you on your next opportunity.
> 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.
Don't do the score thing. Just. Don't. Where there is money involved like this, despite whatever good intentions you may or may not have, reducing people to a score invites gaming and bad actors.
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?
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
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.
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.
That is an accurate comment. Your SELLFF profile can help you to connect with new business opportunities, from which you can save and/or earn $$. It's a new/different alternative to the megacorp solutions that does not track you or sell your personal information.
I was raised by dwarves in a mountain and overcame the rare sverfneblin disease to go to Harvard and the make a million dollars from my app. Buy my newsletter.
I wish there was a service I could simply pay for using, enough so that the operator wouldn't have to use invasive advertising where I could connect with other people who would want my services or vice-versa. Why such a simple thing seems to be not possible? Everyone looks to be only motivated by $$$ 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?
>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.
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.
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....
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.
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).
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.
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.
Thanks for the clarification. It may be worth thinking about obfuscating the TRU score in some way or the algorithms that control it as way of deterring any kind of manipulations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Zero-Cost is showing in the 8.3 second load time I get on the first page. Second, if you want to take up space in LinkedIns market, you need to copy the pros of that platform. Good luck.
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
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.
Right...JavaScript is required at this time. Thx for you comment. We will post a notice on the landing page that JS is required. Also, can work on a non-JS version of the site.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
Make sure you think about how to address the "Chicken-egg problems" for network-effect.
A good read about it is: https://apenwarr.ca/log/20201227 (if you're short on time, you can skip to "Chicken-egg problems" section)
"The defining characteristic of a chicken-egg technology or product is that it's not useful to you unless other people use it. Since adopting new technology isn't free (in dollars, or time, or both), people aren't likely to adopt it unless they can see some value, but until they do, the value isn't there, so they don't."
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.
Not entirely the right person to answer this question, but we went with a .Net solution using SQL Server and React. We decided on the website first that would work OK on mobile devices. Faster and less cost to get into the market.
Thanks to HN "Who wants to be hired" I was able to connect with 3x amazing devs in Croatia who built the solution. I have learned so much from HN over the last couple of years. Lots of value in this community and grateful to be a small part of it.
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 :)
Hello...thanks for your comment. We seem to be experiencing issues with new account registrations and email confirmations. We are working to resolve now. Thank you for your interest in the service and your patience. -Ron
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.
How are you preventing the system being gamed? How would, for example, prevent QAnon, or its equivalent, from being the dominant source and judgement of reputation?
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.
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.
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.
This is fascinating. It kinda sounds very unstable though. Like how does a pandemic ruptured economy somehow come out looking better than it was pre pandemic?
it looks better because (1) we (in the US) borrowed $6T+ against the future and injected that into the present, with inflation stayed only because the dollar is the international currency (for now) and (2) capital has nowhere to go but into (existing) equities, financial maneuvers, and real estate. it's hard to erode/inflate away more than $6T, even for an economy as misallocated as ours when you have those two features going for you.
i don't think it will be stable long term, but it's been a slow boiling of us largely oblivious amphibians. the froth of unrest we've seen here and there in the last decade is pockets of us frogs realizing something is wrong, but we haven't reached that 25% awareness/action threshold to unlodge us toward a new equilibrium.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
If I was one of the only White people on say a job platform, and I was treated with the same level of respect, dignity and fairness as everybody else, I genuinely don't think it would bother me. That's what everybody reasonable wants, respect, dignity and fairness, and that's what I want to give to the Black, Brown, Indigenous and Asian people in our world. My understanding is that if someone truly wants something else such as domination, then yes, normal racial tensions will foment and cascade into hate and suspicion, making it harder and more painful for everyone to give or receive that respect, dignity and fairness, even where someone's actively trying to give it. Different nations and systems have had to deal with multiculturalism in the past, some of them dealt with it better and some of them worse. Our communications technology has created an inconvenient shift in terrain, but there have been other societal shifts, and chapters in history much worse, so I have some optimism about it.
Mind you I'm also not 'normal' in terms of faith let alone ethnic demography where I live, plus I'm what they call "neurodivergent". I've grown up being very, very accustomed to being out of place one way or another. Maybe it would bother White people who are very used to being in the majority where they live and work, and can't cope with a stronger subliminal desire for ingroup dominanance. Dominance is comfortable for the dominator, and we have a nasty habit of liking comfort, so, to get a little religious, we do have to resist the flesh and aim for higher values found in sacrificial love.
I'm genuinely curious what it's like for you being Mennonite in Mexico. How does it affect your life?
> 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.
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.
