Show HN: Dating turned upside down - Tomonotomo
tomonotomo.com
tomonotomo.com
The color scheme is ugly. I like the gradual change over the name on mouseover but purple to yellow through brown is not the most appealing... That being said the layout is good.
I'm not sure I understand the value. Friends of friends are the easiest people to meet / hookup with already. The purpose of online dating sites is to meet strangers you don't already have an in with. Is there really a problem there that needs solving?
The passive cute / not cute thing sounds interesting. Maybe make that the focus? That's something that isn't already built into Facebook and would definitely solve the problem of some awkwardness.
As someone who speaks Japanese and instantly understood what the name meant, I agree. This is an absurd name to use for an American/Western dating site. I can't see myself mentioning this site to my friends.
Also beware of extreme reduction, as "tonto" means "stupid" in Spanish.
("notomo" means "Idon'tdrink" in Spanish, but that's less obvious)
I have changed the representation of the name to make it more readable.
The value in my opinion is to discover potential dates rather than search for them, and of course the mutual connection if both parties find each other cute/handsome/attractive.
1. Get an editor to rework the copy and fix mistakes. There's a lot of phrases that are almost-but-not-quite correct, such as "safe friendly trust" (which is the first thing that people see)...You don't want people's mental spam-alerts to go off at first glance. A lot of the text is also awkward and slows down reading (avoid using the forward-slash...e.g. use "attractive" instead of "cute/handsome"
2. I didn't want to give access to FB to use the site so I don't know how it works other than the landing page...but is the only way to express interest is through calling someone "cute" or "handsome"? Other sites have used "I'm interested" as a way to express...well, interest.
3. Try to replace that stock photo with something unique when you can...and if you have to use a stock photo, don't use one of all white people, unless that's specifically the audience you're catering to.
4. Also, don't describe your users as "boys and girls" unless that's specifically the audience you're catering to.
5. Cut as many adjectives as you can out of the copy, it doesn't engender trust. Also, don't use the word "disciplined"...it doesn't have useful connotations in this context.
edit: After reading the About page, I have a couple more things to add:
6. There are so many reasons why people have negative feelings about traditional dating sites and you can't possibly enumerate all of them...so minimize the amount of telling people those reasons, as you make too many assumptions as is.
7. Related to that: there may be situations in which the phrase "call girls or prostitutes" is applicable, but the promotional copy for your positive online dating website is not one of them -- in any context.
It makes this look like Facebook Stalking Pro.
Just changing this stance to, "someone you find interesting" or better, "someone you might want to get to know better"-- leave the reason open-ended, because we all have different things we look for in people. As it stands, I'd never use the site because it sounds like your active userbase is full of people I wouldn't want to date.
Second, the wording is actually good as "cute/handsome". These are words that have a positive association with image without being sex-driven words, and aren't overly powerful towards seeming like a line.
Also keep in mind it's a mutual interest feature. Only once both people have listed each other as cute/handsome is a person notified, so it shouldn't result in negative behavior.
But you're right - there could be lots of reasons for interest other than attraction. Those can be individual features, like "There's someone who likes your taste in music" or "There's someone that wants to invite you to a FB event". The tool could probably be best served by allowing for a mix of these, so while Phil is attracted to Jackie's book smarts, Jackie is attracted to Phil's interest in social justice.
All points well taken and implemented. Please have a look at it, and provide another round of feedback if possible.
1. Replace that stock photo with something less rigid and fake looking. Stocksy is a good resource.[1]
2. Change the h1 and body fonts. It looks good on the company name but not elsewhere. Any good looking sans serif that isn't helvetica.
3. Change "boys and girls" to "men and women". The former implies that they are under 18 or generally young which shouldn't be the case for a (legal) dating site AFAIK.
4. On the third feature, "looks cute/handsome" doesn't really make sense, so change that. Perhaps "no risk".
5. Change "safe friendly trust" on the pink image overlay. Make the third word an adjective or adverb to match the other words.
EDIT: danso's comment covers this better, read that
All points well taken and implemented. Please have a look at it, and provide another round of feedback if possible.
I found this font attractive though. Is it just me? I am bored of the regular fonts anyways. Can you suggest a font to go well with the theme, please.
I don't see the value-add. Maybe it's 2x better than e-harmony, but it's not 10x better, like some of the new competitors are.
Take Tinder for example. Dead simple app. See a picture of the a potential date nearby. Vote yes/no. If you both vote yes, it opens up a chat thread much like sms.
Tinder incorporates friends-of-friends in the ranking already. I can see how many friends I have in common with a potential match, and I'm more likely to be shown potential matches with mutual friends.
But Tinder goes a step further. It integrates with Facebook, so that it can match on similar taste in books, movies, entertainment, religion, philosophy, based on likes in the profile. Finally, from a cultural perspective, as a smartphone app it's much more free of stigma.
So I don't see the improvement here. It's a good idea, with a growing userbase, but it seems slightly behind the wave, which is defintely going to be location aware mobile dating apps.
You're right about Tinder being dead-simple though. This looks like they basically took the Tinder concept and expanded on it for desktop viewing. One of the best parts about Tinder is that it really reduces the friction for people to talk to each other while still not being totally sketchy. That's the problem with most dating sites these days.
The problem I have with most dating apps is that they try to change, rather than facilitate, normal dating patterns. When you meet someone in bar or at a party, generally all you have to go on is some brief conversation, and physical appearance (which, by the way, I'm getting sick of people saying is terrible. Physical appearance communicates far more than simple in-born beautify: from fashion to mannerisms to posture, there's a massive amount of communication that's non-verbal.) Tinder emulates that process pretty well.
I just don't know the value in custom-written interest profiles that are at best inaccurate and at worst deliberately deceptive.
What I want is a Tinder that emulates the flow of a date, all as part of the app's design:
Matching algorithm->Picture (Vine or something would be better)->(yes/no)->Text conversation->(yes/no)->Audio Conversation->(yes/no)->drink/dinner
What you describe (Tinder), and what Eharmony, Match, Guardian Soulmates or any other site does, does NOTHING to speed up the process of finding Mr. or Ms. Right.
All that a site can do is to appeal to specific character types (like to use your phone? Shy, and prefer an introduction? ...).
Facebook integration will appeal to some (you, for example) but not to others (me, for example).
If you're just looking to get laid you can game chicks on any site. If you want to meet someone to love unconditionally, you just need to bite the bullet and settle in for a long haul.
NO web site can predict chemistry or love based on some funky new process and meta data. You need to spend time with someone to see if there's anything there. This means that dating sites are little more than databases of people that maybe, hopefully want what you want. Success is when they want it with you.
I learnt quickly that I had better odds by using as many dating sites as I had time for, because (apologies to the romantics) it's a numbers game.
The waves I see coming are: a shift from long term romantic involvement to a trend toward shorter term interactions among my generation, a cultural lack of social stigma in smartphone apps vs. websites for dating, and an opportunity to use data that wasn't explicitly entered by the user for the purposes of impressing a prospective date.
And while no program can predict love, it can reduce transaction costs, from e.g. distance, lack of social network, social anxiety upon meeting new people, etc. That friction is leading a lot of people to sit home alone when two apartments over there's a lovely person who would be thrilled to be out on a date with them. What type of commitment they make from there is beyond the purview of the technology.
All the best to you, your wife, and family. It's fascinating and wonderful to me there are little humans running around very may not have existed without the communication the internet enables :)
I would say that the two ways I am adding value here: 1) To discover potential dates rather than search for them 2) Mutual connection if both parties find each other cute/handsome/attractive.
Please let me know if I am wrong somewhere. Thanks
I don't know if Tinder's popularity has hit critical mass outside certain socioeconomic groups (i.e. young adults in the United States, especially college students), but you should check it out for some inspiration and op research.
Grouper is another good startup that is attempting to break the dating paradigm. They combine intelligent matching with "group dates," which is really just a hangout session at a bar with three guys who are friends with three girls who are friends. It takes the sketchiness element out of the equation for women, and preserves more of the current cultural trend away from formal dinner dates.
If you're outside the US, it's also possible that the US competitors might let you see a space that's wide open in your country, or vice-versa.
Once again, congratulations on building something, that clearly your users want. It's so easy to criticize and so hard to create, so please understand that any feedback is meant to be constructive and is only my subjective opinion.
The idea of mutual trust is dubious at best. What prevents two parties from conspiring in advance so that a third is tricked into believing things that are not true? I will say this: the majority of rapes and sexual assaults are committed by those who are very close to the victim, not by strangers -- and the rapist believes what they are doing is "sex".
But the Terms page says:
> We may get additional information from or about you in other ways not specifically described here. We might sell or rent your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your explicit consent.
Also, your name strikes me as the sort of thing that you will be spelling on the phone forever. Consider changing it or at least buying typo variations.
I suppose any other dating sites that break through will be based on extremely simple ideas with elegant or new user interfaces. For example, How About We is an extremely simple idea. The concept of dating friends of friends was already tried several times. The last time I heard of it it was being done by circl.es. I would suggest trying something that is really unique that nobody has ever heard of which would help you break out. I hate to say it but one of the other stories in the last year that was a break out story was Ms. Travel. Try to package what you're doing in a really crazy way. I hacked together a crazy photosheet interface that I've never seen before and it just wouldn't catch. Trying to think of any other thing I could think of which nobody has done, I tried the idea of online dating via the unix command line. That did get me some exposure but certainly not enough to get the wheels of traction turning.
For what it's worth, here's a story that came out on Jezebel.com about my project at the time (which I shut off after a couple of weeks after this article came out).
http://jezebel.com/5934969/new-techy-online-dating-site-is-u...
Good luck w your project!
Once you login, you will see that there are a lot of potential dates for you, if you have even 2 friends on tomonotomo. That's the beauty of the website, imho.
The intent was never to cheat you. Since apologies if I got you offended.
More men than women on those websites, the few women you get don't engage anyone for some reason so you usually end up having to buy cheap leads on silly marketing platforms and fake all the figures (men/women ratio, number of users, etc). Good luck though.
Another feature request: easy scheduling of events, so as a "first date" you could meet the person along with your mutual friends to help break the ice. I find the traditional 1-on-1 date puts a lot of pressure on people to perform well, vs getting to know each other in a relaxed social setting. I would keep these events private so they're only viewable by the immediate friend matrix, though.
(and definitely fix the boys & girls wordage)
Is it just me or does the site design look cheesy?
OkCupid is still the pinnacle of online dating and probably will be for a long time, because the whole point of dating is that you actually go out with someone and see if you hit it off. Just because someone is a friend of a friend doesn't mean they're any better or different than Random Person A, and if anything, you're greatly limiting your pool of options. And lastly, if you're having trouble meeting someone and don't live in the sticks, the problem is likely you.
P.S. -- The site name is exceedingly dumb.
I'd like to see a site where an algorithm is used to match interests only, if you match there, then photos can be viewed...or maybe not, but at least rely heavily on the interest metric. Maybe a site for intellectual-leaning people (or however one would want to word that) would also do well, or one that relies on Myers-Briggs (though I know that's not for everyone).
I love tomonotomo and actually I have a similar web site for job search/recruitment through connections discussed here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6327275
You do not share anything that is not required. We do not post anything on your wall. Facebook login is just to understand your network. I hope you will trust us, and become our user. Thanks
I'd actually hoped this was going to be more like Hire My Friend: http://www.hiremyfriend.io/
That's a job recruitment app based on the notion that someone in a job can't publicly announce that they are seeking a new job, and so their network advertises their availability anonymously.
That trick though, of getting people who know, to be the one to recommend someone... would work perfectly well with dating.
Despite the critical reviews here, you've built something that seems to be attracting users. How long has the site been online, and if that user-count on your homepage is legitimate - what methods have you used to attract your first 100,000 users?
>"Page Not Found! 404" immediately afterwards
>My Little Pony picture
>closing it, never planning on using it again
First impression is important.
I am sorry. I hope you will be forgiving and let us serve you. Thanks
honest question: is it that difficult to find a decent-2-word-combination.com?