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Comment by ratfacemcgee | Hacker News Reader

Yelp, Zenefits and Paypal. What is going on?

Yelp: Very hard to monetize. Because they chose a model where the businesses who pay them are also the businesses being reviewed, they've given themselves a conflict of interest. They've chosen to sell their integrity, which makes their star ratings less reliable/valuable, which makes users trust them less, which makes businesses want to advertise less. It's a vicious cycle.

Zenefits: Broke the law. Also an insanely ambitious, brilliant, risky business model.

PayPal: Hated by most people/customers. Can't wait until they go out of business completely.

B-b-but according the paypal's shiney new superbowl ad, paypal is 'new money'.

> Because they chose a model where the businesses who pay them are also the businesses being reviewed

Crazy when you think about it.

> PayPal: Hated by most people/customers.

I didn't understand this until recently when I tried to "instant" transfer a few hundred bucks to a friend and was caught up in a 3 day "review" process where I was interrogated about the "reason" for the transfer. Never again!

>> Because they chose a model where the businesses who pay them are also the businesses being reviewed

> Crazy when you think about it.

Who do those guys think they are, Moody's!!!?

@Gibbon1 this is a pretty insightful comment. Luckily for Moody's, they made themselves part of an intricate industrial structure where their ratings drive large parts of the industry (e.g., investment guidelines, lending, etc.)

The payment review stuff happens with regular banks as well. It's due to vague money laundering legislation where banks have to act as police but have no guidelines or rules.

A lot of the other things people hate PayPal for is due to their reliance on the credit card companies and their own regulations.

I don't say this to excuse PayPal, but to explain why ant competitor thst shows up will have the same problem. Just look at the Bitcoin exchanges - they should have the most leeway yet people aren't happy with them either due to stringent KYC rules.

http://avc.com/2016/01/ch-ch-ch-ch-changes/

Could it perhaps be related to the recent LinkedIn plunge?

http://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-earnings-q4-2016-2

Executive departures are normally planned months in advance, not 3 days.

Yes and Feb is ripe for C level exec changes... they get through the holidays, use January to firm up their new plans and put their replacements into order and then boom- Feb let it hit the press.

Maybe they're going to launch a startup together.

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