"wooMe is the most fun you'll have online for FREE!"

"get started now! it's 100% free and takes 30 secs to sign up"

Doing a Bayesian update on the claims of automated bot messages, with the fact that the company is willing to make obviously untrue statements on its front page, it seems reasonably likely that they would be willing to lie in other places too. I realise that claiming to be free probably increases conversions, but you shouldn't pursue conversions at the expense of basic ethics. Would you shoot a puppy to increase conversions too?

So, at the moment, I'd evaluate as 80% likely the claims in the TC blog post. Still waiting to read nicferrier's responses to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170210 though.

I can only imagine what the bounce rate is when you put the payment details after the signup for a nerfed account. You can't do much until you upload a photo of yourself and by then they have already gotten something from you: the appearance of activity and photos they can dangle in front of other users. What do they call that again… bait for the lobster trap?

http://www.woome.com/woome/privacy/

Use of Information Obtained by WooMe

When you register with WooMe, you create your own profile and privacy settings. Your profile information, as well as your name, email and photo, are displayed to people in the networks specified in your privacy settings to enable you to connect with people on WooMe.

...

Profile information is used by WooMe primarily to be presented back to and edited by you when you access the service and to be presented to others permitted to view that information by your privacy settings.

You know, it is certainly possible that those messages are all either spam accounts or real people trying to make the money they paid worthwhile by meeting someone. Then again, pyramid schemes are perpetuated by real people trying hard to make their investment worth it too.

Also, the user featured in the top picture personally contacted me, and while I never claimed her profile was fake (but mine obviously was), it turns out she's pretending to be someone else on there (confirmed).

It's easy to say I fabricated the story, much harder to prove, isn't it?

I wouldn't be calling you out if I didn't think you really need to take a good look of how what kind of shady business you're running.

We didn't do anything to stop these getting to you, as you say elsewhere in this thread. Since you weren't top online anymore (and if you're not engaging you also drop off the top of the 'online now' list) you just didn't get these messages anymore.

As for contacting us... well, I'm sorry, I guessed we dropped it. I've been trying to track down your email and I can't find it.

edit but apparently 'Jen' does. Screencast here -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOtBmqqKVcc

(Thanks to my Appsumo purchase of Screenflow which saved me 50%!)

If someone signs up and realises they've been duped, they probably won't even contest the CC charge due to a variation on the Small Penis Rule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_penis_rule

They'll just cancel their account to avoid being rebilled.

And actually, they handled the cancellation process well (at least for me).

I called them up and said I want to cancel because "their site is a scam" and in a no-nonsense way the person started helping me undo the payment (without defending the site). Since I paid through PayPal, I did have to dispute the payment via them (which took a month or two) but I eventually got all of my money back.

So I give the company (or at least the person I talked with) props for their cancellation process, although not everyone may experience it that way.

You put a tiny fake-ai-chatbot on the page to help with conversions.

Here in Toronto, I interviewed once with a dating site similar dating site similar to WooMee /* on second thought I won't link to them */ who "Seem" to be doing similar things (this is of course only alleged misconduct, as I have no proof)

There are also numerous accounts of the dating scam sites out there. I read one story of a "Sugar Daddies Dating" site that charged huge fees to sign up, then when you did a chargeback, they'd refer you to collections for many times what you originally pledged.

So it's either pay up or damage your credit rating. http://maxkle.in/how-elite-dating-sites-scam-people/ Max Klein has a good account of one such scam.

It's actually an experiment with a 3rd party to see if an automated response system converts people to our paid service well.

Stop treating the people on this site like we're simply misinformed teenagers crying wolf.

From your website: "it's 100% free"

If you really WANT snake oil I guess I could find some and get it to you.

Your site either uses fake accounts to trick legitimate users into paying to view messages from these supposed hot women looking for dates with horses and guys who have just signed up yet haven't provided any personal details...or you have a very serious spam problem where bots are running rampant across your site with hordes of fake accounts trolling for new profiles to scam (or a combination therein).

As evidence, I just logged in to my woome account, which I haven't logged into in maybe 3 years, and immediately I got a request for a video chat from http://www.woome.com/sallyl3462/ . Who wants to get laid tonight? Sally does!

I don't think that's what robin is trying to say tho.

We are simply trying to make introductions happen as much as possible because that's what people use woome for. To meet new people.

It seems to work, to my knowledge our users are generally happy we have good time on site, repeat vistits and viping.

It's not that hard to spot users messaging new users during the first few minutes. If one user does this multiple times, just ban him.

1. Delete the fake bot accounts

2. Re-word your homepage so that it is clear to users that you need to pay money to do anything useful

3. Come out and say 'in an effort to ramp up user engagement we went too far and made a mistake. apologies'

I signed up for your site years ago. I have slowly watched it progress from something useful to a totally degenerate spam and bait site.

(Edit: I will add that if it is your affiliates who are doing the spamming, then ban them and put in better controls. I just logged into my account and got 3 messages in less than a second)

Horses for courses not withstanding.

I can only see what these supposedly real women are trying to tell or ask me until I pay up. That's all fine and dandy, but there's no point in pretending that real users were just all jumping on the opportunity to meet a horse in such a short time period.

It would really be interesting to create a second account, or even a second paid account, and see if any of the messages were exactly the same.

Speak straight. Do you or do you not send automated messages or messages from fake accounts in an effort to entice visitors to sign up?

http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/woome.png

Yeah, that's a "real" dater.

From TC:

" After a user "friends" someone, we pop up 6 "other people like him" and the user can select up to 6 people to "say hi" to. Again, we try to focus on 1) relevance and 2) online now in populating those suggestions."

Does that mean that a user has to pay for his curiosity just to see a bunch of "say hi" messages?