Decentifying the social networking space

Piyush Grover

11 years ago

Isn’t it annoying to come across friend requests from fake profiles, trolls/spammers hijacking discussions and being exposed to obscenity of all kinds on social media websites?

Many of us have been put off by social networks due to the rising number of these elements. But, it is these negative entities that inspired us to build a platform that enables positive, healthy and enlightening interactions for its members.

So, in a nutshell, The Decent Planet is a social network for making new friends within an environment that is free from obscenity, fake profiles, trolls and spammers. This also makes it conducive for intellectually stimulating discussions.

Process

We believe there are 2 important considerations in the case of fake profiles/obscenity-lovers.

1. I want to ‘make a fake profile’/’post obscene content.’

2. It’s easy to ‘make a fake profile’/’post obscene content.’

We’re addressing both crucial points simultaneously.

Someone who wishes to be a part of The Decent Planet needs to fill the sign-up form which has some basic questions and some not-so-basic questions.

1st step: While studying their form, we try to gauge the thought process and the applicant’s interest level about this concept.

2nd step: We check their online presence to see if there’s any tendency or history of indecency.

There’s always a pattern which makes it easier to recognize the potential trouble-makers.

Having said that, we’re trying to make the sign-up process extremely authentic but at the same time hassle-free for the users.

So, we’re working on an algorithm to automate the 2nd step of checking their online presence, we’ve named it ‘Decency Quotient’. It will also serve as an automated control mechanism and as an alternative for manual selection that’ll help us in scaling up.

Differentiator

Let me start by writing, The Decent Planet is not competing with the likes (no pun intended) of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+. Because none of them cater to the social networking space where people can make new friends.

Some of the websites in this space are: Badoo, Fropper, Stepout.

What differentiates us is the fact that we rely predominantly on a pro-active approach of not letting potential trouble-makers to pass through the entry barrier. None of our competitors use this approach, giving a free-run to trolls, spammers, obscenity lovers and fake profiles.

Despite culture being a non-quantifiable term, we consider it to be paramount. Hence, we’re trying to build a culture of decency, initially by applying a manual filtration process, which will eventually run in parallel to core users acting as recruiters, and finally ‘Decency Quotient’ merging with the existing setup.

To sum it up, Differentiator: Environment!

Future Plans

1. We intend to integrate ‘Gravity‘ which will be a clean, non-intrusive, curated dating application which will take into account Decency Quotient while addressing the problem of approaching the potential ‘SO’ (significant other).

2. Also planning to bring in an online debate platform, 3rd party apps & social gaming, astronomy themed design, ‘The Best Of The Internet’ and mobile app.

Thanks for reading this not so succinct post. 🙂

We’d really appreciate if you guys could take out some time and give us your invaluable feedback.

It will mean a lot to us and will most certainly help us improve the website.

P.S. Thank you Alok for your feedback the other day and introducing us to this wonderful community.

Regards,

Piyush Grover,

Founder, The Decent Planet