Idea to SendSocial
Posted: October 28th, 2009 | Author: ben | Filed under: Uncategorized | 24 Comments »SendSocial was one of those ideas that had in one way or another been sitting in my head for years; maybe it is my dyslexia but I always thought address were a very stupid way to identify a physical location. I only know 3 or 4 address off my head and every time I wanted to send flowers or somebody’s birthday present I would have to go through the laborious process of finding the address, which sometimes meant having interaction with the postcode finder on Royal Mails site; not an ideal solution by any means!
So then about nine months ago I wanted to send my sister a present for her birthday, so I Twittered her, then in a rash annoyance about such a ridiculous process I twittered the community about a concept to send gifts just using your twitter ID, the idea seemed to strike a cord with a few people so I decided to take it to the next stage.
The next thing I needed was feedback on the idea so I thought well the best way to do this would be for people to share in the value of the idea if they like it; so I created a 10% virtual pool of shares and gave them to anybody who re-tweeted the idea.
Throughout this process there were a number of people who took time to add real value to the idea, so I picked the ones with the most passion and the greatest skills and that became the kick ass team we have working on SendSocial today. You see I would like to say that I really helped turn my idea into reality but the truth is the highly skilled and dedicated team that have built SendSocial are the real driver behind the business; I just try and keep a steady hand on the tiller.
We now have what I believe is a great product, we have great partners and personally I would like to get rid of the traditional postal address forever!
So there you have it an idea brought to life by a social network, a team brought together by a social network and hopefully a tool that social network users will love!
Ben – if this one comes off then your PR people are going to have one heck of a story to tell about how the business got started. Good luck to you and the team.
Great story mate! I really hope this takes off. I am completely sick of my regular mailing address, it’s pointless and this seems like the perfect solution.
Interesting idea, So how will the bod in the van with 100+ packages know which one he has to delivered to a said person? Sure they’ll have a database to scan against…but if they get muddled up he/she will surely have to rescan them each time rather than use good old eye sight…Am I missing something here as it seems a top idea! Am just thinking if i had even 20 packages to get to 20 addresses with no obvious identification how will I know which one? Will they be put into the van in a certain order to the delivery route? Will they be tagged so the system says yes find XXX0001 package in the van? Love is blind?
Hi Simon, thanks for getting in touch. Remember, SendSocial is no longer an idea, it’s a reality – we are literally a couple of weeks away from launch. Hermes our logistics partner have put processes in place to prevent the issues you describe from happening, and our labels carry all of the information they need to make a successful delivery.
Thanks Antony. So the package will ultimately have the persons name and address on it? Not very anonymous from the delivery persons point of view. Just can’t get my head around the concept. Even direct marking will struggle to get the numbers as it relies on accepting the package. With the postal sector booming with new mail start-up and third parties such as Interparcel pooling all excess services, competition may be storng. Is the territory between virtual and physical a dangerous path to tread! I wait to be proved wrong. good luck
Hi Simon, the labels do not have the recipient’s address printed on them. They have a barcode and internal routing codes, nothing that reveals your address – not even the post code. In fact, I should put a screen shot of one in my next blog post to prove it! As with all startups of course there are alternatives and competitors, however we believe our service is an interesting concept, competitively priced and gives more people reasons to send more things. Thanks for your wishes of luck!
i am one of the many couriers who are to say the least annoyed at this idea. a parcel with no address what next. you say its all anonymous whats to stop 2 drug dealers peddling drugs to each other or 2 perves sending illicit pictures to each other. and ever thought of the legal side of this to do with cyber bullying now is this something you have thought about.
Of course there is no way can confirm what every single item being sent through SendSocial is, but I would question how this is any different to other postal methods that are available. If anything, I think that someone wanting to use the service improperly would be more likely to use Royal Mail, as we know the sender’s details and can work with myHermes and the police, if it is necessary, to bring people using the service illegally to justice.
Dear angry courier,
I understand you concern, however it is quite misplaced. The irony is that sendsocial actually has more information about the senders and recipients than MyHermes does when it sends out a delivery.
The only anonymous part of the transaction is that the sender never gets to see the recipients address and vice verser; HOWEVER both sendsocial and myhermes know exactly who the sender and recipient is; in fact as a drug dealer you would have to be very stupid to use sendsocial as we require more information about both sender and receiver than any other delivery service in the UK.
On the cyber bullying part again you would have to be rather stupid to use sendsocial to try and do this as the person receiving the items has to accept the delivery before it is collected, and before you accept you know who has sent the request to you.
I would seriously suggest you try our service out once and then you will see that a lot of the issues you have raised are actually irrelevant for our business model.
Thanks again for your input.
Ben
yes i understand what you are saying but the fact remains that if someone wishes to send a parcel with royal mail they must have the address when thay go into a post office or use a mail box. your service may be more secure than there service but the fact still remains that you can still send a parcel to a person without them knowing what is in it if a child opens it and there is illicet material in it then the harm is done before you or the police get involved. if you want to know the view from the courier side please read the following
http://www.parcelforum.co.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3097
i know we are probably only talking about a small percentage of parcels but just judge for yourself the reactions of the courier
you dont have to publish this nessage if you dont want
Hi Angry,
But that does not really make sense in our model because the Recipient always has to accept the parcel before it is shipped.
In fact again the irony is that our system protects the recipient far more than any other system. Lets take the example of drugs.
In a normal system I would know the address of my crack addicted client, I would get an envelope stick the drugs in there, stick a few stamps on it and stick it into a letterbox; the package drops on the floor of the house in a few days, the crack addicted client’s child thinks its candy, eats the whole lot and dies.
In our system, I would have to register, confirm my email address, put in the email address of my crack addicted client, they would then have to accept the package put in their address; then I would pay using a credit card. One of you hard working guys would then go pick up the crack take it half way across the country, ring the doorbell the crack addicted client comes to the door takes the package; we save the child.
The point is NO courier company knows what is being transfered between point A and B except when it is shipped internationally. The simple rule of thumb is that the more information you gain about the recipient and the sender the less likely something is going to be shipped illicitly, because if they are caught the paper trail is massive. In fact if you are worried about illicit things being sent you should ask MyHermes to promote sendsocial even more because the chances of illicit things being sent actually decreases. Remember the whole point of sendsocial is not that it is anonymous in nature it is that it protects both parties from disclosing personal information that then could be used for cyber bullying and illicit goods.
Ben
Judging by the responses by the Sendsocial entrepreneurs I don’t think they know that much about how the delivery process works as they have a very rosy view of it and assume everyone in the delivery chain, from the start process that an individual instigates on facebook etc, is telling the truth.
How do you know the names given are correct and not false?
How do you know a parcel won’t be slung over a fence for a child to find in the garden (crack coke or otherwise)?
How do you know the credit cards are not stolen?
How do you know a false address (empty property/someone on hols etc) isn’t being used as a safe pickup place/delivery place?
Couriers come across suspicious situations like this all the time.
Hi Fred,
We completely understand these issues and every thing you have pointed out is completely valid. The only point I am making is that these points are valid for ANY delivery service; why single out SendSocial when we are just a tool, we don’t even deliver the packages!
Ben
Hello Ben
Thank you for your fast reply!
Why single out your site?
Because your site enables people to send without knowing an address.
How many youngsters using facebook will think they are getting something nice when they accept a parcel – or how many people will say yes out of curiosity (something they wouldn’t do if they knew they had to give an individual an address in order to use a service like RM).
And how many people could find they end up with something not very nice arriving. If it’s porn, the damage is done once they open it and see it, no amount of complaining to you, hermes or the police can take that back.
Facebook is infamous for bullying as it is and unfortunately I see your anonymous service as another tool for the bully/person with dubious intentions.
Ben, let me say first that I liked the whole idea when you first came up with it and in fact I’m a shareholder of the company
Now, there’s one thing that I’m not getting at 100% about the service as it is now and your comment below reinforce that point in my mind.
The point is, if I know the person email and/or twitter account and if I’m a bit sane I would expect that person to accept the gift only if he/she knows me enough to trust me. At that point I could’ve asked for his/her address in first place… I mean, sendsocial would be a killer app if it allowed me to make a surprise to somebody when I don’t know their address, but this contradicts the service and in fact it’s not the way it works. So the main use I can see for the service (except the thrill of trying something new, but that’s not enough to have a real market to address) is for people who want to be a bit sassy and want to send stuff to somebody they don’t know very well (and viceversa). Possibly Valentines will be a great time for business, think about all the secret crushes being somehow revealed via SendSocial…
To broaden the point (and to link to your last comment) you said that “the whole point of sendsocial is [...] that it protects both parties from disclosing personal information that then could be used for cyber bullying and illicit goods.” That doesn’t make sense to me honestly. Or better, this is not bound to happen anyway, sendsocial or not sendsocial! The person who is protected here is the recipient, which wouldn’t probably disclose their address to a random person emailing them, tweet them, calling them, following them home… well, in that case the job is done
If you see my point, it’s not sendsocial that protects people in the situation you mention, it’s their sanity to save them. And a lot less people are as sane as we would expect them to be, so I’m afraid you will have to face weirdos yelling at you – if not suing you/sendsocial – because they accepted something and then things went wrong. Not that I’m wishing that to you of course (and after all I’m a shareholder too) but I think the value proposition of sendsocial needs to be revisited a bit because at the moment in doesn’t do what it says on the tin I’m afraid…
Cheers
F.
PS: I have the awful feeling that this doesn’t quite sound like the constructive feedback I wanted to give… and if I’m right, believe me that I’m trying to analyse things to make them better, not to be one of the many nay-sayers of this world.
Dear Fred,
Why take the trouble of putting pornography in the post when I could send it to them electronically using there facebook or twitter or email address anonymously. You would literally have to be the most stupid person in the world to use SendSocial for the way you describe above; a bit like saying people should not be sold cars just in case they abduct children.
The real world is infamous for bullying, the only difference with Facebook is that people get caught because everything is recorded.
Ben
Porn was just an example.
It could be anything you’re putting in the post.
Once you’ve put the item in the post and it’s not at your address, it no longer exists.
The same can’t be said for the hard drive of a computer.
In an ideal world, your system would be great.
We live in a far from ideal world, sadly.
Dear Fabio,
Great to hear from you; firstly let me say the name comes from the fact you can send physical items via a social network; rather than its a social way to send things(even though it does have an aspect of this as well).
Secondly quite soon you will be able to send gifts from retailers without knowing the recipients address, this will make it possible to send flowers on valentines day without disclosing who you are(as long as they accept).
Thirdly and most importantly on a liability legal level we have more permission from the recipient than any other courier company in the world; it would impossible to prove a liability if somebody sent you something you did not want because you have given tasset permission for them to send it to you regardless of whether they have your address or not; the same law applies when you receive a libelous email, you cannot sue your ISP for the contents of that email..
I agree some users may act stupidly; but the world would not work and nor would the internet if risk was taken out to a nth degree.
Just imagine if facebook had sat around and said well we should not launch this because it could be used for cyber bullying.
The concept revolves more around a long term vision that physical addresses are become less important in a virtual world; I don’t know any of my closest friends and family’s address because they move about so much; if I want to send my sister something send social is far far more convenient than trying to do the process myself.
Sendsocial is just at the beginning of that curve it maybe a few years before it comes mainstream, but addresses as a concept are outdated, a physical address is wherever I am at that moment and people these days move around more than ever.
Ben
Fred,
Happy to agree to disagree, I understand the issues you are trying to raise; and with anything there is always a risk; I just really don’t see sendsocial increasing that risk significantly.
You say when the parcel is in the post it no longer exists; but that is just not true, the big barcode on it with a unique number on it is the biggest fingerprint to the recipient and sender the police would ever have. Its important to understand that once the parcel enters our system it does not get ‘lost’ in the system like in Royal Mail.
Ben
Ben, thanks for the answer.
When you say “if I want to send my sister something send social is far far more convenient than trying to do the process myself.” I argue that this may be a weak argument and could apply only to a niche, but your closing line got me and convinced me far more: “addresses as a concept are outdated, a physical address is wherever I am at that moment and people these days move around more than ever.” Amen
Keep up the good work, you and the team.
well if this service is so good and by the words of its founder it would be. where are all the parcels you said we would get in my depot there is 20 couriers a day collect not one has had a collect or delivery has it failed already
Hi Courier,
Thanks for your message. We launched a couple of Sundays ago and demand has already been strong, but I’m not surprised that your depot may not have had any SendSocial parcels through yet.
The thing about a service like ours is that, when someone comes to SendSocial for the first time, they might not have an item they want to send then and there – it would be unreasonable to expect that they would. We’re confident, though, that people will come back to us when they do have something they want to send.
If you take a look on Twitter, a lot of people are talking about us, and we’re very confident that as time goes on you will begin to see some SendSocial parcels at your depot.
do you have a link for this
thanks
If you search for ‘SendSocial’ on Twitter, it’ll pull everything up. The link is http://twitter.com/#search?q=sendsocial