Thanks HN: We’ve launched (the dating site about books) | Hacker News Reader

Thanks HN: We’ve launched (the dating site about books)

alikewise.com

77 pointsmwsherman60 comments

I think a widget compatible with amazon would be cool to attract people to your site. I.E. when someone reviews a book on amazon, they could click the alikewise widget that took them to your site and pulled their relevant amazon data to pre-populate a profile on your site. Of course you could then do the whole amazon affiliate link thing on your site to reciprocate people back there.

Smart! The are other sites with book info too. We should look at their APIs.

I've been toying with the idea of creating a basic API for my book site http://bookhu.com (book readership gender analysis). I'd be willing to prioritise it if you (or anyone else) were interested in integrating it.

@pmjoyce you'll find my contact info here: http://alikewise.com/About/People. I'm the first Matt. Drop a line.

Not a big fan of the graphic design on the front page. It's usable, and fairly attractive, but if I squint my eyes and don't read anything I could be looking at a middleware consulting company.

It is not clear where to focus my attention. There is no "do this, now" on the homepage.

I'd make the focus right now on registering with the site, since your userbase is going to be really small at the start. A really simple registration form that stands out could do wonders for you.

I'm short of time, it helps when your site tells me what to do.

OKCupid is a great example of how to convert visitors into members.

Agreed, a little too plain perhaps. Don't get me wrong, you've done a great job by not "going all web 2.0" or a number of other horrendous mistakes, but there's room for improvement. Try starting by giving the #main and #border sections the #FFF background color and the #content container a #EEE background just to set them apart a little (see it at http://imgur.com/pn0fR.jpg).

Little things like that will take you a long way.

Thanks proexploit, I'll play with that.

No problem, just shoot me an email if you want some simple tips. :)

Hi proexploit, I don't see your email address anywhere. Would love to chat. My contact info is here: http://alikewise.com/About/People (I'm the first Matt)

I'd say the biggest issue is that the slogan is 'a dating site but with books', but nothing about the page signals dating or books. There needs to be something somewhere on the page that instantly tells me this is dating + books without requiring me to invest significant thinking.

A sexy man/woman curled up in an armchair in front of a fireplace, wearing a robe/slip, with a glass of sherry and a copy of In Search of Lost Time?

Or GEB ;)

I have to agree, came here to comment because the look and feel of the site doesn't really scream "online dating". Not that cliches are necessarily a good thing, but I'm not sure dark grey and orange are right for the job.

HN folks were kind enough to alpha test and offer feedback. Thanks! Feedback is still welcome, of course.

Does your site intend to be US-only?

It wants me to enter 5-digit Zip code, insists on that even.

To start, we are US-only. We are running as fast as we can to go international. Mostly has to do with legal stuff.

Ok, nice to know that you are aware that 5-digit Zip code doesn't cover all possible locations.

Could you elaborate on the legal issues you're facing en route to going worldwide?

Well, a lawyer friend described some EU privacy laws and it's not clear to me what we'd have to change to comply. Or if we even have to comply, since we operate in the US. We are looking into it.

It would be nice if you mentioned that somewhere on your "get started" form.

Very nice idea. Can I have dating based on my (safe) browser history?

Are you sure you wouldn't like your dating based on your unsafe browser history? ;-)

I think Adult Friend Finder fixed that issue already :) .

http://www.pickv.com has the same concept but with movie,tvshow,music and food as well

You might want to check out http://alikewise.com/Profile/testingstagingagain !

Other than that I think the idea is excellent - if you manage to get enough people then the site will work really well. That's the problem though isn't it...

Best of luck.

Ha! Thanks. One of our testing accounts. :)

Hint to others: Nab the good usernames while they're still around.

I'll put up a profile and see what happens, as I'm not having much luck searching for people with my taste in books. I see great potential.

I'm debating putting my profile name into my HN profile. . . .

Very nice. How about something that can be used worldwide (India, for instance)?

This. I'm tired of most websites assuming I'm an American.

Especially if your service doesn't involve mailing me anything, and I live in an English-speaking country anyway. You don't have to do anything special for me; just let me in!

...just don't use ZIP codes for anything. That's braindead in this day and age, even if you do live in the US. Give the user Google Maps and a pin to drop—this lets people actually be exact with their location if they want to be, without giving you an address that could be used for spam mail.

I hear you! We are moving international as quickly as possible. Has mostly to do with legal stuff. Soon!

I'd love to be able to bring in my goodreads or librarything entries. The idea of sitting there and entering all that data in again just makes my laziness ascend.

It seems that men and women read different books, so matching based on simple similarity is likely to be ineffective.

I absolutely don't agree with that. I mean, I'm sure there are some books that bias to one sex or the other, but in my experience, most fiction is universal. I've met a number of women in my short life who matched very closely my personal taste.

Do you have any particular reason you suspect this is true?

Well, I for one haven't yet met a girl in my area who enjoyed sci-fi.

If you are looking for a 20-something MALE who likes Atlas Shrugged, you are in luck.

I think there are only three females on the site at the moment, but it appears you would be better off there with Anna Karenina.

Pretty sure OkCupid is the dating site about books. Or at least every profile I've ever read there is.

The Seattle alt weekly newspaper, The Stranger, covered you on their blog today. Congrats again!

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/04/02/judging...

Your gender ratio seems to be biased in the wrong direction, probably an artifact of seeding it with Hacker News folks. In a community site, the quality of your community is a feature. Features aren't just things you can code.

Cool idea, but bootstrapping this could be an issue. E.g. as of right now, if you do a simple search for "Man seeking women" or "Woman seeking women" you'll only get ~20 results (not to mention that search is broken).

Well, the search seems to be working now.

ok, I searched for two books -founders at work and the little schemer.

Founders at work found me 'Kate' who is a total babe but sadly in America. The thing is, founders at work isn't actually in the list of books in her profile.

little schemer found me 'Polina' but she doesn't have it in her book list either.

I tried searching with and without quotes around the title.

Hope you fix that. I like the idea of the site itself though. Bookmarked for future use.

I'm having trouble adding the books I want to my profile.

Thanks djm. We start with an exact search and (if we don't find anyone) then we bring in "related" books, using Amazon's recommendation engine.

Given the small # of people we are starting with, this progressive search is gonna "go broad" pretty often. So it's looking for all kinds of books relating to the words "founders" or "work".

Not satisfying in the short term, I realize. As we get more people, the "exact" part of the algorithm will give better results and the "broad" part will get less relevant.

And yeah, Kate is a babe.

Just me or is the search kinda slow (or broken)?

Have a URL I can check out? Seems OK on this end. Thanks.

Yes, search seems to be broken. My search for "hot young slutty babes seeking broke, alcoholic, out-of-shape, over-the-hill, married programmers" is turning up nothing. Must be a bug.

>"hot young slutty babes seeking broke, alcoholic, out-of-shape, over-the-hill, married programmers"

And I was disappointed when I searched for GEB and nothing turned up.

That’s a shame, really.

I'd like this better if it weren't a dating site.

Like, a place where you can find people who like the same books as you, and then talk about books.

Those do exist...check out goodreads.com and librarything.com.

We don't really think of them as competition to what we're doing, btw. Different goals.

Thanks for the links, I will check them out.

It would be cool if you could integrate their APIs into what you are doing. (Create Alikewise account based off of already existing Goodreads or Librarything account).

I guess what I'm concerned about is that it becomes a very niche site without a community that is hanging out and talking about the books that they are reading.

Presumably if you go on, you find someone, and you leave, you don't have the 'all my friends are on it' factor. (It is also kind of limited group, a lot of people will not be looking for partners that read the same books as they do). It kind of appeals to people you might think of (or who might think of themselves) as intelligentsia.

But is a cool idea, and is definitely intriguing at very least in terms of social experiments, kind of figuring out if people are compatible because of similar intellectual interests. I hope it goes well for you!

I agree, integration would be great. It's a pain to input a bunch of books, reviews, and ratings. If Goodreads had a "turn this into a dating site" button, I'd press it in a heartbeat, but there's no way I'm going to start over inputting books and ratings on a new site.

This will never work. Women read trash.

I don't know why you're being downmodded, I agree. I don't think 'books you like' is a good way at all to match people up. But then I hardly ever read any fiction.

It's probably being downmodded because it's bigoted, but you're both missing the point. It's a niche-site for people who like reading fiction - for people for whom 'books you like' is a good way to be matched up.

Someone who thinks they like reading because they read the latest Dan Brown, or people who don't like reading, will be probably be disappointed, but they're not in the niche, so that's not really a problem.

Suggesting that Women have different tastes in general to men is bigoted now is it? He could have put it more delicately, but I believe he has a point.

How many men read Mills&Boon? How many women read Terry Pratchet?

> Suggesting that Women have different tastes in general to men is bigoted now is it?

No. Stating that they read thrash is.

> How many men read Mills&Boon? How many women read Terry Pratchet?

There's plenty of trash to read. Some of it caters to women, some of it to men. And since when is liking Terry Pratchet the shibboleth of literary taste? While I never got the whole "geeks should like Science Fiction"-thing, I can see the charm of Pratchet. So we'd probably appeal to different kinds of partners on a literary dating site, but I guess that's pretty much the point.

I still disagree @bigot though. People should toughen up a bit and chill out. "Women read trash" is just like a woman saying men are obsessed with cars... who cares.

My main point here though is, that I have absolutely no idea what my ideal woman would like reading. But it sure as hell wouldn't be anything like what I like reading.

What next? Dating based on what clothes you like wearing?

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