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Comment by falsestprophet | Hacker News Reader

I think this a pretty interesting concept. But, I think your branding needs work.

Forgive me for being so blunt, but the name yumbunny is way to creepy and awkward for a dating website. I think it a catchy name that could definitely work for something else.

But the second I loaded the page and saw that guy looking down lasciviously at that way to eager girl, the name became way too much.

yum...bunny. Bunnies are an awful lot like cats (you follow). I just showed this to my roommate's girlfriend; she said, "ew".

A dating website's biggest challenge branding. I am pretty impressed with the branding on downtoearth.com. I think you will be much more successful if you can tone down the creepiness to a basal level like match.com or better achieve negative creepiness like downtoearth.com.

I'm sorry I am not offering other suggestions. If I think of any today, I will post them.

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I agree with this. I didn't click the link because I assumed it was either a porn site or an Easter Bunny / Chocolate thing... or even Easter Bunny porn! Really I had no idea what it might be about.

And yeah, matching on looks seems frankly bizarre. Perhaps as a bit of fun, in a hot-or-not way, to construct the most appropriate couples... but actual dating? No.

Thanks for the great feedback. :)

We've done lots of user testing so far and get different impressions. The front page image will definitely change and be A/B tested to death once we launch-- it's just what we've got so far.

Note that we're hoping the front page won't be the first thing people see when they encounter YB-- they'll hopefully see it first via the widget on their friends MySpace profile, etc.

Thanks again for the great feedback.

Agree with you on the name -- "yum" conjures up something delectable while "bunny" makes me think "Playboy Bunny." It connotes a sort of superficiality that would lead me to choose a different dating site.

If a dating site wants to succeed, it probably doesn't want to aim its message squarely at us...

> It connotes a sort of superficiality that would lead me to choose a different dating site.

It appears that the concept behind that site is that people match your pictures with other people that you would look good with. This is the definition of superficiality.

I'm not sure which creeps me out more, the name or the stock photo. I think both need to go.

Unlike other misadventures in naming, with a dating site your users must trust you. It's sudden death there if you mess that up. Even something which registers subconsciously or ambiguously as, "This site is for creeps." will make you dead in the water, which really, in the grand scheme of the amount of work that goes into setting something up, would be a silly reason to do poorly.

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