Sex will happen | it's how you get there
November 17th, 2009

State Farm won’t underwrite social software?

State Farm doesn’t want to connect people.

We got this letter from State Farm today. They proactively canceled our policy out of nowhere with the explanation that:

State Farm does not write businesses that develop social software that allow people to meet online.  The size and scope of the operation does not meet our underwriting quidelines

It’s hard for me to believe that State Farm wouldn’t underwrite Facebook, Twitter or any of the bajillions of consumer and business-facing companies making or using social software.

That said, here’s the rejection letter we got from them today. I know that they’re on Twitter as @statefarm. Wonder if their underwriters know. So much for being “like a good neighbor.”

statefarmcancel

August 24th, 2009

Numbers we track in our online/offline life

The antiquated, “eyeball” media model is screwing with our online behavior.

I had a fun brainstorming session recently with Pierre Omidyar (@pierre). One of the things we talked about was how social software’s design has impacted freindsshow we behave online. The metrics companies choose to put in front of us are really meaningful since people optimize their behavior around those numbers.

In the consumer space–because most companies decide to follow Google into “free” land– they fall trap to optimizing for the dusty, century-old media business model: get a ton of viral, sticky eyeballs, then sell ad space.

Number of friends, is the metric on big kitchen sink networks like Facebook, Myspace, etc. On Twitter it’s number of followers. And you can see the resulting behavior every day. As soon as someone joins Facebook, it’s a race to add as many friends to cart as possible to get that number up. Just look at Follow Friday. There are even applications developed to help you game your Follower numbers, so you can quickly achieve the status of 23,083 meaningless followers.

Here’s why Friending and Following doesn’t work

Besides not actually being part of an environment tailor made around meaningful connections, the other reason that Friending, Following and other social number don’t work is that no one wants to give you negative feeback. Sure, Robert Scoble stopped following 106,000 people but most of us don’t want to unfriend, unfollow, or unanything that would send a negative message to someone else. So, while we focus on driving our social numbers up as high as possible, those numbers end up being meaningless. They don’t reflect reality. In real life people come in and out of our life. People we vouch for at one point, we can’t vouch for at another point. Our friends change. People we want to meet change. Because the kitchen-sink networks optimize their numbers around mass-use in order to sell advertising, they can’t solve this problem.

The numbers we track in our online/offline life

After my conversation with Pierre, it got me thinking about the numbers we track in our online and offline life. Since, Blackbox Republic is focused on fusing online/offline realities together, arriving at measurements that help enable meaningful relationships has been at the forefront of our development. The chart below is a visual representation of the delta between how we currently account for our online and offline social. As you can see, it’s pretty huge. I’d be interested on your ideas on how to bridge it more effectively.

socialnumbers

August 11th, 2009

10 things not in Blackbox Republic

1. Labels

One of our Founding members told me that “labels create drama,” and we agree. If there’s one thing we’ve overwhelmingly and consistently heard is that sexpositive people don’t want to be labeled. They don’t want checkboxes, or to live inside someone else’s rules. So inside Blackbox Republic you won’t find yourself having to put yourself in buckets. If you want to label yourself, fine. Do it. But we don’t make you.

Sometimes you don’t know how to fit in until you break out. — Michael Baczynski

labels

2. Profiles

Profiles are tired, old snapshots of us. The web is littered with them.  Our public profiles are strewn everywhere like super-ego mini-marts. None of them are accurate. It’s the public, professional or dating us. Over and over. Who cares what your favorite movies are or where you went to high school.

profileszz

3. Lookie-loos, tourists & creeps

Chris Rock once said that if a bullet costs five thousand dollars, there would be no innocent bystanders. When someone got shot, you’d know it was for a damn good reason. Since our members will pay to be there, they’re there for a good reason. Combined with our vouching system, that means that the tourists, creeps and lookie-loos will troll their usual haunts but not find a home in the Republic.

toury

4. Hang ups

Sex-positive people don’t have an issue with their own sexuality or that of others. Odds are, if you are that comfortable with yourself, you don’t get over-heated about too much. In my experience, sex-positive folks have less overall hangups. If you can be open and accepting of the intimate parts of your and others’ life, you’re open to a lot.

issues

5. Censorship

Blackbox Republic is a place for unbound self-expression. A place to explore your alter-egos. We’ve joined a ton of sites in the last few months and are surprised how heavy handed and micro-managed their administration is. There are member agreements that force you to agree to never name another competing website. The Admins delete, edit, and/or move member’s content. No doubt, dating and sex sites are used to a lot of bad behavior by their very definition.

censor

6. Store

There are millions of storefronts all over the web. The last thing you’ll find in Blackbox Republic are more shopping carts. There are no product directories, or browsing the isles.

mall

7. Ads

Don’t we get assaulted with ads enough in our public life? As innovative as the web is supposed to be, it’s really just the same old media model of “free” to get the eyeballs and sell ads. You won’t find that inside Blackbox Republic.

ads

8. Public life

Blackbox Republic is a private community. That means it’s not for prying eyes, search engines, or career-ending accidents. Your life is our secret.

public

9. Boring people

Ours is a creative, right-brained crowd. You can bet that since everyone who’s there is serious about being there and as everyone is sex-positive, that there will be no shortage of amazing people. You won’t find depressing newsfeeds, get poked, have a drink thrown at you or get caught up in a Vampire contest.

boring

10. Only sex

Blackbox Republic is a community where–yes–sex will happen. So will friends, dating, and marriage. It’s about your whole personal life, not just your sex life.

sex

July 19th, 2009

Why risk being eaten?

At one point I blogged about “What it takes to Go Big.”

I’ve