eSnips Takes Hint from Online Dating, Debuts “Social DNA”
Mark Hendrickson
17 comments »
Looks like tonight’s theme is social discovery. Israel-based eSnips, a media-centric social network we reviewed over a year ago, is releasing a new feature called “Social DNA” meant to help you discover people similar to yourself.
The idea’s simple and already executed in one form or another by most online dating services. Users fill out quick and “fun” quizzes about a variety of topics. They also list their musical, literary, cinematic, and dietary preferences on the site.
Social DNA then takes these two sources of input and compiles percentages meant to reflect how similar you are to others on different topics. You’ll find out that you and Sally are 64% alike in political beliefs but only 8% alike in musical tastes, etc. The site will also tell you who you match most closely in a particular community or group of friends.
Social DNA is cute enough but seems to confuse the purpose of eSnips even more than it is already confused (is it an online storage service? a social network? a promotional tool?). Plus, the feature doesn’t add much substance; I don’t expect many people will actually get to know each other after discovering that their “social genes” match up well. But who knows; maybe eSnips’ reported four million users will really dig Social DNA.
I swear this has been done in one form or another dozens of times before. I can’t quite put my finger on who did it, but I think that just means the number of repetitions of this particular concept approaches infinity.
Doesn’t mean that it is -bad-, it just means that slapping an important sounding name on a derivative concept does not make that concept more interesting.
I think quiz sites should stick to giving quizzes and eSnips might do well to stick to storage and… you know, having a really neat logo.
Wait, isn’t it a BAD idea to date people with similar DNA to yourself? (Unless you’re from Alabama, maybe.)
so many startups, so little time.
mike, you should continue that fuckedcompany site
This concept of people similarity really isn’t something new any more. Simpy has had this concept and functionality for a few years now and it works well (and I like it). For instance, people similar to me are listed on http://simpy.com/user/otis and they indeed have similar interests (I happen to know some of them) and none of them ever explicitly described their interests - it’s all done implicitly, via bookmarks and tags.
True it isn’t really a new concept, but it’s always interesting to look at tools that connect people by shared interests.
The first person that can take what Esnips does and give it a fresh design and easy interface will hit the jackpot.
I could really do without the spam:
Mike: This is an email that notifies non-active users that have not visited their account for over a year that their data will be removed. Are you suggesting we should remove the data without notifying them? Plus, this is literally one of 2 emails we sent over a year. So I am not sure what it is that you are actually saying here.
As to the post itself: The reference to dating is irrelevant which leads me to think that not much thought was given to reviewing the product. But I guess this is where people have their own opinions.
Yael Elish, eSnips CEO & Co-founder
I have to add to Yael’s comment since I also feel that people haven’t spent any time on the site or with Social DNA if they’re making these kinds of comparisons.
I did an extensive blog post that explains what eSnips Social DNA is all about and eSnips overall that should help to clear up some of the confusion. http://www.downtheavenue.com/2.....world.html.
Disclosure: I’m a consultant to eSnips.
P.S. Ooops, appeared the last link was broken.
http://www.downtheavenue.com/2.....world.html
@9,
For me it doesn’t look like a spam. Of course it is an alert which is useful of you really care about your content. But my doubt is why should you delete the content for? Threatening users in this way will spare you from the cake. I guess hard disk space is pretty cheap.
another byztander.
What an awful review. Mike, how much time did you spend actually USING the product and new feature? Seriously, do tell.
Speaking of spam, TC used to have a few thoughtful, engaging articles a day. It’s now become RSS spam - too many shallow, poorly written reviews on stupid products than I care to keep up with.
UNSUBSCRIBE.
clearly the author has not used the site, as evidenced by the account activation email (call me columbo)…
as for the idea, makes sense considering how much music and related commerce is taking place on the site.
and yael is a cool shit as well, so seriously doubt they’d make decisions like this in a nilly willy way…
Yael - It seems to me that the idea of matching people via quiz responses does originate with online dating sites, which is why I drew the comparison. I didn’t mean to suggest that Social DNA is a dating application; it’s just very similar to a mechanism used to match people up romantically.
As for whether much thought was put into reviewing the product, I’d say a moderate amount but not too much - the concept and execution seems pretty straightforward to me. If I’m missing anything substantial here, please do tell.
I think that Integrating a platform that let’s people share so much information about who they are, what they like, what they think and what they believe in, within an already existing, large social community has an very interesting angle to it.
Web 2.0 is about connecting likeminded people, and Social DNA takes it one step further, from showing matches based on a handful of common tags, or common friends to showing you matches based on hundreds and thousands of common parameters.
If you look at Facebook apps like ‘iLike’ or ‘Compare’ you can see people get very engaged in it. eSnips Social DNA does it in a much broader way and a more integrated experience. Also while these apps compare you to friends, Social DNA compares you to a way broader audience. The implementation itself is much deeper. Check out the open question, comparison, statistics….
my response to the eSnipe people primarily but all other developers and entrepreneurs should take notes
if you have to explain to people about the purpose of your site, you have failed! complex sites alike should focus on making their sites dummy proof, people should know what to do, how to do it, and why they’re doing it without a somebody having to explain it to them.
if people don’t get an incentive to come back, you have failed!! initial engagement gets people through the door, but once they’re in they should proceed to the next “profound” level to keep them engaged and bring them back, getting matched with people you don’t know is not an incentive, majority of people are not even interested in that.
if you have to re-promote your site through commenting on the same article post to make a case for your self, you have failed!!! i lost total respect for you doing that, even worse was getting you’re employees involved in the process!
also, it is not a bad idea to listen to people who trying to help you, the commenting section is there for you to see the feedbacks from some of the professionals, leverage it but don’t offend it!
i do marketing and not development so i see things differently for all other reasons.
I ran into an interesting survey about online dating that is worth checking out. It’s called “Is online dating now accepted?”
http://blog.globaltestmarket.c.....our-lives/