HN Explorer

Startup Offering a Virtual Girlfriend on Facebook (cloudgirlfriend.com)

27 points by dfuhriman ↗ HN
Step 1: Define your perfect girlfriend. Step 2: We bring her into existence. Step 3: Connect and interact with her publicly on your favorite social network Step 4: Enjoy a public long distance relationship with your perfect girl.

33 comments

[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 75.5 ms ] thread
santana
i'd take a virtual boyfriend as long as he can deliver
VladRussian
it seems there is really dry season in your geography to trigger you to make your first comment on HN :).
santana
do i get points for that? ;)
VladRussian
at least i gave my point for that reason :)
zacharycohn
I feel like if this is at all successful, it's just going to get shut down by Facebook for creating fake users.
JonnieCache
Almost certainly. It'll be hilarious while it lasts though. The name alone cracks me up. Unfortunately they've dropped the ball by not having a painfully trendy logo with a cartoon girlfriend sitting on a cloud or something.

They should open source it when it gets banned so the fun can continue.

EDIT: just realised - this is basically a more benign version of that "sockpuppet management" stuff we've been seeing recently. Is this the start of the rise of the bots within human society?

bioh42_2
Basshunter's Boten Anna came out in 2006 I think. But yes, the rise of bots on our networks is inevitable. And they do not have to fool everyone all of the time, only some for brief periods of time. On-line communication is already formulaic and does not require a long attention span.

Really, this is just Eliza with a slick new cloud API.

nullsub
right. this is a direct TOS violation, right?
ChuckMcM
Unless of course they don't violate the ToS and instead have a real person be your 'cloud' girlfriend.

If you mechanical turk out the role of the girl friend to a human using the same sort of technology that lets a chicken play tic-tac-toe [1] then presumably you can finesse the ToS.

Next we'll see a new startup for providing plausible deniability for ToS violations, basically you send someone a device with the instructions "When this light goes on push the button, if you keep your average response time under 5 minutes for the month we'll pay you $10."

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-12N3kVh3Q

benwerd
I'm pretty sure this takes outsourcing a step or two too far.

Personally, I'm hoping it's some kind of social experiment, and they're going to come out with some OKCupid-style expository blog posts in a few months.

(If anyone's seriously considering this, do ask yourself if it's really going to make you happy ...)

larrik
The idea that you would actually want this for the social interaction never occurred to me. My first reaction was that this was the next generation of

  1) "I have a girlfriend!"
  2) "Great! Can I meet her?"
  3) "Uh no, she lives far away"
  4) "Oh. Then how did you meet?"
  5) "Um, summer camp?"
  6) "Suuurrrre."
Edit: I still don't understand HN's line break formatting.

Edit 2: Thanks

RiderOfGiraffes
At the bottom of every page there's a link to the FAQ: http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

That has the question: "What kind of formatting can you use in comments?" followed by this link:

http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

That says:

  Blank lines separate paragraphs.

  Text after a blank line that is indented by
  two or more spaces is reproduced verbatim.
  (This is intended for code.)

  Text surrounded by asterisks is italicized,
  if the character after the first asterisk isn't
  whitespace.

  Urls become links, except in the text field
  of a submission.
Does that answer your question? You get a line break by leaving a blank line.
pohl
Virtual social proof. An ePivot. Pre-selection DHV as a service. I love it.
eof
This is clearly the value here.. not the interaction itself, but the social status of having some hot babe liking all your status updates.
rmason
I'm willing to bet that a lot of you are only upset because you didn't have the idea first ;<)
kalendae
if they can pull it off (terms of service violations and what not) this will be brilliant, it is just a viral bomb ready to go off the things that can happen. I see chat roulette like kind of infamy very quickly.
Cyranix
If your monthly fee / microtransaction payment is declined, be prepared for a nasty breakup.
eof
My perfect girlfriend can solve the P vs NP problem.
deffibaugh
Talk about solving a burning market need..
jbooth
I think this is the first time I've ever seen a story on HN and wished it was on Slashdot for the comments.
nhebb
Great, now when I see those insipid Microsoft ("To the cloud!") commercials, I'll envision some lonely guy with a bottle of lotion, logging into Facebook.
frb
It's just the next logical step!

First SaaS then PaaS and now RaaS: Relationship as a Service

Turing_Machine
Whatever happened to good old-fashioned sockpuppeting? :-)
indytim
To make it especially realistic, they could offer a physical address to which you could send gifts. As an add-cost feature.
indytim
Good plug for launchrock - this should get some visibility, surely.
jaymstr
Ya, I can't reveal numbers, but they're blowing up.