PickupPal Blog

Eric has blogged about this issue: trust/stranger/feeling safe…In my mind, there is no way to be 100% sure that someone you are interacting with, who you have not known for a certain amount of time, is a “safe” person (for lack of a better word). At work, at the grocery store, at the park, at Uni, driving in the other car on the highway, sitting next to you on the bus, at the movies or at the symphony for that matter, we are surrounded by people we do not know. We all decide individually what we feel comfortable doing and who we feel comfortable interacting with, sometimes even talking to. We make choices everyday based on a whole series of individually-set criteria to go in one direction or another, or to do one thing and not another.

Ridesharing is not for everyone. But I think it works for a lot of people whose criteria for making the choice to share a ride with someone are met within the PickupPal community model. There are a series of tools that PickupPal provides to meet a number of these criteria (not all, but some)…
Tools such as:

• member profiles with photo
• gender preference matching
• in-system messaging
• post-ride feedback/evaluation
• five-star rating
• drive/ride statistics tracking
• community support with like-minded people
• people going to the same event/concert/festival

So with these tools to satisfy some criteria, and other personal decision-making criteria, that members may have, being met by such things as telephone conversations and /or pre-drive meetings, a lot of people (Pickuppal members) are perfectly comfortable to accept or offer rides with others members going the same way.

It is a challenge to support people to trust others and feel safe with others. And we at PickupPal, would never presume (or even try) to convince a person to trust another solely by virtue of the online community that we have created. What PickupPal does is offer a box of useful tools for its members that may (or may not) help inform their decision regarding sharing a ride/drive, it does not decide for them.

We are challenged as a society and at PickupPal to understand the trust relationship. To understand what makes another person a “stranger” (and strange/not trustworthy) and what needs to happen for someone to go from such a “stranger” to a person who you just may not know, but is worthy of your trust. What is our default position as a society? These are very interesting questions and to understand them and address them is, as I said, certainly challenging but also inspiring… At least to me.

-Suesan

Facebook plan to announce a new extension to their API called Facebook Connect. With it users can use their Facebook data on other sites, your Facebook profile and friends are no longer restricted to facebook.com. This is great news for PickupPal, because it will allow Facebook users to use PickupPal with their existing, trusted network of friends. Making for a safer, more familiar experience for new users.

It appears from the Techcrunch article that Facebook are doing this in response to a similar MySpace feature: MySpace Data Availability, but in general this is a very smart move for any social network site; it is an extension of federated identity and trust models. Leveraging a users existing reputation within a known social network and extending that reputation into new networks.

Imagine signing-up as a new PickupPal user and sharing rides with people you already know!

- Jonathan