
Show HN: Overlap.me - a new way to meet people & share your identity online - h34t
http://www.overlap.me/blog/introducing-overlap-dot-me
======
Shenglong
Does this really overcome awkwardness? I don't think awkwardness is ever a
function of not having enough common interests. I've had brilliant dinners
with girls who've had zero interest in theoretical physics, and yet, I talked
about it for a good half of the dinner. Reciprocally, I have very little
interest in shoes, but I've been fascinated by explanations of shoes.

Yet, there have been times where we share the same interests, but the other
person is especially boring. It doesn't matter what interests you share, if
the other person can't elaborate on their interests or offer insight/comments.

Also, sometimes I like talking to people with completely different interests.
One of my favorite persons actually is my exact polar opposite. We get along
great, but we share 0 common interests.

I'm pointing this out as a consideration factor, not because I don't like your
project. I think you do have a good start... but feedback never hurts? :)

~~~
h34t
Of course, feedback is most welcome.

It's not that you need to have a lot in common with someone to get along. The
hypothesis of the app is simply that the least-awkward way to _begin_ a
conversation _is_ by starting out with the common ground you share. From this
warm introduction, it's then easy to move on to other topics.

And, the awkwardness I'm trying to overcome is the small kind--how to make the
first comment, how to send that first message. I personally find blank message
screens intimidating.

~~~
Shenglong
If this works out as you expect, I'll definitely be looking forward to it.
Your problem identification is spot on, even if we have different thoughts on
the solution!

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tcgore
This is a really, really good idea. Much time has been spent discussing
separating different parts of your social life, but the idea of doing it based
on "shared secrets" is great.

A big obstacle in my mind is duplication of overlaps, e.g. 'I read Hacker
News' and 'I read HN'. The both mean the same thing, but if two users click
"Me Too" on the different versions, they won't see the common interest. People
may be tempted to just add a new overlap instead of searching for an existing
version, especially as the number of users and possible overlaps grow.
Hopefully you can find a way to have the community help aggregate overlaps.

~~~
h34t
Yup, this is definitely a problem that will need solving. Aware & thinking :).

~~~
siculars
I would recommend a user curated feature to that marks 'overlaps' as
duplicates that then get sent to some human to moderate. Similar to user
curated spam or inappropriate material.

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btucker
I like the simplicity of this. Here's your biggest problem I think: I just
filled in a bunch of overlaps (which was kind of fun), but that's probably all
i'm going to do right now & I'll likely forget all about overlap.me by
tomorrow.

Somehow you need to get back in front of me--say next week--with some reason
I'd want to return.

~~~
h34t
A big challenge is simply having enough users to give you the sense that when
you're bored or lonely, you could rely on Overlap.me to help you find
connection.

I figure "small wins" -- like the initial fun of joining your first overlaps
-- are a step towards building this critical mass. They don't encapsulate a
long-term value proposition, but they get the site part-way there.

Some of the early testers found the service quite addicting and were returning
every day to see who had joined the overlaps they've created. So another
opportunity might lie in building more of an experience around this sense of
belonging/community.

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djm
I've been thinking about this space a little too & seeing your site reminded
me of a tv clip I saw some time ago that compared the western and eastern
approaches to social networking.

The western approach was described as bringing your real life network online
(fb etc)[1] and the eastern approach was described in terms of sites that
allow people to create temporary ad-hoc networks based around shared
interests. The example of this given in the program was mixi.jp which is
apparently huge in japan.

This latter approach seems to be closer to what you are trying to do. It'll be
interesting to watch how far you get with this, so please keep posting to hn
to keep us up to date.

[1] This description works for fb but I don't think it really applies to
twitter.

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ianterrell
First marketing message received!

"You like data visualizations? Check out my company!"

~~~
h34t
Please be sure to mark spam as spam

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bravura
One thing I don't understand when I sign up:

 _Should I use a pseudonym or my real name?_

In general, I prefer to use my real name. However, if personal sentiments of
mine will be shared publicly, then I prefer pseudonymity.

~~~
h34t
I've gone back-and-forth in my mind about this. At the moment I have my real
name on the site, but I don't think it's necessary.

When you meet new people in real life, names are only given after a certain
amount of trust has already been built.

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tdoggette
Are you the founder? (If you are, we have 11 things in common!) This is a
really neat idea, and the post does a good job explaining it. I just signed up
and I'm playing around.

A brief note: the "Show me [Safe for all ages|Moderate\Unsure|Restricted]
overlaps" is awkwardly phrased-- if I select Restricted, is the site gonna be
all sex, all the time, or will I still get the unrestricted overlaps?

Also in that little settings pane, having to click OK after selecting from a
dropdown is annoying-- I expect it to work like other dropdowns, where it
stays like I left it if I click somewhere else.

I like that after searching for an overlap and not finding it, I can click
"New Overlap" and it auto-populates, but does that need to be a separate text
field? The transition feels a little awkward, and it needs to be very smooth
to encourage people to create new overlaps.

I'm still playing with it, but I think it's a very neat concept that could get
big.

EDIT: Okay, if I "Me Too" and overlap, I get to see who else did too, over on
the right, but it's still one more click to open up our overlaps, a scan
through the list, some typing, and another click before I can send them a
message about how we both like Nutella. What if there were a message button by
each person that I could use right after I "Me Too" something to talk to them
about it?

Sorry if this is disorganized and long, I'm just adding as I go through the
site.

~~~
h34t
Indeed, solo founder here :).

Good points re: settings UI. Will fix shortly.

Hmm will think about the New Overlap flow. I wanted there to be more space
than the search field allows, and also to make sure people review the options
available.

Originally I had a single text box that would automatically find/create an
overlap for whatever you typed in... but I want people to review existing
overlaps first. If a similar overlap is already popular it would make sense to
join that one.

~~~
tdoggette
What if, for a search with no good results, it spat down the extra "new
overlap" UI with the search text already filled in?

EDIT: Or keep it the way it is, just with the same field for search and the
new overlap, but with the other stuff being visible on the button click.

~~~
h34t
Hmm now that makes a lot of sense.

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Postscapes
I am currently living in Seoul for short term and we are always talking about
how this social segment is really missing outside of specific online community
meetups.

Overall, I think this is really cool concept and on the right track.
Currently, I would like to drill down first by Location/Region followed by
interests and then have you show me who fits those two criteria. If there are
too many matches I would refine/add more and if too few pull back on my
interest selections.

Good luck on the project!

~~~
h34t
Great ideas... these features were added a couple days after launch.

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icebraining
Suggestion (for the future): use the Last.fm API to, if the user is
interested, link his/her profile to overlap.me. Then you can use his/her top
artists, albums or tracks to provide suggestions for overlaps.

EDIT: A faster suggestion: please make the overlap "suggester" ignore common
prefixes such as 'I like', 'I love', 'I am', etc.

~~~
h34t
Both great suggestions. Thanks.

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eftpotrm
Interesting - signed up, created a few overlaps, will see what happens.

Apologies if I'm blind but I couldn't see an easy way to see who matched
overlaps? Could be useful to do a list of users according to match rates, or
to find those who match a certain profile.

Also, might there be some value to doing _negative_ matches as well as
positive?

~~~
h34t
The best way to discover users now is to browse overlaps. Sorting user lists
by match rates is temporarily disabled until I ensure the back-end is ready to
handle the load (this is the first major public posting of the site).

Filtering, by both match rates and location, will obviously be a high priority
as the # of users increases.

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jeffchuber
Are you worried at all that people will add things that they aren't interested
in - just to see if others are? Curious what you've thought about that, and
how you plan to mediate it. Definitely good ways to do so. BEST OF LUCK!
Identity is a majorly messed up space, and this is a much better direction.

~~~
h34t
This is why I liken overlaps more to 'tact' than 'privacy'... because you
can't prevent people from lying/misrepresenting themselves, nor can you
prevent people from changing honestly wanting to change their overlaps over
time (you might be Christian today, but atheist tomorrow...).

One possible solution is to only let you leave an overlap a week after you've
joined. But then you have an incentive to create a fake account, and you can't
use it for short term overlaps (like joining "I feel like shit" for four
hours).

~~~
jeffchuber
Gotcha - makes sense. Could be fun to go into anonymous mode, or something of
the sort. If you want to drive true identities just make each overlap a public
declaration (you have to tweet to add) or something like that. Always tricky
where to place your barrier to participation ;)

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paulocal
This is pretty sweet! I like the idea a lot... Just out of curiosity, did you
develop this yourself?

~~~
h34t
Yup, in Ruby/Rails 3.1 & CoffeeScript/Backbone.js.

It's actually my first web app.

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dumbphone
I have to admit that my first thought was, "Yawn, yet another social
something-something," but then I read the blog post and was pleasantly
surprised. I might just sign up.

Btw., the design could use some tweaking. It looks a little like a Microsoft
FrontPage template.

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8dot5by11
Just signed up. Looks like an interesting concept. Just a thought, but why not
hide the overlaps I've already added? Or as an option. Would definitely help
out; less scrolling down the better. Also, newly added overlaps with a "new"
icon?

~~~
h34t
Hmm an option to hide does make sense. Still need to have an easy way to
navigate to your overlaps (there's a "My Overlaps" link, but it's not very
prominent).

With more data it'll be also be possible to suggest overlaps to you based on
what you've already joined.

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craigmc
Really nice take on the issue of not forcing users to create a "one-size-fits-
all" online persona (which currently is such a limitation of most social &
dating sites). Obviously, you've got issues of how to reach a wide enough
audience to get it off the ground if you are flying solo, but some of the
dating sites are fairly acquisition-oriented (e.g. Cupid plc over here in the
UK) and so attracting their attention might be the way to go (if you haven't
already raised some external funding by the time I've posted this comment...)

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Sukotto
When I set my location to "New York City, NY, USA" I think that should auto-
trigger overlaps like

    
    
      - I live in New York City
      - I live in New York State
      - I live in the United States

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bkudria
This is actually pretty interesting.

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sadlyNess
Like the concept and if you work on the feedback, then you are onto something
and I think your competition ATM is Google+(haven't used G+ yet). Get a co-
founder and a strategy. Your "Add tag" should read "Press Tab to add tag" or
similar. I should be able to comment with my OL(yeah, Overlap) acc since i
have one. Nice design, but needs more work(you have set a high par,run with
it). Breath deep and give us something great.Good Luck

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markddotme
I'd love to use this for finding co-founders or team building, so some form of
grouping feature would be helpful to organize certain overlaps together. After
signing up and adding a number of overlaps I immediately thought that this is
how Hunch, Quora, and/or LinkedIn should feel in terms of experience. So far I
really like this. Looking forward to seeing it grow.

~~~
h34t
It's a great idea and I've experimented with UI's for grouping in the past
(grouping/lists were a victim of the simplify-before-launch phase).

All tweets, blog posts, postcards, phone calls to friends, shouts from
rooftops etc. would be greatly appreciated in helping Overlap grow ;-). My
marketing budget is less than what I spend on coffee, and I'm currently in
Colombia.

~~~
markddotme
Yes, a good call in this case, and a rallying tweet has just been sent.

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masterzora
I decided to check it out and take a look around and I'm already running into
my first issue! It won't let me update my location at all.

Running Chrome 12.0.742.100 on Maverick.

Unrelated feedback wrt the dating settings: restricting the gender
identifications to male/female and most definitely restricting the "looking
for" to male XOR female leaves a nontrivial number of people in a bit of a
bind.

~~~
h34t
Pushing a fix for the location bug right now.

Dating settings will be updated... I removed extra options yesterday to
simplify the user queries, but they will be put back in.

~~~
snprbob86
That UI is also has several UX problems:

1) Poor defaults - better to pick "Choose One" / NULL instead of
misclassifying gender, etc

2) Small widgets, hard to click/read

3) Confusing "OK" button and saving behavior

4) Hard to even find in the first place!

~~~
h34t
The placement is deliberate -- dating won't be a viable use case for the site
until user count has increased substantially. Right now it's mostly there to
make people feel comfortable that if they leave dating off, they shouldn't be
bothered.

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zbanks
Very nice!

It'd be cool if you could select a bunch of "Me too" options when you first
sign up without it reloading the right sidebar. On Chrome at least, it slows
down, gets choppy, and makes it hard to click on other options & scroll until
its fully loaded.

Once you've made some initial overlaps, you should be fine. Starting off it
just is a bit tricky.

Besides this, it's a cool idea. Good luck!

~~~
h34t
Good to know, I'll think about how to handle this. (The problem of not testing
on other people's machines!)

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dadads
This is an interesting concept.

You could definitely release interesting stats on what people like,
particularly on how certain subjects correlate with each other.

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d0m
So, after only 3 answers it went from girls to hardcore geek; damn.

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johnnyjustice
Put a flattr up buddy! I want you to succeed, this shizz is awesome.

