We rarely look at the “Explore the latest house sits” on homepage of THS iOS app. But today we took a peek and 23 of the first 25 listings were located in the US. We are not US based house sitters, and it appears many non-US housesitters are not applying to volunteer their time in the US, so the presence nevermind spew of such listings seems redundant. Or just plain desperation by THS?
It reminded us of the “Sits We Think You’ll Like” listing section that seems to have become “Sits We Want You To Like” low-quality listings.
Perhaps there could be a new toggle in profile settings to disable/enable US listings?
We’ve just launched a test that will make it easier to find sits that you’ll love.
There are a few variants of the test, but in essence, app users may see a new layout on the ‘Find a sit’ page, designed to more accurately match with the type of sits they’re looking for.
This is an early piece of work, and part of a bigger look at how to make finding your next sit even easier. We’ll share more about that work with you as we get closer to the time.
Yes, mine looks different to that @Mark_B. Instead of Just Added, mine is Explore The Latest House Sits which is false because they are all Low Applications and in the US which is of no interest to me. So, once again, this is not “making finding my next sit even easier” but I’ll be stuck with it because we know THS just goes ahead and implements whatever THEY want and not what their members want.
@temba I’ve just edited my country preferences to remove the USA for now. Let’s see if that makes a difference to the number of US sits in "“Sits we think you’ll like”. Most were over Christmas when I already have a THS sit booked so not especially helpful.
@temba on the website I see “Explore thousands of house sits and find your next pet sitting adventure”. The first page has 10 sits, all with the Low Applications tag, 8 of them in the US. A pretty useless view that I will skip to head straight to my saved searches.
@Debbie, great idea. We did this too. But vast majority of listings under ‘explore the latest house sits’ presented of us are located in the US.
Curious if this is also the case for housesitters not based in North America? If we scroll down under ‘explore the latest house sits’ then a ‘view map’ button appears that is limited to North America. Huh. Maybe ‘explore’ feature is based on current geography of housesitter? Rather than preferences per housesitter profile? Ugh - hopefully it’s the latter but never know! A couple listings in our ‘explore’ list are in Australia, that are clearly not on this map. Darned if we understand the logic.
@Mark_B, when new features are released are algorithm ‘explore’ (or equivalent) listings based on preferences per THS member profile? Would seem positive customer experience - e.g. if housesitter wants to only sit cats then ‘explore’ listings with dogs rather pointless, or geographic equivalent examples.
Perhaps there’s a more creative solution … changing currency in THS subscription to AUD .
If we understand rightly, Australia will shortly vote on new legislation that would permit consumers to disable algorithms in feeds - not for a few minutes or until next open app but for good. It is possible that this may target unwanted posts, bots, topics from US social media companies but it would presumably impact THS too.
If we understand rightly, under any new legislation then a Facebook data feed (if consumer so elects) may only contain postings from people, companies or topics that have been chosen by the consumer. No algorithm content. So any ‘explore’ THS housesit list would have to comply with preferences per member profile, and expressly does not contain unwanted nonsense .
Just to add, that some members may also see no change to the page that’s being tested (the control group).
Closer alignment to preferences is part of this test and we’ve already had positive feedback, so fingers crossed others are finding it equally as positive.
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