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Comment by anindha | Hacker News Reader

Dating apps right now feel a little like pre-Facebook social networks. There is one for every niche.

I wonder why there isn't a platform for single people where dating companies are just apps on top of the platform. Seems like bad user experience that a user needs to maintain multiple accounts.

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great idea but I think the really big company in this space will be a platform for single people.

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Different dating apps cater to different mindsets towards dating. Some ban pictures in favor of words; while others only work if you have great pictures; then others want one to mention their annual income ranges.

The groups on Facebook are very different but it still works. You should be able to build most things on top of the platform. Flickr was the social network for photographers but most photographers post on Facebook now.

Sharing photos is easier on facebook because all of your friends are connected. Quality is worse but speed and discovery are easier.

Strangers don't belong in that model because they are not friends. Most people want to keep strangers away from your real life until they become friends so having a third party site keeps that experience away from preying eyes. Once a couple is formed they will connect over facebook and start sharing their experiences.

allowing you to connect via FB and sign up for 3rd party services is essentially that. it's questionable how much integration with FB is valuable, considering people are justifiably wary about what they want to do publicly and privately, and FB privacy settings can change and are confusing to many.

I think the product's design is pretty different though. If you want only text as well as photo-centric options, that's hard to design. Also, if you want people to spend 2 minutes reading a profile before deciding if it's someone they want to "like" or message, that use case needs to be designed very differently than a use case where a user wants to decide in 3 seconds if the other person is cute enough to "like".

You might be right though, it might consolidate in the future if people figure out really good interfaces that make it work well for many use cases.

Ehh, most photographers advertise on Facebook (for free, via postings on a page), while pushing their users to other sites to actually browse their content. Basically, they use Facebook as a glorified RSS feed for their external site.

Interesting concept, the key difference with specific niche apps is the intent of the user when signing up

We're solving for very specific requirements, aside from the benefit of shared identity I think it'd be a lot harder to keep the product free of feature creep and still appeal to all

Thanks for the kind words

You mean facebook?

Facebook doesn't have open APIs and blatantly opposes non-advertising extensions

Facebook login works fairly well to grab data once.

This is a good point! Most dating apps have Facebook login and grab a bunch of information from Facebook. Maybe this platform for single people grabs data from Facebook.

I like the idea of having LinkedIn and not just adding all my work contacts on Facebook. I want to be sure that the information I share on the dating platform and Facebook don't mix too easily. Curating my Facebook data once when signing up to a dating app is fine.

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