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Comment by smalter | Hacker News Reader

simple: girl to guy ratio

The real question is - how do you entice more girls to sign up? Girls not only attract guys in to joining (obviously) but more girls as well.

I guess that rich guys attract girls.

Find a way to make women as fascinated by men as men are by women? Also, I think the comment on 'rich guys' is likely onto something - advertise on ladders.

I think OkCupid has a pretty good solution to the question. The book "The Game" classifies personality quizzes as "chick crack," and that's the majority of OkCupid's pull right now. ImInLikeWithYou's approach was not bad either; let the girls be the center of attention as guys fought over them.

Even iminlikewithyou's somewhat novel approach ultimately failed - they've switched to casual gaming: http://gigaom.com/2008/06/26/iminlikewithyou-gets-vc-cash-fo...

Can you work in babies to the dating site somehow? Babies are like candy to them. Also shoes.

shoesbabiesandboyfriends.com?

You forgot handbags and gossip.

I saw an interesting solution to this by the brits a couple years ago.. I think the site was "datemymate" or something to that effect.

Essentially the idea was that the friends of someone would sign up, and then start writing their friends profile - the idea I think was to mimic how women find their friends dates in the real world.

From what I understand, their female/male ratio was very good to the point where at times the females outnumbered the men - whereas on other dating sites this is just not the case.

doesn't look like it worked out, stats aren't that good: Started: December, 2005 Total Male Members: 338 Total Female Members: 417

Heh, I had the name wrong. The site in question came up in conversation with a English chick I know when we were chatting about dating sites at the pub a couple years back.

Beer + time does cloud ones memory.

Anyway, a quick Google search reveals that the site that I was talking about is called mysinglefriend - I think she originally told me mysinglemate or something, which is where I got confused.

Sorry about the mixup.

I think he probably meant: http://www.mysinglefriend.com/

MSF's actual advantage is that it's fronted by Sarah Beeny (Americans: she is probably as well-known in England as Martha Stewart is in the US), a national TV personality - even if it were "conventional" it would still have achieved critical mass.

I think this problems stems from safety. It would seem as though women are more reluctant to meet people online because they do not want to find out that their date is a loon. Someone could come off as completely charming online and in person be a total crazy. If women knew that their safety was not in jeopardy, I think your would see the numbers even out.

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