Lulu's innovations appears to 1) using Facebook identity, 2) restricting it to women-only, 3) collecting ratings rather than long-form reviews (ratings are easier to defend as protected opinion speech), 4) collecting reviews from non romantic partners, and 5) branding/positioning away from being a cheater database.
Obviously there are many problems to keep a service like this high quality, but it's an interesting use of the social graph.
The problem with any such rating system is one of intra-operator error. My five might be your ten and my ten might be your five.
The most valuable information is the long-form review, which would get them sued out of existence. Stars and ratings are worthless.
If this ever takes hold, I want to see an app that discovers if someone you are about to go on a date with posts reviews on such a site. It would be ironic if this app caused the women who use it to get less dates because they've been identified as a ratist.
> “It’s just this gratifying thing that you know you can do,” she said. “You have no control of whether a guy is great or a jerk and at the end of the experience, even if no one reads it, you feel like you have gotten back at the guy. You have taken a bit of control."
I'm not sure how this is going to end well for anyone.
Lulu's innovations appears to 1) using Facebook identity, 2) restricting it to women-only, 3) collecting ratings rather than long-form reviews (ratings are easier to defend as protected opinion speech), 4) collecting reviews from non romantic partners, and 5) branding/positioning away from being a cheater database.
Obviously there are many problems to keep a service like this high quality, but it's an interesting use of the social graph.