I tried out Seven Cups of Tea after reading this article, and I have a few points of feedback.
From what I make of it, it's apparent that the business model is that of "professional listeners" i.e. a few listeners charge for their service and essentially become an online version of therapists without being therapists. (although a few do appear to be trained as such and they charge their usual rates, most of the people on the roster don't appear to be professional psychologists)
This all fine and good, but the problem within the model though is that there's a tension between the positive side vs. the revenue side: we volunteer and help people who need a listener, but we try to nudge people towards paying for these sessions. This manifests itself through these constant popup windows while the listener is engaged in a heavy emotional conversation. Imagine you're pouring your heart out to someone and things are at an emotional juncture, and a sickly cheerful popup comes up on the screen cajoling you to sign up or rate the listener. It feels horridly out of context and it takes away the experience of the person within that moment. And this has happened to me 4 times so far in around 25 minutes.
Of course, the thing is that 7 Cups of Tea needs to convert its users and it needs to make that happen relentlessly, but the key over here is subtlety and I feel that this design iteration, sadly, misses that. However - from an outside perspective - it doesn't have to be this way. You see, anyone who visits this website and connects emotionally with a listener experiences the purest form of engagement - emotional engagement and a genuine empathic bond with someone. If the person or the bond is strong, then there is no reason why they won't sign up, after all the product has touched the very core of their being. Of course they will sign up, if there isn't any friction! They're hooked and they want to maintain that bond. They want to connect with this person again and they want to feel that sense of connectedness again and again. They want to feel okay again and again. So really the best thing 7 Cups of Tea could possibly do is get out of the way and let people connect with one another and let things flow from there.
In other words, this can be so much more. It has the ingredients of being so much more. It just needs the right touch. A light touch.
Thanks for trying out the service and giving us your careful feedback. I agree that we have lots to learn here. Some of this still feels clumsy. We are constantly iterating on things and hope to get the right balance sooner rather than later. I also agree that it can be so much more. It sounds like you have some real insights here. If you are open, then please shoot me an email ([email protected]) so I can better understand your thinking.
The success of this venture leaves me asking some questions.
Have we become so isolated in our tech-centered world that we no longer have friends/family/neighbors that we can talk to?
Does everything have to be done on the internet, where we can happily pull the plug if we just don't feel like continuing?
I'm speaking as an American, and don't pretend to know much about other cultures, so keep that context in mind. But it seems to me that over the past 20 years especially there has been a drastic increase in the isolation most Americans have from the outside world. Many of us could not even tell you the names of our next-door neighbors -- many not even the last names of the families.
Now, I'm a technical guy, and have been pretty much my whole life. Like most people who read Hacker News (I would presume) I make my living working with computers, and spend a great deal of my free time doing things with computers also. I was the first in my family to even know about the internet, and I'm the first one they call when they need help with anything computer-related.
I'm not saying that computers are bad. I'm also not saying that "7 Cups of Tea" is necessarily bad. I just think that a lot of us who spend so much of our time using these remarkable tools (computers and the internet) should take care to make sure we don't overuse them. Many things in life should be done in person. The internet provides a filter to many experiences which can be very useful, but I think in many cases it can also be a barrier to real interaction.
I'd be happy to hear what others think about the subject.
This is a good point. In short, the answer to your question is yes. Many people in America, and other countries, do not have friends/family/neighbors that they feel like they can have an honest and open conversation with in order to feel heard and understood. This trend has been happening for quite a while and it seems to be accelerating rather than reversing. The question then becomes what is the best solution for this problem? We think 7 Cups of Tea provides a very good solution to this problem. Yes, it uses the medium of the Internet, but it also provides people with a sense of real intimacy and support that can be hard to come by in their immediate surroundings.
You still remember the world pre-internet. When you can go outside, meet people, and when you connect you block the use of a phone line.
That's not how we live anymore. Now you're connected from the day you are born.
And kids, just watch kids interact. They're using the internet to make the kind of connections you and I just don't understand.
They're seeking levels of comfort and intimacy and it can be given to them from around the world.
If you're transgendered and the struggles or problems you face can't be related to your neighbor. If you're dealing with issues that your family doesn't understand or don't want to tolerate, where do you turn?
Another person half way around the world to someone who aches for connection is more real than the crowd of people he's in.
So when people latch on to this idea that technology isolates us, I say you don't think big enough.
You're physically in a body but your mind's free with the internet. And that's just amazing.
Fascinating question. I think unfortunately this is the way of things, don't you? People are afraid to be vulnerable offline; they always have. The anonymity of online connection makes people's walls come down and allows them to be vulnerable without fear of judgment. I actually think that is incredibly powerful and something humans have never had access to before.
Also, professional psychiatric help (which often simply involves this active listening) is incredibly expensive. Everyone deserves access to that help.
But, YES, I think we do need to make a concerted effort to connect with family, friends, and neighbors in person. The internet can facilitate these things and facilitate connections with people we previously never had access to. Any product that facilitates human interaction offline, to me, is a gift.
I unofficially studied ideas pretty similar to this in college. For a brief stint (~2/3 years), I was very interested in the intersection of communication, technology, activism, and public policy.
I've heard this argument referred to as the "Bowling Alone Hypothesis" [1]. Basically the idea that first radio, then television, and now the internet, etc. are socially isolating us from one another and we're stuck "Amusing Ourselves to Death" [2]. There is also likely an anthropological / evolutionary biology argument to be made about the development of small group communication.
Some simply dismiss these arguments as ludditism, but I think a much more nuanced response casts the internet as a great medium for communication [3], social engagement [4], and activism [5].
I've never used 7cupsoftea, but have used similar service such as CompassionPit, Omegle and another site I'm forgetting the name of.
Most people I've talked to are quite young like high schoolers to peeps in their late 20's with quarter-life crisis. People mostly have girl/boy/parents problems or general existential crisis revolving around career/romance/existential meaning.
I think the appeal of the site is to relate to strangers and letting your guard down. I think there's a lot of appeal of listening to someone as it makes you relate to your own problems and step outside of yourself to realize that it's not a "me" world; and that everyone is kinda of grotesque like in that short story collection, "Winesburg, Ohio".
I used to feel that way with HN and reddit /r/all, but both sites have grown so big and evolved into more commercialized niche for startup's and meme's; that they feel like high school with people putting on their in-group faces lol. I think that's the appeal of subreddits for people to go into smaller communities. Same thing with one-on-one online anonymous chats. It's the not same as talking with friends, friends may be unavailable because they're busy or with someone else or you don't want to share some details with them. It helps frame your problem from your original context in your social and family clique to try to explain it to a stranger.
I never understood the fascination with neighbors. What's so special about the group of people who happened to choose the same building to live in? I can understand that historically it made sense, but nowadays it just feels outdated. Or maybe that's just my bias, since I dislike most of mine for various reasons.
We certainly seem to live in a more secluded society, and it runs far deeper than the Internet. From what I've gleaned, this isolation has been increasing for decades. (Immediately I was reminded of a book on my list to read called Bowling Alone[1].)
But I had associated the Internet with better connectedness as a result. I wasn't raised in an active neighborhood community, it was just the place I lived. And so I live today; I don't really know who my direct neighbors are, because my social life is smeared out so much farther. While I am cordial and pleasant, there's not a lot of social depth left of me to share. Which likely comes across as aloof.
I'm not a user, so take my comments with a grain of salt. I think of this as something like an "intro to connection," a way for lonely people to bootstrap from zero friends to one or more. I'm very comfortable talking about personal stuff with pretty much anyone, but I definitely was not like that in my teens and twenties. It took me lots of experience and not a little therapy to get to the point where I'm comfortable. Perhaps this can be a shortcut for others.
The internet is a social space. 7 Cups provides communication. Both of those counter your assertion of isolation and it's a value judgement on your part that these forms of interaction are inferior to the ones you promote. The internet doesn't provide a filter to in-person experiences, it's an entirely different set of experiences and forms of interaction that resemble aspects of in-person ones, but are not the same nor are they simulations.
Getting people to volunteer can be one of the most difficult challenges a community builder can face
The word "volunteer" appears in the first two paragraphs but not elsewhere, but I don't think it's the right word: most people in Internet communities don't think of themselves as "volunteers" per se.
Hey there, I'm the author. I agree with you. These terms need to be clarified. We decided to use volunteers in the intro to introduce the idea of what 7 Cups is doing. While the members do technically "volunteer" their time, you wouldn't usually use that terminology. Technically, they're just giving their time to the community.
Elated to see Glenn & team grow this amazing and much needed community to 17,000+. I definitely see this filling an important gap in our society for years to come.
Author here. I agree-- I felt weird about the picture myself and debated for a long time. I'm going to restore the original picture I had in there, as I don't want this one to distract from Glen's story.
From what I make of it, it's apparent that the business model is that of "professional listeners" i.e. a few listeners charge for their service and essentially become an online version of therapists without being therapists. (although a few do appear to be trained as such and they charge their usual rates, most of the people on the roster don't appear to be professional psychologists)
This all fine and good, but the problem within the model though is that there's a tension between the positive side vs. the revenue side: we volunteer and help people who need a listener, but we try to nudge people towards paying for these sessions. This manifests itself through these constant popup windows while the listener is engaged in a heavy emotional conversation. Imagine you're pouring your heart out to someone and things are at an emotional juncture, and a sickly cheerful popup comes up on the screen cajoling you to sign up or rate the listener. It feels horridly out of context and it takes away the experience of the person within that moment. And this has happened to me 4 times so far in around 25 minutes.
Of course, the thing is that 7 Cups of Tea needs to convert its users and it needs to make that happen relentlessly, but the key over here is subtlety and I feel that this design iteration, sadly, misses that. However - from an outside perspective - it doesn't have to be this way. You see, anyone who visits this website and connects emotionally with a listener experiences the purest form of engagement - emotional engagement and a genuine empathic bond with someone. If the person or the bond is strong, then there is no reason why they won't sign up, after all the product has touched the very core of their being. Of course they will sign up, if there isn't any friction! They're hooked and they want to maintain that bond. They want to connect with this person again and they want to feel that sense of connectedness again and again. They want to feel okay again and again. So really the best thing 7 Cups of Tea could possibly do is get out of the way and let people connect with one another and let things flow from there.
In other words, this can be so much more. It has the ingredients of being so much more. It just needs the right touch. A light touch.