OKCupid have said “we experiemnt on our customers, deal with it”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28542642

People seem to think this is a problem. Facebook doing it certainly caused a ruckous.

But businesses experiment on their customers all the time, it’s how they improve, be it pricing, formats, advertsing and more. So why are people getting all upity about this now. Is this somehow different or are people just looking for something to whinge about?

jfletch – Member

OKCupid have said “we experiemnt on our customers, deal with it”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28542642

People seem to think this is a problem. Facebook doing it certainly caused a ruckous.

But businesses experiment on their customers all the time, it’s how they improve, be it pricing, formats, advertsing and more. So why are people getting all upity about this now. Is this somehow different or are people just looking for something to whinge about?

Ya, because they are still single.

Is that one where you have to pay? If so, I’d be miffed

“I wish to complain about this thing I use for free. I’ve never paid for it, spend hours a day using it and I demand it to work exactly as I want” 🙂

Is that one where you have to pay? If so, I’d be miffed

Probably this +1, with Facebook you kinda accept that in return for the free service you consent to being poart of their data mining.

That and informed consent for the experiment, even if the T&C’s state they do this then it’s not informed as no one ever reads them.

And ‘dateing’ is expensive both in terms of time and money, presumably people use these sites in part to seperate the wheat and the chaff and narrow it down to people you actualy want to go out for drinks/dinner with.

The new facebook news feed pisses me off, it just fills with shared crap and posts from STW as that’s what gets likes/shares and therefore deemed popular. Posts from actual people dissapear.

Is that one where you have to pay? If so, I’d be miffed

To give the best possible experience to your users, you have to know what the best possible experience is. To ascertain what the best experience is you have to present different versions to different people – some of whom will get versions which aren’t the best. Sometimes the most successful version is extremely counter-intuitive so you need to try to isolate the parts of the experience that make the difference – sometimes intentionally presenting non-optimal solutions to users, knowing that they won’t perform well.

The alternative is to offer everyone a worse experience – this is what software engineers seem to have been specialising in for years.

Why is this news?

I’m buggered if I know. (As it were)