Ask HN: Best ways to approach online dating (from a site design perspective)? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Best ways to approach online dating (from a site design perspective)?

1 pointpersonlurking3 comments

What are the best ways to theoretically approach online dating? Not personally, but from a site design perspective. Some sites might want the users to 'Like' each other in order to unlock the messaging service, others want you to answer questions (OKC) to highlight the match factor, etc.

It seems the main problem, aside from the chicken and the egg, is women don't really participate (or perhaps reciprocate is the right word), yet they have gone through the trouble of creating an account.

Using a hetero context as an example, wouldn't the best way be to use a free credits system where women get 5 credits per month (meaning they can contact up to 5 men) and men get 2 such monthly credits (in order for the women to not get bombarded)? To make this potentially viable, the site would also have to apply a 'use it or lose it' solution...that is, use the site actively or else your profile gets deactivated (not deleted, per se) or less visible for a certain amount of time as a penalty.

Are there better ways?

What kind of messages are you sending?

Ones that say 'Hi' or 'Hey' or don't seem like they've read the profile, or ones with long rambling cut and pasted generic rambling letters about how they are 'good people and want to treat you XYZ' don't really deserve replies. Do they just want anyone? Or are they looking specifically for something more?

Some message sent do deserve replies, but the people receiving them might just have a full schedule of work/life/ect. Not everyone who is on a dating site is actively searching daily.

Additionally, you can't know who is participating, only who is not participating with you. You may have really lovely words to share, but the recipient might be tracking 3 other message threads. No one is obligated to respond.

It's not really plausible to punish people for not being the right level of active on these sitss. The search results do tend to favor more active/updated profiles.

That said, if you can come up with a great way to improve engagement across a new dating platform, you may find some measure of success.

The IAC owns Match.com, OKC, Tinder and recently bought PlentyOfFish. Maybe you can make something new in a space that seems saturated, but is rapidly becoming more consolidated.

I met my wife about 6 years ago on OKCupid. From what I understand, the site has grown quite a bit and the audience has changed a bit.

With that said though, my advice: Send lots of messages, and go on as many dates as possible.

I'm living outside the US so users are limited, unfortunately. But the 'send lots of messages' idea is always one way to do it [1]

http://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/

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