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Comment by menloparkbum | Hacker News Reader

Your idea is pretty good. I signed up for OK Cupid a while back and repurposed the photos and certain other information from my FB profile. It would have been nice to just auto-import.

I would take a look at OK Cupid, if you haven't. The other dating sites like Match or eHarmony seem very "find your future husband or wife" oriented. The other end of the scale, AdultFriendFinder or even the Onion / Nerve personals are very ghetto/spammy and seem to be best suited for ugly people into weird sex stuff, or actual prostitutes.

OK Cupid has worked out very well for me in finding people who just want to go out on a few dates and have fun without the pretense of sizing me up for marriage or whether or not I'll fit into a harness in the dungeon.

If there was an iPhone app for OkCupid it would be nearly perfect. (for actual "dating.")

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You might also want to look into the UK site "Mysinglefriend" - my understanding of the site is that it is designed to help you find your friends dates.

I've been told (by a english female friend) that its quite successful in the UK, can anyone else confirm this?

My understanding is that it's the amateur matchmakers heaven. For friends who like to meddle in the affairs of others (eg, the female population) - which is how you also attract males to the site.

The tech-savvy ex-hipster geek-trash I know in Houston all love Ok Cupid. But they use it heavily for the sort of social networking that Facebook is suppoed to be for. (It's apparently better than Facebook for finding people with similar esoteric interests.)

On the flip side, Facebook & Friendster started out as surreptitious dating sites. People went on there to figure out who among their friend's friends were cute enough to date.

Your last point raises an interesting question - when the current business model of social networking sites is "keeping in touch with people you know", might a future business model be: "Helping you find people you don't know but will find useful - for work, dating or sports"?

LinkedIn has got the first covered.

For the dating piece, wonder if a "bounty" model might make sense. i.e. I will pay a matchmaker $1 to introduce me to a potential match (if I agree it is a good match based on some preliminary info about the person).

My wife and I met on OKC!

As did my wife and I. Victory!

I met my girlfriend on OKC!

OKC is definitely one of the best sites out there in this field. I made a very good friend on OKC and met my wife through her. OKC doesn't feel like a typical dating site and there is no actual dating required. Most of the people who go there are mostly in it for the quizzes.

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