Ask HN: help alpha test our new dating site (it's based on books) | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: help alpha test our new dating site (it's based on books)

alpha.alikewise.com

24 pointsmwsherman33 comments

Are you really going to market this as a dating site? Because you will be steamrolled by actual dating sites that provide substantially more.. flesh.. Dating sites make money because people are willing to pay money to get laid.

Doing dating through book taste doesn't exactly signal hookups, so why even label it as a dating site? Make it a social site around book taste and let dating happen in the community by itself?

Good questions. Niche is the only way to go, I think, the big guys have the big middle ground. And honestly, none of them are so great that people should be loyal. (OkCupid does a nice job.)

There are other social book sites out there, and they seem to do well. In our case, the difference is that user intentions are clearly about dating. I think (hope) that matters.

When it comes to big dating sites, people aren't loyal at all, but people go where everyone else is, because that increases their chances of hooking up. Having the best features or design or functionality won't help you one bit if you don't have people on your site.

So yeah, niche dating it is, which is why I suggest that you tone down the dating aspects of it.

I don't know, the Cambridge-grad-only dating site seems to be pretty popular. Elitism can be a powerful motivator, especially for people thinking about settling down and having kids. Late 20s and no kids yet is a demographic with a lot of disposable income.

And while it might be a small niche, this is a _huge_ market and attacking a niche then working out how to expand (movie matching? music matching?) is a perfectly valid strategy.

Sure, but I think that for that to work, you have to tone down the dating parts of the site and emphasize the matchmaking parts of the site.

Basically, a site that is good for hookups or dating makes it very easy for users to quickly browse through the other users' images. The best ones I've seen basically lets you make a (detailed) search, then just shows the results one by one with a big NEXT button on each. No lists, no clicking back and forth, no popups, just a very simple flow through the results.

But matchmaking needs a workflow that is more refined and feels less like a flesh-market. In the market research we did where I worked many years ago we found out that matchmaking appeals to people with little time. They don't want to spend hours browsing profiles, they want to be fed a slow stream of new profiles that the system has decided is good for them. This could possibly work with book taste as a base. If you make a recommendation engine like Netflix or Amazon, you could then grab other users that actually liked the books and have that as a starter.

"User X shares your taste in books, but hasn't read book Y, why don't you tell him/her about it?"

hmmmmmmmm My wife is definitely not into the same genre of books as I am and frankly I'm happy with that. Is there some real correlation between compatibility and the books you read or are you just assuming that?

We don't think there's a correlation. We just think it's a good conversation starter. And books encourage people to get reasonably specific about what they are into.

Anecdotally I observed a distinct gender gap in reading material preferences between the sexes. So much so that I wanted to test that and see whether this would be a reasonable way to segment reading material.

My recently launched site [1] is based on measuring and presenting the gender split of readers of any book (and how each sex rate the book) on the assumption that men and women often enjoy different reading material. The data I've gathered so far seems to validate that assumption and points towards substantial gender bias for a great many books.

I'm currently in the process of writing a blog post highlighting the most frequently used words in book titles favoured by women vs. men based on the data I've collected. This is my first dip into the "MI" of the data but, despite the simplicity of the initial analysis, again the data shows there is a pronounced difference.

What might be interesting is some sort of combination of the datasets. Such as using an individuals reading history to categorise their "average gender preference" for books [2] and how might relate to their choice of dating partners and their book gender preference.

It's an interesting proposition and I like the clean look of the site and it's simple workflow. I'll be following your progress with interest.

1. http://www.bookhu.com

2. If such a thing even exists - just a hypothesis that needs to be tested at the moment

The first thing I wanted to do was SEE who else was on there. Dating sites need to have people to attract others. You don't make it very apparent how to see or search who else is on there.

I didn't even read the popup because it GOT IN MY WAY of seeing who else was on there. And then the 'find people' form was off to the side, and I didn't notice it because I looked at the featured profile...a dude...then up top Find people should be first, not getting started.

If people find other people they like on there, they'll find their way to the signup screen. First show them your goods, then they'll sign up when they see what they like.

Agreed. It's a chicken-and-egg problem on any social site. Our first challenge is getting that critical mass.

The popup is just a welcome for alpha testers. It will go away when we're in production.

I thought this was a good idea. One of my own particular favorite authors is usually mentioned on social sites but in the form of "I hate people who like <This Author>."

Alpha testing: I searched for "Thomas Paine" and got one result. The one profile result didn't seem to match the query at all.

I tried searching with the quotation marks and got an error. Exact matching doesn't seem to be supported in that manner?

Thanks! I fixed the error issue with the quotation marks.

We are not doing proper boolean searching just yet. Everything is treated as "or" right now. Something to work on.

Seems like a really small niche. Wouldn't movies be a better thing to match on, or music?

Why not offer any type of media or product that you can grab from Amazon.com or another source to match on?

Books, movies, songs, travel locations, favorite restaurants, etc.

How quickly will Moby Dick be the most read book on this site....

Right now, we can only add profiles for US locations, sorry about that. International is a top request and is coming soon!

http://alpha.alikewise.com/Profile/danalotus was the featured profile for me and it scared me. The eyes have eerie glowing spots in them from sharpening. I would recommend either asking that girl for another photo or not featuring her. :(

If I do a search and then click back, the button still says 'searching...' and I can't do another search. If I then click refresh it goes back to 'find people' but doesn't work. I need to click in the title bar and press enter to do another search. Firefox 3.6 linux.

One more caveat, there only a small number of profiles on there right now, so search results will probably not be very interesting just yet.

We are most interested in feedback about usability, technical issues, and whether we are generally on the right track.

"q=Nietzsche, q=Sartre, q=Camus Hmm, none yet. Try adjusting your search criteria."

where are all the a1=18&a2=23 philosophy chicks?

edit: q=Paul+Graham, success. We can be hopeless and poor together.

Those girls are too busy going on dates with people in their philosophy classes. No time or need to mess with an internet dating site.

it's based on books means one lists book titles to describe his/her character? Interesting to see how some people would abuse this to become popular.

Yup, that's the idea. It's less about revealing character and more about giving people something to talk about. Like flirting at the book store.

You need to put in some hooks to help spread the word about the site. How come you're not encouraging people tweet or post to Facebook right when they sign up?

Quite a few of my friends are bi. Why can people on your site only be seeking men or women, but not both?

This is a ludicrous expectation for a site that's still in alpha.

This is a dating site. The core functionality of it is I am X seeking Y.

No, its core functionality is I am XX seeking XY (or vice-versa). Most people are heterosexual; it would be crazy for an alpha-stage dating site to spend time catering to users who might be bi. (Unless that's their niche, in which case, more power to 'em.)

The site already caters to people who are hetero- or homosexual. Catering to people who are both should be a minimal effort to change, if it is coded right.

I tried it out and thought it was a fun site. It will be even more so when there are more people on it.

This is an awesome idea. I wish I had thought of it. Best of luck to you.

[bug] - search for books with nothing in search field.

Coming soon?

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