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Comment by callmeed | Hacker News Reader

Was thinking last night: do any of these LBSs have a solid dating component?

It seems to me that some dating-specific features (find and flirt with nearby singles but also maintain privacy) could help increase adoption.

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http://grindr.com/

Nearby singles? How about a LBS adult friend finder for discreet encounters?

http://www.assistedserendipity.com/

That's on the right track, but I'm not sure piggybacking one of the networks will work–almost as if they need to do it and promote themselves ... maybe even work out deals with the venues ... if a lady checks in at a bar, she gets a free drink–if a dude checks in, he gets to meet ladies ... just thinking out loud.

Or maybe everyone who is single can wear a shirt with a QR code on it :)

I've been thinking about this for awhile. Current dating sites make it easy to meet lots of people, but then there's the issue of how well you actually mesh in real life. Thus, some sort of hybrid approach might be better.

I'm imagining some sort of OkCupid/augmented reality mashup. I think there might be something to some level of algorithmic matching, but it doesn't mean much until you actually meet the person. Matching systems can, for instance, prevent people with totally incompatible different values systems from even wasting time with each other. Augmented reality would let you pick someone out of a crowd (via the inevitable smartphone) and pull up their profile. It could even provide the "similar users" ability among people that were present if you happen to meet your type, but they're not physically attractive to you.

Lots of work can be done here. I'm trying to get the number of awkward first dates down, and I believe it to be possible if we meld the best aspects of online and offline personas.

OKCupid seems to have been making changes that would allow something like that to become a factor in their compatibility ratings. Their "Special Blend" ranking algorithm is multivariate secret sauce, and it's easy to imagine them offering the option of sorting on proximity.

the problem with that site is it doesn't really work as advertised .. in the ideal scenario, you get an alert if Female > Male ratio goes above a certain threshold for places in your town .. however, most of the checkins span across a few hours .. i.e. it's no where close to realtime or where it should be ..

I had an idea about an anonymous dating app per se with focus on women ... no idea how feasible it is but here it goes:

men and women check in to an event or at a club or wherever .. men cannot see details about women beyond a certain basic demographic (age interests etc.) .. men "poke" the women they find interesting, women get the alert, they get to see all dets about the guy and if they think he's interesting, poke back to reveal their details and/or a message. they can take it from there .. ofcourse, this has to catch on for people to really have pick and choose from potential matches ..

now if anyone wants to work on this idea, feel free to .. or hit me up to work on it in detail hah ..

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