Why online dating is broken | Hacker News Reader

Why online dating is broken

blog.7pmanywhere.com

59 pointsamirn52 comments

Here's the problem as I see it: most natural interactions you have with other people almost always involve a "social object" (Here's a good introduction on the concept: http://gapingvoid.com/2007/12/31/social-objects-for-beginner... ).

Online dating sites really don't provide any useful social objects other than photos and "interests". Even socially intelligent people are going to generally fumble around a bit if they're forced to try to create a conversation with no real context. "So.. uh.. you're interested in skiing. I also like skiing too!"

The other problem is that expressions of interest are incredibly overt. I think the sites tend to ignore the power of flirting. The whole point of flirting is that there has to be a sense of uncertainty. That you MIGHT be interested, if they're cool... Without a sense of flirting, you end up with the uncomfortable "shopping" sort of metaphor. I mean, think about something like facebook -- I can comment on a girls link and say something clever, without being incredibly obvious about being interested, but if she's also interested there's at least a little bit of play that can go on there, right?

I don't think the solution to the dating problem is social networks per se, but there has to be some way of signalling some interest without the incredibly overt mechanisms dating sites currently offer, and there has to be a way of interacting that is a bit more indirect.

Incidentally, while I don't think World of Warcraft is a great dating model, I know a few friends who have met their current girlfriends on there. It's inefficient given the amount of time sunk, but I do think it sort of highlights what I said above -- in this sense, World of Warcraft (and the things that happen in the game) are the "social object", and natural relationships were able to evolve out of that.

I do, though, agree with the article that the entire idea of "matching" is ineffective.

Perhaps the solution is to create a website with multi-user activities (such as games) whose direct purpose is some trivial objective but whose actual goal is to provide a casual, flirty, social environment.

And we've come full circle :)

"Going to bars, joining clubs/teams, etc etc, is suuuuch a horrible time-consuming meat market."

"We'll fix this with technology!" [insert inspirational music]

[fast forward a few years]

"Online dating is suuuuuch a horrible time-consuming meat market."

"Let's get people to gather together to do something easy whose primary intent is actually providing an open environment for interaction!"

Maybe offline dating wasn't as bad as we made it out to be ;)

FWIW, OKCupid is doing just that in NYC - i.e. gender ratio-controlled IRL group events for singles.

There's a great interview with the founder of 'words with friends' who says this is the exact intention behind the site (more or less).

Interview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFFZpF7Y_8k

There's an inforgraphic that states more marriages per year originate from WoW than from Eharmony.

Here's the link: http://www.webpronews.com/gaming-beats-dating-websites-when-...

That's fascinating, thanks for sharing that!

While this is a nice ad for their site with a novel take on online dating, its claims about other dating sites are pretty wrong. Every dating site sees its primary objective as not scaring away the women, and designs itself accordingly.

The 7pmanywhere concept doesn't really make sense to me though -- why should matchmaking happen using realtime chat? Doesn't that just limit the pool too much, if you have to find good matches from the people who happen to be on the site at the same time as you? Aside from that, at least they're trying something different and new.

Dating sites definitely position themselves well to women, but that's more a marketing thing.

Almost every site is designed symmetrically. Even though guys and girls have vastly different experiences on said sites, they go through the same process, and have the same functional options. Hardly 'designed' for women...

The notion of 'matchmaking' is a bit of a misnomer - we consider ourselves a fun way to meet people, an introduction. There's no substitute for meeting in person to determine chemistry.

Also, it's called 7pm Anywhere because the active part of the site starts at 7pm :)

I guess that's why it runs at 7pm, to ensure that people in an area are online at the same time?

Exactly!

Getting a response from online dating isn't that hard and an actual date only took 2 or 3 messages. I think it's that most people just don't know how to communicate. It took me a bit of experimentation on what works, but once I figured it out I didn't have any problems. When I did okCupid I was a bit over 50%. Now I'm 6'8" and in shape but I'm definitely not Brad Pitt. My favorite first date topic was asking girls about their other online dates. They had horror stories about extremely awkward guys that had no idea how to interact with the opposite sex.

While this elegantly solves the messaging problem. Guys that never win won't stick around. Also how much information are you hiding from both parties? Just the picture or more? Most men and women have certain standards, height, look, build, etc. I have quite a few close female friends and they all have a minimum set of standards which exclude 95%+ of men.

> I have quite a few close female friends and they all have a minimum set of standards which exclude 95%+ of men.

So do I... in their 30s'. But in my case, that's why they're all still (deservedly) single

I call this attitude "I'm only single because I'm not picky enough". Kind of how people interviewing for programming jobs are self-selected to have a real problem with FizzBuzz, this seems to be a very common issue with online dating. I haven't seen any sites that try to address it, and don't really have any idea as to how they would.

You score very high on one of two most salient first cut criteria for women on dating sites. If you also have a high status and/or high paying job then the correct response to your post is -- duh you found it easy.

Being out of the age where friend circles include lots of singles, I spent a few years on the online dating circuit. It worked out for me in the end, but it's a pretty miserable process and none of the new sites (including this one, sorry) seem to fix the fundamental problem of de-personalization.

If I were on the market in this day and age, I'd definitely stick to Meetup and similar sites where you can join a singles group and go to events where you can do something fun/interesting/comfortable and meet a lot of eligible singles in the process. More importantly you are presenting your real-world self and meeting theirs, bypassing all the vaguely sociopathic behavior that's more or less normal on the dating sites.

> "'d definitely stick to Meetup and similar sites where you can join a singles group"

Been there. Wasn't fun.

The problem with ungated singles groups is that it turns very heavily into a gigantic sausagefest, even in cities with relatively decent dating scenes.

It reminds me of the Microsoft parties I've gone to back when I lived in Seattle. You can spot all seven women at the party by the clusters of men surrounding them.

For singles groups to work a gender ratio must be enforced, but that also gives group organizers a lot of leeway to be generally not-awesome people. It also brings out some of the uglier sides of humanity.

I was once part of an "Asian Americans" Meetup group, which like most Meetup groups is a pretty flimsy facade for a singles group. There was a major row where a white user wanted to join - IIRC the guy was raised in Asia and had a strong interest in Asian culture. The male membership of the group revolted, citing pretty much every lame reason except the real one. A vote was taken, where the female membership voted in a landslide to allow the guy in, and the male membership the opposite. The ban stood, some (thankfully some) people left the group in protest, including myself.

This was an exceptionally blatant experience, but I wouldn't put this past most Meetup groups, ethnicity or otherwise. Meetup groups with a singles slant (i.e., most of them), seems to bring out the most territorial, the least charitable, and the least human qualities in people.

Hmm, I've noticed that most meetups, even without a singles theme, lean heavily towards singles, so maybe the ones that are less blatant are better targets. In my experience the turnout is majority-female (assuming it's not a heavily biased topic like programming or stock trading) here in Silicon Valley where millionaires outnumber single women by 10 to 1 (I exaggerate, a little) so I'm surprised to hear it isn't so everywhere.

I met my wife on eHarmony, and every date I went on before that through the site was great, with interesting, intelligent women (although the chemistry wasn't there until I met my wife). I don't know if eHarmony has the problem solved in its entirety, but the quality of my matches leads me to believe that they're doing something well, and something well worth the money.

Ditto, although I suspect it's less about the matching algorithm and more about

(1) a matching process that prevents spamming and forces (well, paradoxically it optionally forces) a back-and-forth interaction before dropping into the standard e-mail mode and

(2) a female-male ratio greater than 1 which further turns around the usual dynamic of overwhelmed women choosing between invisible men

I've had very good experiences with it as well, and while I thought the matches were pretty good, I'm very curious as to how much of its success is due to the matching algorithm and how much is the process it uses. The somewhat high price barrier helps ensure people are serious, and the metered-out matching process helps prevent people from sending or being overwhelmed by mass spam. It's a more "relaxing" experience to leisurely read through a few profiles a day and send some of the quick questions out to find out if there's mutual interest (though I often skipped past the second or third steps to get straight to direct messaging).

Eharmony is a great site. But it's aimed squarely at people looking for serious relationships.

We're looking at people who aren't necessarily at that stage yet.

They have identified the problem with online dating: men don't get responses and women get bombarded with messages. It seems like a simple fix might be to have a rule that says only women can initiate conversations (for the heterosexual segment). Has this been tried yet?

(Normally) women don't initiate, even if they're interested.

Yeah, and on the flip side I doubt most men will be comfortable with women initiating until the social norms around turning women down become less messed up.

Agreed. Maybe make it so women don't even have to send the first message, and instead just click an "I'm interested" button, which then notifies the guy so he can send a message if he wants. This addresses several problems: if women are going to be screening/filtering anyway, might as well have them do it upfront and only get messages from people they are interested in (instead of being bombarded with crap), and men would be incentivized to write better messages instead of sending a high volume of low-quality crap. This is also in line with some (possibly bogus) social psychology research[1] that suggests that women are the ones who usually initiate courtship by signalling through non-verbal cues, even though the first "overt" move (like going up and starting a conversation) is usually by men.

On the other hand, there's a real question of whether women would be willing to put in the time/effort to view profiles and mark them as interesting or not interesting, but I bet that on current dating sites women do browse profiles pretty regularly but stop short of actually messaging people they're interested in. (Can someone with access to actual data confirm/deny this?)

1. Stuff like this: http://evolution.anthro.univie.ac.at/institutes/urbanetholog...

>Further, virtually every academic (read: non-biased) study on the topic of compatablity indicates no correlation between successful relationships and personality/interest based matching.

I'd be interested in reading these studies, but I'm coming up dry searching Google scholar. The best I can find is an article saying that the research that has been done on match systems for online dating is inadequate.

I'm also not clear on how you would even do a good study on that. First of all, is it a controlled study? I find it very difficult to believe, for example, that two people rated on OKC as 10% a match would be as likely to get past the first date as two people ranked as 90%. But if you're not controlling that variable, you're going to be collecting data on match ratings in the range of 80-100%, and it seems very likely that any possible distinction would be lost in the noise at that point.

Moreover, dating site match-making algorithms are not necessarily just a raw number. Taking OKC as an example again, some people might just look at the raw score, while others actually go through and see what conflicting answers were given. A good study on these systems would need to account for these different types of users, as it is very plausible that the latter type is getting a lot more value out of the rating system than the former type.

A good resource for finding articles on this is: http://www.onlinepersonalswatch.com/internetdatingscience/

After some thought, Ultima IV popped into my head. Specifically the beginning of the game when the player is asked several questions which don't necessarily have a correct answer but do in effect slant the players morality in one direction or the other.

Thee and thy friend are valiant but penniless warriors. Thou both go out to slay a mighty dragon. Thy friend thinks he slew it, thee did. When asked, dost thou A) Truthfully claim the gold B) Allow thy friend the large reward?

Has anyone attempted to use such metrics to find matches between individuals?

I've also noticed that couples who have different interests actually engage in more sharing. Seems like sometimes when both partners have to many interests in line, it is a cause of detachment instead of bonding.

Oh this is like an old tv dating show in Germany called "Herzblatt". Stopped 10 years ago but was very popular.

Its the same concept.

There was a show in the US around the same time, but can't remember the name, but it was the same concept

There was a show in Australia called Perfect Match [1] based on another called The Dating Game [2] which is fairly similar (asking questions to 3 members of the opposite sex in a blind date format)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Match_(Australian_game_... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dating_Game

It was also on in the UK as "Blind Date," with Cilla Black.

"We're gonna have a lorra lorra laughs!"

Reminds me of the ElemiDate[1] app (not launched yet):

"ElimiDate is a fun and new approach to dating. We all know how girls like getting guys` attention, and how guys are ready to show off to be the only ones in the horizon. This is what ElimiDate is all about. A girl sets up the game and creates the first task, perhaps "Take a picture of your shoes". Then five guys join the game and compete against each other to make the best impression. After each round the girl elimidates the worst-performing guy. At the end of the game the girl has to make a final decision: whether elimidate or date the lucky winner and connect through a chat." [2]

[1] http://www.elimidateapp.com/ [2] http://betali.st/startups/elimidate

Yeah, they came out of SW London halfway through 2012 if I'm thinking of the right group. There's a few different sites that seem to be converging around the same idea.

Is your company The Dating Game?

That may have been the inspiration... though in Oz it's called The Perfect Match ;)

This problem is extremely culturally localised, look at the rash of mail order bride sites, not in isolation but as to what it suggests. Just because the market works one way within one culture is absolutely not a global indicator that this must always be so.

And to immunise myself from potential responses of "ewww, mail order brides are creepy", I'm not actually suggesting using those services, merely pointing out that if markets exist where women happily engage in such practices, consider what it implies about normal dating locally in some instances.

The western cultural experience is not the only option on the table.

Not sure I get how the example relates to the point your making. But agree 100% that Western culture is not the be all and end all.

It is the market we're playing in though...

Not the market you need to be playing in, something enormously frequently overlooked when a localised problem arises here I have found, is all.

I like the overall scheme. If information overload for women is the hard part, that's the thing to focus on.

That said, how will you attract men to a site where they are likely to be filtered into oblivion? The mainstream dating sites may, in reality, be useless to many men, but by giving subscribers the ability to actively do something, they may feel like they're making contact.

Conversely, how will you handle women who "shoot too high" ? (i.e. If female subscribers filter too hard, they may not get the response rates they desire.)

Funnily enough, we've found if you make it enjoyable for women, it's more enjoyable for men.

It's true that some guys will get the harsh end of the filter stick. But with this method it's easier to know where exactly you're failing. If you get knocked out at first selection each time - you need to improve your answers. If you get to the end repeatedly but have no luck - maybe a better photo.

I think you have the actions to improve reversed.

What do you mean?

Nothing serious :) Getting knocked out at the first selection likely has more to do with the photo than the answers - visceral filters occur first.

"visceral filters occur first" - Agreed.

Except girls only see the photo of the last guy remaining - so all they have to go on is the answers ;)

There is a well known problem of building a service requiring two different communities (e.g. sellers and buyers, teachers and students).

And sometimes the actual problem is that the distinction is made explicit, where it shouldn't be (once I had a problem, as I by mistake registered in one, and couldn't use the same e-mail to register in the second - even if there was some overlap).

Here it is an interesting example of the opposite. And also, a practical remark against political correctness :).

Thanks!

Agreed that what we're doing might not be viewed as PC. But the opposite argument - that women and men are the same, doesn't make any sense.

Just a polite critique: the blog seems a bit lacking in tact. I would think twice about using the service given the tone of the other articles.

A couple more things I encountered when trying to sign-up: 1. I could not see New York, SFo on this list. Which are the current target cities? 2. Upload a JPEG only picture. Really?

Thanks for the feedback, we'll look into it!

Love the idea of a blog post that is a plug for your company. I am not being snide or sarcastic, I think it was a great approach.

Btw, played around with 7pmanywhere and it is a great idea and execution! Keep up the good work!

Thanks. Appreciate it :)

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