Participant
how to (and why) limit who can join
In oSplit, participants are typically connected to the organizer through personal networks, such as friends, friends of friends, or nearby people. This design promotes trust and eliminates the need for extensive background checks or restrictions on purchasing sources.Familiar participants in group buys offer added benefits, sometimes it is better to get into car-sharing agreements with trusted individuals who are likely to be more considerate, responsible, and care for the shared resource's usage. Similarly, having only nearby participants offers additional advantages, such as sharing local resources like gardens and avoiding the need to transport heavy shared items like lawn mowers. You can also create exclusive groups to restrict reservations to specific participants.
Additionally, you have control over who can join (friends, friends of friends, nearby people) and the flexibility to set automatic or manual approval for reservations.
The oSplit allows organizers to sell items exclusively to their own friends, friends of friends, or nearby people. This limitation is in place because without extensive background checks, it would be irresponsible to allow anyone to sell to everyone, as it could lead to potential scams or counterfeit items being sold.
Consider this: When you launch a crowdfunding campaign on a public platform, understandably, you may be subject to intense scrutiny from the platform administrators, investors, and the public. This can lead to delays, additional expenses, and potentially damaging negative publicity. Even with a rating system in place, sellers could initially sell good items to build up their rating and then start selling defective or counterfeit items in large quantities before receiving bad ratings, resulting in them making a significant profit. To prevent such issues, some platforms hold the funds from sales for a month or more, but this can create cash flow problems for legitimate sellers.
Limiting sales to the seller's friends or friends of friends helps reduce the risk of getting scammed, as sellers are less likely to scam someone they know or someone who knows their whereabouts. In a marketplace where anyone can sell to everyone, established sellers with a proven history of successful sales often have a competitive advantage over newcomers due to the trust they have built with their buyers over time. This can make it challenging for new organizers to initiate a group buy. However, oSplit takes a different approach. By allowing new organizers to sell exclusively to their friends and friends of friends, they do not have to compete directly with top sellers.
Consider this: When you launch a crowdfunding campaign on a public platform, understandably, you may be subject to intense scrutiny from the platform administrators, investors, and the public. This can lead to delays, additional expenses, and potentially damaging negative publicity. Even with a rating system in place, sellers could initially sell good items to build up their rating and then start selling defective or counterfeit items in large quantities before receiving bad ratings, resulting in them making a significant profit. To prevent such issues, some platforms hold the funds from sales for a month or more, but this can create cash flow problems for legitimate sellers.
Limiting sales to the seller's friends or friends of friends helps reduce the risk of getting scammed, as sellers are less likely to scam someone they know or someone who knows their whereabouts. In a marketplace where anyone can sell to everyone, established sellers with a proven history of successful sales often have a competitive advantage over newcomers due to the trust they have built with their buyers over time. This can make it challenging for new organizers to initiate a group buy. However, oSplit takes a different approach. By allowing new organizers to sell exclusively to their friends and friends of friends, they do not have to compete directly with top sellers.
While it's true that buying in larger quantities usually results in lower prices, not all items may be offered by big group buy providers, especially local items. This is where private group buys organized among friends or friends of friends can be beneficial. Sometimes people may not want to buy too many items or go on vacation with a large group of people, as it can be challenging to manage such a large group.
Note: In order to participate in your Deal, only your friends and/or friends of your friends can join. Therefore, it's crucial to share your Deal on your social media to ensure maximum participation.
Having a smaller but trustworthy potential participants can have several advantages. For deals that require interaction among participants, such as booking cars and hotels for group vacations, it's better to have person Friends as participants, as people generally prefer to travel with friends rather than strangers. In such cases, limiting who can join the group buy is beneficial. The same goes for sharing resources like boats, where limiting the participants to the organizer's friends increases trust and responsibility in using and caring for the shared resource.
Trust works both ways, as organizers need to trust their participants to use and care for the resource responsibly, and participants need to trust the organizer to deliver as advertised. Having only the organizer's friends as participants can help boost this trust, as the organizer knows the participants and vice versa.
On the other hand, for deals that don't require ongoing interaction with participants, such as buying multiple cars together, it may be necessary to open up to a wider audience, including people Friends and their Friends, in order to gather participants quickly. In such cases, organizers can check the reputation of potential participants or ask mutual friends for recommendations before accepting reservations.
more on Reputation
more on Reputation
At times, you may have friends who you know are not trustworthy, struggle with sharing, have different cleanliness standards, or are financially irresponsible. In such cases, you, as organizers, can block them from reserving your deals. Blocked friends will not receive notifications when deals are created, but they can still see the deal if they have the link, such as through social media.
On the other hand, for trusted friends or family members, organizers can designate them as Trusted Friends, which allows them to reserve deals automatically when the Approve All Trusted feature is used. Organizers have the option to change the trust level of their friends by going to the Friends → view your Friend → adjusting the Friend Level accordingly.
On the other hand, for trusted friends or family members, organizers can designate them as Trusted Friends, which allows them to reserve deals automatically when the Approve All Trusted feature is used. Organizers have the option to change the trust level of their friends by going to the Friends → view your Friend → adjusting the Friend Level accordingly.
Sometimes, you may want to share things only with a specific groups Group of people, such as pleasant friends, church members, trustworthy individuals, or extended family members. This could be for events like parties, camping trips, sharing vacation houses, or even lending money for business purposes.
You can easily add specific friends to a group by going to people Friends → view your Friend → adding the friend to Group 1, 2, and/or 3.
You can easily add specific friends to a group by going to people Friends → view your Friend → adding the friend to Group 1, 2, and/or 3.
Note: the group is not visible to its members, so your friends won't know if they are in your group or not.
With Participant feature, you have the flexibility to allow a wide range of people, including your friends and their friends, or a narrow group of people (using groups), to participate in your specific Deal. However, if the Participant pool is too wide, your best friends may lose out to someone your friend knows, and if it's too narrow, there may not be enough participants for the Deal to proceed.
To address this, oSplit has an Approval option where reservations may require organizer's Approval before they can be put in In-Queue and moved to the Allocated status by the Platform. This gives you, as the organizer, control over who should be prioritized.
Approve Manually is especially useful when you want to make decisions on reservations yourself, rather than having it done automatically. Depending on the nature of the shared item or experience, different criteria can be used when manually approving participants:
- Financial responsibility is important when sharing something that requires maintenance or ongoing expenses. Ensuring that participants are financially responsible can help ensure the sustainability and proper upkeep of the shared item.
- Having similar cleanliness standards is crucial when sharing a living space or a vehicle. It ensures that all participants can maintain a clean and comfortable environment that meets everyone's expectations.
- Pets ownership can be a significant consideration when sharing a house or a car. Preferences for a pet-free environment or accommodating pet-related needs should be taken into account to ensure compatibility, allergies and avoid potential conflicts.
- Considering how the shared item will be used is essential for efficient sharing. For example, when sharing a lawnmower, it's ideal to avoid sharing with someone who has a much larger lawn than others to ensure fair usage and prevent overburdening the equipment.
- Shared interests or hobbies can be advantageous when going on vacation together. Sharing common activities or interests can enhance the overall experience and foster better friendship among participants.
- Geographical proximity is important when sharing physical items, especially for convenience and logistical purposes. Being in close proximity allows for easier coordination, transportation, and overall smoother sharing arrangements.
- When sharing a home or vehicle, it can be beneficial to prioritize someone who has knowledge and familiarity with the specific item being shared.
- Take into account personal past experiences, reviews, and vouches. Considering reviews and vouches from others can help in making informed decisions about approving reservations.
oSplit also offers different types of Approval settings to help automate some of these approvals and avoid having to approve reservations one by one:
- people Approve All - all reservations will be approved automatically.
- auto_fix_high Approve Trusted - reservations made by Trusted Friends will be approved automatically.
- gavel Approve Manually - none of the reservations will be approved automatically.
- people Approve All Friends - reservations made by Friends will be approved automatically.
- groups Approve All in Any Group - reservations made by anyone in any of your groups will be approved automatically.
Note: As the organizer, your reservations will be automatically approved, but they will not be automatically given higher priority than those of other participants.
You also have the option to change your Approval and/or Participant before the Deal ends. However, past unapproved reservations will not be automatically approved using the new Approval option, and no new notifications will be sent.
Approve Manually can also be used to allocate the item better, especially in Money, Capacity and Segment Triggers, as reservations are not immediately allocated upon qualification. Once you think a sufficient reservations have been received, all reservations can be approved simultaneously, allowing for a more deliberate evaluation of the reservations.
Because sometimes there is a benefit for limiting the participants, we tried to make it easier for you to filter, select all, select individual for mark or approve reservations.
- You can use filter to display only the reservations that you marked before push_pin, reservations made by a certain participant, or reservations for a certain item, if the reservations are approved or not task_alt , how many In-Queue or Allocated - this is useful to select all / part of the filtered reservations
- You can sort by clicking the column title - you can Shift-click (hold shift while clicking) the table title to sort data by multiple columns, this is useful to compare.
- You can select certain reservations manually, checklist Check All, push_pin Check Marked, task_alt Check Approved or contrast Inverse Checked (check become unchecked, unchecked become checked)
- Once checked, you can gavel Approve Selected, gavel Un-Approve Selected, push_pin Mark Selected or push_pin Un-Mark Selected (mark to be used later on).
Note:The earlier a reservation is approved, the higher priority to be picked to fulfill your Deal, and you can re-approve approved reservation to lower the priority, even un-approve approved reservations, however, Allocated reservations will remain Allocated (unless someone cancels that causes the reservations to transitioned to In-Queue, it will not be moved back to Allocated again).
