Peeple: You Can't Keep A Bad Idea Down

Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" is a great horror story.  Underneath that lies a cautionary tale of someone who had an idea that never should have taken flight, and refused to listen to an inner voice that said otherwise.  Julia Cordray and Nicole McCullough, the founders of Peeple, apparently think Doctor Frankenstein's approach to the creation of their own monster is actually worth pursuing. 

“She may have gone underground, but she’s not quitting. The 34-year-old Canada-based recruitment specialist is back with a new, toned down tune. She and her 37-year-old Southern California stay-at-home mom co-founder and best friend have eaten their humble pie, admitting that earlier iterations of Peeple’s policies were “ill conceived.” After taking a lifetime’s worth of burns over the Internet’s most hated app, they ditched the five-star rating system and opted for an opt-out. Peeple isn’t evil, they say, and you’d better be ready because it’s coming soon whether you want it or not.”

The initial Washington Post article on "Peeple," an app that will allow you to rate people on anything and everything, was enough to turn Cordray and McCullough into the most hated people on the internet within hours of its publication.  People far more experienced than I in pointing out how terrible ideas can get did so on notification of the Peeple monster. 

“Given an opportunity, some folks will use Peeple in good faith and some will use it to abuse, harass, and antagonize others. That is the natural and probable consequence of its existence...Bomb always eventually beats bunker; the urge to screw with other people always eventually beats technological innovation. Cell phone confirmation and a review structure stand no chance against a nation chock-full of mood-disordered twitchers will too much free time on their hands.”

Eventually Cordray and McCullough went underground, turning off their websites and social media accounts.  Cordray started damage control after making "Yelp for People" the "quickest way" to wrap "anybody's head around the concept."  She did this through posting LinkedIn updates about what happened, what she was doing, and why she was taking these steps as she built the app.  

The first step was to shift public perception.  It wasn't a rating app.  It was a "positivity app." 

“Peeple will not be a tool to tell other humans how horrible they are. Actually, it’s the exact opposite.

Peeple is a POSITIVE ONLY APP. We want to bring positivity and kindness to the world.”

The next step was to fine tune this "positivity app" into what Cordray and McCullough always wanted in the first place, just with a few "tweaks." This "fine tuning" happened in less than a month after the world told her Peeple was ripe for abuse. 

“The first change is that it’s 100 percent opt-in. You have to actually sign up to our platform to be on it and no one can actually add you to the platform. You also have full control over what goes live on your profile. So, if you want to post up positive recommendations only, or you want to do a mix of constructive criticism, or you want to put up some very honest feedback recommendations, which we highly recommend, you can do that. That’s the biggest change — you’re in control over what goes live.

You can now also deactivate your profile. Deactivating will remove any activity that you’ve ever done, as well as any activity that’s ever been written about you. If you decide to reactivate, all of that will go live again, so it’s not like you ever lose the data or the information about you. It just won’t be publicly visible while you’re deactivated.

There’s also something in place of the five star system we had. It’s your recommendation score. It’s a number made up of every recommendation that you receive, regardless of you posting it live on your profile or not. The score is accurate against what people are going to recommend you for. It’s made up five separate elements.

We also have a “Nearby” tab, which allows you to find the highest scored people within a 10-mile radius of your location. So, you could be at a networking event and look people up on the app and you can see who the best of the best are rated professionally. Or, say you’re dating and you’re at a bar, you can look up the best on the dating side. ”

And how does one "opt in?" Easy peasy lemon squeezy.  All you have to do is double authenticate with a Facebook account and a PIN code texted to your cell phone.  

Which still lends the platform to abuse, since there's nothing verifying whether or not the Facebook profile is the person's actual account or a fake. I could still get on Peeple, create an account for someone else, have the app verify through said fake account, and get the cell phone PIN texted to me.  Even their "six month activity" time isn't a guarantee against someone with a grudge.  

Peeple is in beta testing right now, which is rather interesting because adamant claim of Cordray against it being used for bullying is "you have to see the app to know it's not going to be used badly" 

“I found it ironic that people could bully me and claim I was building a bullying app and I hadn’t done a thing. They did to me what they were scared that my proposed app would do to them, all without ever having seen it.”

The Entrepreneur article linked has a planned release date of December 10, 2015 to the App Store for iOS.  Visiting Peeple's website still has it in beta testing.  

Cordray's takeaway from her Peeple experience sounds terrifying. 

“Sometimes you need to lead down a path that is so innovative and so new that you will cause some fear. That doesn’t make everybody else wrong and you right, it just makes you more convicted in what you are trying to do and prove. Don’t waver on your convictions about what you want as long as it doesn’t harm others. Our app was never going to have the ability to harm anybody.”

Sub out "app" for "monster" in that last sentence and Cordray sounds quite a bit like Dr. Frankenstein.