Testing the Opportunity Hypothesis: Part 2

Interviews:

Normally, I'd say the general population of people that fall inside my opportunity boundary are college students and those who are currently looking for a job. The majority of teenagers-twenty "somethings" could fall under this category. At first, I thought that people outside this age boundary would still find a usage in my ICleanup service because there are still many risks of having inappropriate things online when you are holding any professional position. For these interviews, I tried to mainly conduct outside that age range to learn as much as I could about the different groups that would potentially be interested in my service.

1. My first interview was with my dad, who is already well into his established career. I began by asking about his current social media usage and if there were any things on the internet that he was concerned about. His answer was what I imagined: no. He would have no interest in a service that would clean up his social media pages because they are completely clean and harmless already. So, i transitioned to asking about if he would be interested in the Google search monitoring service that allows him to be notified whenever something new shows up on Google of his name. He said that he is already subscribed to a similar alert system that tells him whenever there is a new post that includes his name. I explained to him that the difference was that my service would then take that information and if the post was inappropriate or reputation damaging, we would push it all the way to the back of the Google search so it would not be seen by a typical Google search. He said that he personally would not be interested, but that there are people that he works with that have had things published about them that are reputation damaging and do not paint them in a very good light. He said that these people would, in fact, be interested in a service that solves this problem. 

2. My next interview was with my sister, who is a junior in high school. This service seemed to be super beneficial to her, considering applying to college is one of the most worrisome times when it comes to social media. My sister explained to me that many of her friends would not be interested in the service because they have resorted to a different way of hiding themselves on the internet, such as changing their name on Facebook to something obscure and silly. For example, a friend named Sarah changed her name to "TriSarah Tops." This allows your friends on the Internet to still identify you but keeps the colleges from finding you and your inappropriate posts. This cracked me up and it made some sense. It is a short-term solution, which is what I explained to her. She then told me that though she does not need the service YET, it would be something that she and her friends would consider in the future because you can only change your name on Facebook so many times and you can't really be making your name TriSarah Tops when you are searching for a job...

3. Next, I interviewed a student that goes to another school. I figured since she was my age and also in college, she would fall right under my boundary for this opportunity. I asked about her social media presence and what she generally likes to post. She said that her number one posts are generally food and photos of her and her friends. She uses Facebook solely to keep up with old friends and relatives and she uses Twitter to get her news and other entertainment. When I heard the comment about posts with friends, I immediately thought that this was my key to sell this to her. Oftentimes, students post photos with alcoholic beverages. Even if you are of age, this is still a major turn off to many people in hiring positions. She then explained to me that her sorority has a very strict "social media policy." This means no photos at parties (drink in hand or not), no posts with curse words and nothing posted or re-posted with inappropriate content in any way. She explained that her sorority did this because of their reputation and the reputation of the girls. I think that that is awesome! But not for my venture ;)

4. This interview was conducted with a family friend who is a stay at home mother of four. I began asking the typical questions about her social media and Internet presence and she said that she posted lots of photos of her children. This sparked an interesting idea. I thought: I hated it when my mom would show my friends awkward photos of myself as a child. Maybe some things I can clear off of social media for people are not just inappropriate photos for work, but embarrassing photos as well! I continued to ask if she asks her children for their permission before posting photos of them and she quickly answered, "no, never." She said that usually her kids get somewhat annoyed, as long as they are not "tagged" in the photos and that they don't show up on their personal pages... This interview was super helpful for me. I could open up the service to also remove and clear out embarrassing photos that your family/friends have posted of you as well!

5. Lastly, I interviewed a recent UF grad. She also would normally be considered a prime target customer for my service because she is currently in the thick of job searching. She is an avid social media user and oftentimes re-posts many controversial articles that normally annoy people on the news feed sometimes, because it was just her being herself. Nothing was actually inappropriate (i.e. no drinking, no partying, no curses, etc.) and she was just posting a lot of opinionated things. She explained that she wanted to work for a place that accepted her opinions and her personality. I think that is a great point. 

Inside the Boundary	Outside the Boundary
College students People looking to get hired People with a job already who want to know what is being posted about them and when People who want a perfect online image	Those with perfect online images already People who don’t mind what is posted about them online People who don’t have careers/any reason to keep a perfect profile Children Elderly people
Need to remove inappropriate posts and photos of themselves on the internet Need to maintain a good internet image Need to make sure that when their names are searched on Google, only positive things show up first	The need is not to remove inappropriate things because there is either nothing inappropriate to be removed to begin with, there is nobody who would care if they saw inappropriate posts, or they do not mind that people see inappropriate posts. Or they simply do not use social media
Frivolous posting earlier on Posts by others that they personally cannot remove but we can push out of sight Things that they did not realize were inappropriate at the time	They don’t need anything removed because there are only good things They don’t need anything removed because they don’t use social media They don’t need anything tracked because there is no one searching for them on the internet They don’t mind that there are inappropriate things

*EDIT: For some reason the recording app that I used on my phone is not allowing me to upload to Soundcloud. I came back and made my interview descriptions much longer to make up for the lack of audio. Hopefully, this is ok.*