Web 2.0 has reached a new and disgusting low. As well we see that venture capitalists are more than willing to help fund trips through manure piles since it seems that Unvarnished just received a fresh round of funding of half a million bucks.
Well just imagine waking up one day to find your name splattered all over the web because of reviews of you as a person have been left on an account in your name that you never opened and that you can’t remove. We’re not talking about how nice of a person you might be either. No, this site is meant for people to unload all the reasons why you suck and are nothing but a dirtbag.
Oh and to add insult onto injury – you can’t open an account for yourself to try and head off any possible manure being flung on you by people hiding behind the mask of anonymous. In other words you suddenly have a target pasted to your forehead and ass which anyone can take shots at – real or imaginary.
All this cowardly wonderfulness is of course couched in the normal Web 2.0 and Social Media warm and fuzzy ideology as told to Jennifer Valentino-DeVries by one of the site’s founders
Peter Kazanjy, one of the site’s co-founders, said the aim of the site is to improve on the way professional reputation works in the real world.
“In the offline world, you can make reputation claims about me and I would never know that,” he said. On Unvarnished, people are able to see what is being said about them and can respond or recruit other coworkers to provide reviews on their behalf.
Some-one please explain to me just how the fuck this kind of gutter sniping will in any way improve how professional reputation works?
Who the hell are we kidding here.Seriously. This is nothing short of providing all the tools needed to commit professional assassination. And the VC’s are obviously lapping it to the point that they persuaded the founders to take away the option to let people who have been attacked remove reviews of them.
Ryan Tate from Gawker puts it well when he writes
No, what makes Unvarnished more despicable than other anonymous forums, or other websites that coerce you into joining, is the highfalutin’ role the site is trying to fashion for itself, at the center of professional networking and careerbuilding. When LinkedIn tries to puff itself up with the old smoke and mirrors of being for “professionals” and “executives” and otherwise Important and Serious folks, at least it’s just in the service of trying to scam people out of a little cash for the service of hosting resumés on the Web (the incremental cost of which is infinitely tiny). When Unvarnished puffs itself up in the same way, it does so in order to actually hold people’s careers hostage. It might not pull off that trick, but that’s the goal.
On the other side of the Fence we have Owen Thomas from VentureBeat who thinks that this is perfect for Silicon Valley and much needed
Instead, Unvarnished aims to gather fair and honest reviews about people who wouldn’t normally hit the limelight — mid-level product managers, senior engineers, and the like. Recruiters and hiring managers struggle to learn forthright information about these types. It’s not worth the time to do the kind of exhaustive background check one might do for an executive hire. But LinkedIn’s fluffily friendly recommendations don’t give a full picture of the kind of foibles and personality quirks which might make for a costly failed hire.
The question Unvarnished is asking: Can Silicon Valley handle the truth? I think it can. The Valley runs on data. And yet we seem to think that the engineering culture of honesty and openness somehow doesn’t apply to people. Yes, there’s always a place for tact. But the best managers — and the best employees — are the ones who let you know exactly where things stand.
WTF?!? Are you kidding me?
Look anyone who thinks that this is going to turn out all nice and pat on the back goodness is loose a few screws and has obviously forgotten anything about how human nature works.
Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb might think that there is some evil genius behind the idea but personally I think that is giving too much credit to the founders. They have just figured out how to give people a platform where they can be as mean, nasty, hurtful and spew as many lies as they want and never face any repercussions because of it.
That’s not genius.
It’s just plain evil and disgusting.
The concept works well for entertainment but stinks for business because if you use it you’ll get hit with a discrimination lawsuit.
I also don’t like the integration with facebook. I’m going to create a fake facebook account just to log in because I don’t want my friends to know I use this site.
BTW – Anonymous social reviews have already been done better by DirtyPhoneBook which is hilarious in my opinion.
Okay, this is just stupid.
“On Unvarnished, people are able to see what is being said about them and can respond or recruit other coworkers to provide reviews on their behalf.”
First off, if you respond to slander you are defending yourself and therefore guilty! (Isn’t human nature just wonderful)
Secondly, if you and 10 of your friends something about me, and me and 10 of my friends say the opposite about me, which should be believed at all? “Recruit coworkers to provide positive reviews”???? Buying public opinion.. noting new there I suppose.
There is absolutely NOTHING positive that can come out of this whole deal. Even if we completely leave out ALL the bad things that WILL happen (suicide because of ugly slanderous libel for instance), we’ll still leave a bunch of nothing. Positive feedback is paid for and negative feedback is someone with a grudge. We’re humans and we’re the cruelest animal on the planet.
This is one seriously retarded concept.
Hello?!! Where have the adults gone? This country has children committing suicide over online bullying, and now adults are jumping on the bullying bandwagon.
This is ridiculous and disgusting. Someone please create an Adults Who Refuse To Use Unvarnished facebook page.