Like Secret Finds Romance Within Your Social Circle | Hacker News Reader

Like Secret Finds Romance Within Your Social Circle

dainbinder.com

40 pointsdbin7822 comments

Not the first Facebook app to do this. For example (link now deleted, though), http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2334990, which I remember because I posted this comment:

"Oh, I just marked you/everyone to see if you had marked me, I wasn't being serious."

"Yeah me too". Solution: "I'm serious" button after first match a.k.a two-step matching.

Problem: "I only marked the 'I'm serious' button to see if you were serious, I wasn't really serious."

Solution: "I'm REALLY Serious, and I'm an Asshole" button

Joysper.com is another similar app. It's gotten quite a bit of traction at the few major Canadian universities it has been rolled out at.

This is a fundamental problem in this area. Flirting exists for a reason, and that reason is because relationships are smooth curves not step functions. And the seriousness of relationship issues (which can easily be as heartbreaking as losing a family member) means that it's typically necessary to begin only with the most tenuous of bonds between people who might love each other.

Trying to force this subtle and enormously complex social interaction into a clunky machine is just asking for disappointment and failure.

Nature also lessens this problem by correlating seriousness with physical affection and hormones. Kissing is a much more meaningful signal than texting "I seriously like you".

In college, my friend coded an official "somebody likes you" webapp for the senior formal.

I had the email addresses for 1/2 the senior class (through an email that wasn't BCC'ed), so I wrote a program to war-dial his webapp.

I found out that, of the "somebody likes you" messages I got, three of them were guys who entered all their guys friends, to make sure they weren't being messed with. (And inadvertently messing with their friends in the process.) The other message to me was from a person I didn't want to date, and had to politely decline.

A few friends caught wind of this technology, so I ran the program for them too. Results were similar. I don't think there were any true romantic matches made.

My friend who coded this app never fails to tell this story when he recommends me to investors, with the best intentions. I hope it reads as YC-style creative rule-bending.

It's cute, and I could see where it could really help some people out, but overall I think people just need to take more responsibility for demonstrating their romantic interest. Even if it doesn't work out, I think it's healthy to air these things out.

I largely thought the same thing when reading the description of the app. Learning to communicate openly and honestly is probably a much better approach to this sort of problem than some highschoolesque crush app.

If you're wondering whether Dick or Jane 'like' you, just ask them. If they are going to be awkward about it then they probably weren't the right person anyway.

However all that said, I bet the app will be a smash.

Over the years I've had a lot of spam mails from services that claimed to be doing this (but obviously weren't). If I'd gotten a message from this one, I'd probably discard it as spam (or a friend trolling).

Yeah, that's going to be a big problem for them. Too many scam/spam "services" have poisoned the well.

I believe rather than focusing on people in your friends circle, it would be a better idea to focus on friends of your friends. Say an app that listed the photo and short bio of all of your friend's friends. You could then express an interest in somebody you would like to date and the app would notify your mutual friend and that friend would make an introduction.

Ofcourse there are certain issues with this approach too like the mutual friend being someone you 'kindof sortof' know, or a mutual friend who happens to be an ex of yours.

I think it would be cooler if this could be done programmatically.

Write a matchmaker system/app? that users could allow to process their data and find patterns (likes, comments) tying them to people they were interested in. This could then anonymously contact the matched individual and prompt them to run the app.

This would avoid some abuse issues and because each partner has no control over the matches made, makes the whole thing less awkward.

Might also include: - Textual analysis of comment text throughout a users 'graph'. - Privacy issues. - Business plan.

This reminds me of that joke from long time ago where there was a machine that recommended potential mate. A woman requested a man of shorter stature, who likes water and cooler climate, dresses formally most of the time and loves to eat fish. The machine recommended her a penguin.

The problem is, no matter how you slice it, there's nothing more effective than a good old fashioned cup of coffee and one of the interesting parties taking a bit of a risk. It's just the way it has always been and I highly doubt that it's possible to do this with an app or a program that works perfectly. No matter what you try, someone will try and game it.

1. Post link on Facebook redirected through your web server. 2. Correlate ip/site coming from with individual.

Now you have stats on who is stalking/interested in you. (Disclaimer: I don't use Facebook)

Isn't it possible to simply "like" all your friends, and then sit back and wait for the notifications to come in about all the people that like you?

it looks like they limit you to 15 (still a lot!) crushes to prevent that behavior

An alternative solution would be to allow different levels of "like" - that data could be translated into a ordered list of "who you want to date most" and they could run the stable matching algorithm to suggest initial dates.

Hasn't this already been invented? Like several times?

Is there any evidence that this problem really exists? In my experience, it's only in the movies.

Do you not have friends? I have had friends who I came very, very close to telling them that they liked each other (fortunately they worked it out themselves, but it was a close thing). Sometimes people don't even realize they have romantic feelings for someone and sometimes people don't have the ability to recognize when someone else shares those feelings.

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