Dear HN - help me with my online dating site | Hacker News Reader

Dear HN - help me with my online dating site

16 pointssteveeq113 comments

Dear HN,

I'm trying to come up with some wildly different approaches to the online dating problem. I'm emphasizing concept development instead of technological development (which is overemphasized, in my opinion).

One strategy for instigating creative ideas is to ask oneself "what is the dominant idea behind all this?" Take Speed Dating, for example. The dominant idea behind speed dating is "going on a large number of small dates instead of a small number of long dates". One can throw out the "dating musical chairs" format, but still keep the basic concept. So my question is:

What is a good excuse/activity for people meet up for 5 minutes?

I'm thinking about hooking up people via gps/cell phones, although that may change. I would like to get some input or ideas of anything that comes to mind. I don't care if it's outlandish or "probably won't work". I'm not looking for "right", I'm looking for "different". While the "crazy, but wrong" idea might not work, a related idea could, so please don't hold back.

- Steve

PS Any hackers on my list who are into experimenting with concepts (not necessarily this one), join my meetup "Hacker Codejam": http://www.meetup.com/hacker-codejam/ . It's kinda a hangout for programmers who like to work on their side projects from time to time.

Plug into facebook. This will allow you to attract users because there's no registration barrier, and collect information about the user's tastes and interests. Then use that information to find like-minded individuals who would be a good match. Now you could connect that with your GPS idea. If you're within, say, five miles of a good match, a notification goes off on your cell phone saying you should meet this person. If both parties confirm, your service would provide a means of having them connect in real life. Either it could call them both and connect them, or it could propose a mutual location for them to meet.

How about you make a deal with theaters etc... in the area.

Couples go online and pick shows/movies they want to watch.

You match people by show, time, area, etc and when they both agree they PayPal you the money to buy the tickets online.

They meet at the theater or a nearby public place.

So, they have a common interest, feeling of safety, immediate discussion points, etc...

And maybe you can squeeze a percentage of the ticket price from the theater.

Okay, I've never been able to figure this one out... you're saying the perfect place for a first date is a large darkened room filled with strangers and an attention grabbing audio-visual bonanza?

I just don't get it.

Maybe as a second or thid date, once you've figured out some particularly interesting inde film you think he/she might like. Otherwise it just seems a bit uncomfortable to me.

Anyway, having said that: I wonder if you can utilise aspects of speed dating and social media. The point of speed dating is the anonymity (it's a person, not a profile), and a (woefully) popular part of social networking are those abhorent lists of likes and dislikes. Throw people together "willie nillie" (anonymously so to speak) and provide them with some of the aforementioned evil lists to fill in about the other half. This can then be pushed as marketing info, and you can direct the latest black and white french film that the local picturehouse is showing to the perfect couple... the idea being that it is the other way round, (active instead of passive) so it still has the feeling that you invited her to this movie because she told you it was her favourite. You didn't just read it on a profile and think that'll do.

I like a movie as a first date. You meet and get to chit-chat for about 10-15 minutes before the movie. Then you get to just quietly get used to being by the other and no pressure of conversation during the movie.

After you can continue to chit-chat and get dinner or coffee. If things aren't going well you can easily bail (or they can). I find it's a nice simple format. Compared to starting with say dinner.

I think there needs to be a way to leverage a person's social graph. I'm in a three-year relationship that came about because a mutual friend played matchmaker.

By having the two parties connected to each other via mutual friends you also address some of the safety concerns - perhaps you require someone in the chain from person A to person B to vouch for each of them.

This may or may not tie into an existing social network - the problem with making it tied to Facebook is that not everyone wants to announce to the world that they're looking for a date, for fear of appearing desperate, or because they use Facebook for other purposes (such as business connections). Another potential downside is that a lot of people go online specifically to date OUTSIDE their current circle of friends.

(As an aside, I typed this and was reminded of what my little brother and his friends called the "Friendster game" in college - going through acquaintances' friends to score who had the hottest friends.)

I had an idea to make a designer clothing retail store into a dating site a while back... I'll share my notes:

If you are trying to build on online e-commerce site that sells apparel and want to BE something different, then... build a free Online Dating site with a Catch:

Validated Profiles (aka. Real People) - Must have/buy an outfit from [Designer Clothes Retailer] and wear it on the photo to be able to use all of features of the site (look but don't touch model).

You can coerce people at the stores to register (discounts or good salespeople) to get it started ( just need a camera and a laptop, good lighting, and a backdrop with logo on it).

Have buy this outfit on every profile, and given the ability to rate people and clothes separately (hot or not style) then you overcome the (straight) guys looking at guys problem by showing them what outfits were top rated by girls... and so on.

speed dating is in large groups of people, it's safe, and there's not much pressure.

a lot of people (especially women) don't want a spontaneous meet-up alone with some random internet person they've never seen nor know anything about.

even on sites like okcupid where you can email/instant message someone for weeks while having a completely filled out profile with pictures and background information, many are still uncomfortable meeting up in person.

unless your site is going to be geared towards hookups and one-night stands. then it would probably work exactly for those same reasons; it's somewhat anonymous and quickly provides a way to meet someone extremely local.

One Idea I've thought in this area solves the question you were asking about, what activity/excuse the users have to come meet?

Well instead of that being a question for you, make it for the users... Users can enter in activities they want to do? (may it be grab some coffee, see a new show, bird watching, even slightly non dating things like jogging or carpooling, etc). It'd be something like Craiglist, but more focus and non chaotic on this aspect of person-person activities... Now the site would do is match up these based on relatedness of activities the person would like to do.

Try this: Have your user select some 5 people they would like to date. Once selected shoot an email off to 5 of the user's friends asking them to have a look at the prospective date's profiles and tell which would be most appropriate for the user. Then confirm with the user and setup a date.

DISCLOSURE: This idea is not my own. I read about it somewhere, most probably a previous HN thread.

I had some friends that started dating from hotornot.com and the interesting thing I think is that it is more like a game or a place to amuse yourself for a few minutes than a dating site. So I think that's an interesting principle, wrap up a dating site in a game format.

You could base your meet-ups on anonymity and uniformity. I've always wondered why these sites focus so much on pictures. I think they should be based on personality and similar interests. Take the pictures and user-ids out of the list of people going to meet up. Also you can add structure to the event. I find people are much more likely to meet a bunch of strangers if they know exactly what to expect and what is going to happen.

The social map idea isn't bad at all: you might not get a great idea about a person by their biased autobiographical profile. Looking at their facebook or myspace activity may glean much more insight as to their personality.

One of the things that strikes me about dating sites is how they're designed for people who are the absolute best at communicating and putting forth a good impression. If online daters were so good at that they probably wouldn't be trying to get a date online! There needs to exist mechanisms that help people to express themselves. Also, I could just be crazy, but it seems like there's some inherent dishonesty in presenting yourself via online dating. Are you lonely? Horny? Bored? There doesn't seem to be a way to express any emotions or desires that others may share without appearing undesireable. Some way for people to connect based on their emotional state seems useful to me, I just don't know how you'd present it to users (other than perhaps through hidden settings and a "show me users who feel similarly to how I do" list method).

i speculate that with dating paradigms, women fear:

1) safety 2) stalking 3) hurting a guys feelings

men fear

1) rejection 2) stigma of "resorting" to a dating site 3) not having to face a girl he's not interested in

so, if you can solve these things you've got something.

i think an iphone/gphone app with faces you can flip through (here are some guys/girls in your area) would be neat. really simple interface. also, i'd let anyone browse, no signup, but if they want to date, they have to sign up and get verified. or something like that.

i agree about the other comment about verified identities. you might want to drop a postcard in the mail with a code and have them enter the code online to verify they're real. that would help remove the safety and stalking factor for women.

What you're very close to describing here is the Loopt Mix app. There is a small sign up, but its pretty quick and simple. The number one issue with these platforms is that they are plagued with a large number of males completely throwing off the male to female ratio. The problem to overcome is how to get women to use these applications.

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