

Show HN: Weekend project, fun spin on dating. Only friends edit your profile - jmtame
http://www.cupidwithfriends.com

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aggronn
Honestly, I think this is a brilliant idea for a few reasons, but the most
significant can probably be explained by this real-life comparison:

Consider two scenarios. a) You go out to a party, by yourself, with the sole
intention of meeting someone you can take home, or ask on a date. or b) your
friends think you need a girlfriend or boyfriend, and drag you out to a party
and try to get you to meet people and facilitate it that.

Scenario (a) is a relatively uncommon occurrence with, what I assume to be, a
lower success rate than (b). Unfortunately, all successful dating sites thus
far are almost perfectly analogous to (a).

The differences between the two situations are pretty big because of the
countless nuances that make people just generally seem more sociable when
they're _being social_ compared to when they're sort of _trying_ to be social.

In a sense, this introduces the concept of a good wingman into the online
dating scene.

Beyond that, I think by having other people manage your profile, you're taking
away some of the stigma associated with dating profiles. Among them that they
can become very self-important, uncomfortably personal, and come with a
certain level of expectation of being honest. By making everything second-
hand, you have to be more realistic in your evaluations of people's profiles.

Moreover, I think it dampens the 'desperation' factor. I think this is also a
lesson we can gain from the analogy in my second paragraph.

~~~
angryasian
I didn't try the app, but I would say its not because its a lot of work to be
asking of people. Filling out a profile is incredibly tedious. On top of that,
if a person's friend were to write something unflattering or something that
wasn't agreeable, I imagine the person would ask their friend to change. So
basically you would get the same response as if the person had to the time to
fill out the profile themselves.

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JDGM
There's been a UK version of this around for a while now:
<http://www.mysinglefriend.com>.

I know this because it has been advertised quite a lot in the popbitch
newsletter but today is the only time I have visited the site (via a google,
before posting this comment, to check I didn't imagine the whole thing). I
find this process interesting. I might have thought the adverts were useless
on me, as I never clicked them, but lo and behold the company stuck in my
brain somewhere and here I am sharing the information on an internet forum (to
appear knowledgable? for karma? why?). Takeaway: advertising is more powerful
than I thought.

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davemel37
David Ogilvy calls this "The Moving Train of Interest."

~~~
haliax
Source? Google yields nothing for that phrase.

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melvinram
I like the quotes on the left :)

Favorite: "I got my friend laid with this web site." - Nobody, ever

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llamallama
This is funny, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet:
<http://i.imgur.com/f3m2F3d.png>

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delano
If the situation were reversed, the dialogue would be mainly about the
injustice of an established company ripping off the design.

It probably doesn't matter much for a weekend project though.

~~~
FreshCode
Surely this would be acceptable as satire on his part?

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hojoff79
This idea is great in concept, but has been tried before in several versions
and has yet to gain traction. I believe in the social arena, no one has found
a viable solution yet.

The real crux of this (at least one crux, if you see this more as a gimic
dating then you may view it another way) is creating a verified online image /
reputation. This site simply applies that to dating, with the idea here being
you are not creating the profile so it is by definition verified by other
people who created it.

I had friends who attempted a social network startup based on this idea. The
obvious problem you run into is the temptation by friends to write jokes /
things that are untrue, which I think actually increases with a site like
this. I absolutely want to see who starts reaching out to my friends after I
write describe them as "Avid Harry Potter fan, captain of the local quiditch
team" and add a status updates like "He's in a bad mood today, very upset he
scratched his wand yesterday". Our friends attempted to put some legitimacy
behind their site by requiring you to accept statements before they were
publicly viewed, but then you lose a lot of the legitimacy / verified nature
of the profile.

Eventually they pivoted to the professional arena, with recommendations by
professionals, professors, etc. People who by the nature of your relationship
are more likely to respond accurately. There are issues with this model as
well, such as co-workers who you pissed off writing bad things, selection bias
if you get to pick who reviews you (anonymous helps that) etc, but I think
there are significantly inherent advantages in the professional arena. But
even in that area, I don't think the main "issue" has been resolved.

This is definitely a concept with real business potential should it be
mastered; it solves a "real-problem" which many startups do not (with the
specific application here being online dating, but there are 20 other great
applications which could become viable businesses). I certainly do not mean to
discourage the work done (I think the site actually looks good in form and
function), but it is my opinion a tweaks on this current model will not emerge
as solutions to the broader reputational verification issue online. I believe
an outside the box and completely different solution will emerge in this area.

What do people think? Is anyone familiar with a version of this model that
really does work? Or has anyone seen another model which solves this issue and
works?

~~~
jmtame
That's interesting, would you mind posting the link to the site or name of the
company that was doing this before? Would love to check them out.

I think it's something we're opinionated on: dating doesn't need to be a
serious business. It's okay to be humorous, and that's also being honest. If
your friends joke around and are sarcastic, you like their sense of humor, and
it communicates implicitly "these are the kind of friends I have, if you don't
like them, we might not get along."

There's a difference between nasty comments/bullying and sarcasm, and we'll
allow bad stuff to get flagged and take it down.

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elliottcarlson
Excellent idea - we had a co-worker at my old job that had his OK Cupid
profile in github. We all made pull requests and tried to make it far more
appealing. It was fun, but I can also see how this could work as a site.

~~~
goo
I love that... I wonder if he gave anyone commit privileges..

~~~
YokoZar
Personally I'd rather rebase than commit.

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404error
You guys should rotate a guy/girl image on the front page and a/b test. :-)

~~~
obilgic
Notice red background.

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niggler
Is there any way to demo / use this without FB? (I understand why you want to
connect to FB though)

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jmtame
Not right now. Maybe in the future we'll let you join using e-mail, but for
now it makes it a lot easier to prevent people from faking their own profiles
and it also speeds up the process of adding friends.

~~~
daave
This.

"CupidWithFriends would like to access your public profile, friend list, email
address, custom friends lists, birthday, current city and your friends'
relationships, birthdays, current cities and photos." -> Cancel

(In general, I don't feel like Facebook should let me give my friends' photos
[not just mine, but theirs] away to a 3rd party without their explicit consent
first).

Relatedly, the 'Why Facebook' hover text says: "We use Facebook to make it
easy to see which friends use the service, add existing friends, and prevent
certain friends from seeing your profile. We do not post to your wall or spam
your friends."

So my friends who I don't want to have see my profile will know I'm hiding it
from them? Because they'll know I'm using the service, but they can't see my
profile?

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simondlr
Had a similar idea a while back. Allow people to sign up, create a profile,
etc. Then have matchmakers. People browsing profiles and matching people up.
If they start dating, you get rep for being a good matchmaker.

~~~
davemel37
sawyouatsinai.com is exactly this for jewish dating.

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rfurmani
That's really cool! I have worked along the lines of making a wiki-style
profile for everyone (<http://wikisapien.com/>) but the whole dating angle
gives this site a neat hook that should attract good users.

~~~
18pfsmt
I think your project is quite nice, but I'm an extremely private person, and
don't wish to be found by random folks I went to high school with or be
stalked by ex-es. So, some way to not be listed in any searchable directory
would be a must. The only simple way I can see this being feasible would be to
only allow "un-listed" people to find the others. If two people are both "un-
listed," I'm not sure how that would work. Perhaps they would have to exchange
private keys in person?

~~~
rfurmani
You can set permission on who can see your account, and if one does not have
permission to see you then you will not appear in the search results. In
particular you can set it to be completely private.

~~~
genwin
Is the profile that's edited by those who have your permission to see you
visible to others who don't have your permission to see you?

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nate_martin
Wont people just make fake fb friends and write their own profile?

~~~
davemel37
and do all the work? I would rather my friends write it up and get one of my
close friends to make the edits I want.

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johnnyb9
Love the idea! One suggestion is to add a footer, even if it's just a
copyright. Like Marissa Meyer said for Google, it gives the site more of a
punctuated end.

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Cmccann7
I love this concept. Your app seriously needs a few things though.

1) You have to be able to message people on a dating site, none of this coming
soon button. 2) You have to be able to have some rudimentary search/filter.
People want to find people of the gender they are interested in, location,
etc.

You've probably thought of both of these already but a dating site really has
to have both of those.

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creativityhurts
The reviews are very well done but I'd still like to see more
info/demo/screenshots before logging in with Facebook though.

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joshmattvander
Copy is hilarious!

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MasterScrat
That's great, but won't it be creepy to get messages from a dating website you
never signed up to? Or is the person whose profile you're editing asked to
give permission before the profile goes public?

~~~
rhizome
Hah, it's the dating version of GetSatisfaction!

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davemel37
The logical next step is to hook up the bridesmaids with the best men who
created the profiles for the happy couple.

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alhaigh
we built a whole site several years ago round this concept -
www.datemymate.co.nz (bit outdated now, but you get it)

~~~
cybernomad99
I like the idea. What happened? Social graph was not as pervasive as now.. I
think this idea has a chance... Act quick before FB makes it a feature into
their website... Linkedin has similar feature with their endorsement from
coworkers..

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orangethirty
Landing page says nothing about the product. How about some information before
forcing people to log in?

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tantalor
Right, I'm totally confused who this product is for. Is it for people who want
to date, or for people who don't want to date but want to edit their friends'
dating profiles?

How do I know if I have a friend who has a dating profile? Do they have to
share that with me in a side channel like their newsfeed?

Don't get me wrong, Facebook should buy this "weekend project" for $10M before
it gets out of hand. I'm just not sure if I'm going to regret clicking
"Connect". Before we connect, how about you sell me on it.

~~~
jmtame
This is about playing the wingman role for your friends and helping them out.

What I've noticed happen is that after commenting on my friends' profiles,
they've commented on mine. They just want to reciprocate the favor. But nobody
joins the site asking their friends to do it.

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afandian
See also: <http://www.mysinglefriend.com/>

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jimmaswell
I wonder if making fake friend profiles for this and doing it that way would
be effective.

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jmtame
That won't work. You have to have 100+ Facebook friends to join.

~~~
jimmaswell
Then I guess it'd just be a problem of dedication. Or outsourcing the job
somewhere

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jmtame
That's a lot of work to fake a profile, so it seems like the odds are much
lower with us vs. another site where all you need is an e-mail address. I also
think Facebook is also good at detecting fake accounts.

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ben0x539
Do you offer anything to people who won't connect to Facebook or whatever?

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ballstothewalls
This is a great idea.

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henghonglee
PHOTO UPLOAD FEATURE PLEASSSEEEEEEEE~~

