
Why We Think We Can Prevail in the Notoriously Crowded Online Dating Space - achalkley
http://blog.date.fm/post/13817361596/date-fm-or-why-we-think-we-can-prevail-in-the
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silverlake
This doesn't solve anything. The core problem is that women get tons of spam
messages and men get very few responses. This means the matching algorithm is
broken. This site is just a tweak on hot or not.

~~~
DarkShikari
There are a few core problems here.

The first is that dating sites typically don't care about people actually
finding a good partner, because there's a negative economic incentive for it.
If you find your perfect man/woman, _you won't come back to the site and keep
paying_.

The reason why women typically get loads of spam is because many sites are
expressly designed to encourage this. A common pattern is where it is not made
clear whether or not a profile is active. Since only a small percentage of
profiles on the site are active, it's hopeless for a guy to try to send
detailed, personalized messages -- odds are, they'll all fall on deaf ears,
inactive accounts.

This is intentional -- because it lets the site appear as if they have far
more profiles than they actually do. Once they've suckered someone into paying
to send messages, they find that they get almost no responses, and end up
finding themselves forced to send hundreds just to reach a few live people.

Which of course leaves the recipients flooded by spam... so they leave. Adding
to the glut of inactive accounts.

Combined with the general sleaziness of the industry and the type of people
who _use_ general-audience dating sites (read: the type who tolerate all these
problems), it's no wonder the entire industry is a disaster.

There are definitely niches available for matchmaking sites _not_ built around
the typical model, that try to pair up people for long-term relationships
based on what actually matters instead of providing sex-starved 20-somethings
with people of the opposite sex to ogle. But it's hard to market such a thing,
even in a specific niche, because the entire industry tarred themselves with
their own brush, leaving a huge number of possible customers permanently
turned off from the idea of ever using such a service.

~~~
goodside
"The first is that dating sites typically don't care about people actually
finding a good partner, because there's a negative economic incentive for it.
If you find your perfect man/woman, you won't come back to the site and keep
paying."

Dating sites that think like this are in no actual danger of having their
users fall in love. It's hard enough even for well intentioned sites to set up
_enjoyable_ dates, let alone ones that lead to marriage.

If anyone actually had a dating service that worked so well they were losing
users due to excessive happy relationships, that would just mean they weren't
charging enough to get in: Imagine what people would pay for a service where
30% of all users end up with the love of their life within a year. Hell,
imagine the marketing value of having large numbers of satisfied couples going
around telling people they met on a particular site.

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danso
> _"I don’t think conversations start with “I don’t smoke, want 3 children,
> and am Catholic”. But this is basically what online dating sites do: they
> put a ton of information in a person’s profile, and ask other users to
> evaluate this data. There are certainly busy people who can’t be bothered
> with speaking to people, and want a dating service to run algorithms and
> find them someone. Maybe these people have played the dating game, and have
> had enough. They actively want something unnatural, and don’t mind if the
> computer sifts out people who aren’t their carbon copy."_

I don't necessarily disagree with most of what else you say in the blog post,
but if this is seriously your conception of how people use dating sites, then
you are doomed to fail.

Speaking from the experience of _living_ with various roommates who have done
e-dating with the popular services, none of them have ever approached them in
this mechanical way. The data helps refine the search, but they're still
looking for attractive people to chat with.

And that data part _is_ important. If you're a 20-year-old looking to have
fun, you're going to want to weed out anyone who is in an age demographic that
wants to have a life-long relationship. And vice versa. So _not_ having that
data is a disadvantage that you have to make up for.

~~~
fleitz
My friend wrote greasemonkey scripts for POF and OKCupid, all it does is
repeatedly search for his "type", builds a list of users and then messages
them just after they come online. Same thing if someone views his profile.
There's a 15 minute delay for that one so he doesn't come off as creepy.

Yeah it's spammy, but surprisingly effective, I'm encouraging him to write an
A/B testing module for it so he can test the effectiveness of different
messages.

Contrary to what one might think he's just using this for LTRs.

~~~
anonanonabc123
Are these posted anywhere or could I send an email asking for these? :)

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tryitnow
Good idea, I'll check it out.

one comment: "We thought about how most people meet. Generally, a person will
see someone, be attracted to them..."

That's not the first step. The first step is context, e.g. you're at a party
thrown by a mutual friend.

That first step is important, it's context and that's what needs to be fixed.
In the real world "dating contexts" are fairly limited, e.g. there are only so
many parties you can go to in a week, only so much time to participate in a
hobby with someone else, etc, etc.

I look forward to seeing this app evolve. If you address the "context" issue
it could really take off.

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jasonwatkinspdx
I think they underestimate how much of a role context plays in meeting people
in the real world. You may not have an online dating style bio sheet on your t
shirt, but that you and your crush are in the same place, likely doing the
same thing, provides a lot of information that you might be compatible.

~~~
fleitz
More than that, there is social proof, with dating sites you have to establish
social proof by yourself, where as in person you're usually introduced, or
know others at the event.

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kogir
This sounds oh so very much like Loopt Mix. While it may seem to be working at
first, as the app gains popularity the quality of the average match will fall,
the attractive/desirable people will leave, and you'll end up with a sketchy
hookup app where people pay for sex with iTunes gift cards[1].

I wish them luck, and would love to be wrong, but I'm skeptical.

[1] Yes, this actually happens in the real world. Nothing surprises me
anymore.

~~~
joshtimonen
You know, we discussed many ideas that have such public elements, like "Where
you are" public statements, but we ultimately decided against it because we
felt it might be susceptible to stalker behavior. And I don't think a lot of
people would be comfortable putting that kind of information out into the
world publicly. We kept coming back to the realization that a private chat is
where information has to be exchanged.

We also feel that the simplicity will help encourage new users as the months
and years go by. We think most people stay away from online dating because of
the unnecessary complexity, when really they just want to be able to start
chatting with people who like them, that they also like.

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jaredsohn
This is essentially a mobile advertising-supported implementation of
HotOrNot's MeetMe service.

My understanding is that MeetMe was hackable by 'liking' every single profile
just to see who likes you back (although there is still a risk that people on
the other side are also 'liking' every single profile which would make the
match worthless); curious if this service handles this differently.

~~~
joshtimonen
I encourage everyone to spend 10 minutes on hotornot.com, and then try date.fm
for 10 minutes. Once you've done that, I think you'll see just how different
it feels. While our monetization strategy is a simple ad banner, we think it's
much better than a complex system of paid accounts, credits and other upgrades
that most sites rely on for revenue.

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pinchyfingers
Since your idea is to recreate the experience of meeting in real life (I'm not
sure if this makes sense, because people could then just choose to meet IRL -
people date on-line for a reason), sell the same benefits that would convince
cool people to attend a party and meet up.

Your app is party without a headlining DJ or popular promoter.

Sell the benefits that would convince cool people to go to a party:

\- Convince females that your app discourages loser males who will spam them
for sex.

\- Convince males that there are plenty of females who are not justing wasting
men's time.

It seems like those are the benefits you are comfortable offering. There are
other benefits to users of dating sites, but it seems like date.fm isn't on-
board with the things people normally look for from on-line dating: pre-
qualified partners and easy sex.

I'd rather go to a party than meet girls on a phone app any day, but I'll def
try out date.fm and give some more feedback, if it gets any traction.

~~~
achalkley
We'd love to hear how you got on.

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bravura
Argh! If you want to improve dating using technology, stop focusing on how to
arrange first dates. That problem is basically solved to 90%.

Focus on how to fix the real problems in dating, i.e. the things that happen
between deciding to go on a date and agreeing you're in a relationship. No, I
don't know how to solve this in a scalable way. Yes, you will create a lot of
value if you can do this.

~~~
redthrowaway
>the things that happen between deciding to go on a date and agreeing you're
in a relationship

...are those which 99% of people don't want to outsource to technology. That's
the _fun_ part of dating: the fluttery-chested, "why can't I breathe right oh
god does she notice I'm not breathing" excitement. Let's not make An App For
That™.

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nyellin
Online dating is a huge potential market.

Whichever service eventually "solves" online dating wont call itself a dating
service. People don't use online dating because it is just that - online
dating. The social stigma isn't going away.

Facebook can disrupt online dating by introducing you to Facebook users near
you with common interests. Unfortunately, I am not convinced a startup can do
the same, or I would be doing it.

~~~
slig
Also friend of friends with similiar interests or letting the user match two
of his/hers friends that he/she think might get along, etc. I quite surprised
that they didn't get into that yet.

~~~
achalkley
I'd be interested to see if the third party could be bothered matching two of
their friends. It seems they'd have to go out of their way to use an app (on
facebook) to do that.

That sort of stuff would be initiated in a conversation with a singleton.

~~~
slig
I can only image they would. I often see people complaining that they don't
have anything to do on facebook, what means that they get bored, they want
more useless stuff to procrastinate.

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joshtimonen
We've posted some follow-up comments on how we're trying to improve the
quality of Date.fm here: [http://blog.date.fm/post/13881727508/how-quality-
and-simplic...](http://blog.date.fm/post/13881727508/how-quality-and-
simplicity-make-date-fm-something)

Would love to hear your thoughts.

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achalkley
We're approved! [http://itunes.apple.com/app/date.fm-simple-private-
free./id4...](http://itunes.apple.com/app/date.fm-simple-private-
free./id470074344?mt=8)

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helmut_hed
Is there some reason this is an exclusively iOS app? Seems like something
generally desirable... if appropriately designed. Or is there some business
reason for the restriction?

~~~
achalkley
A number of reasons:

It's to guarantee a certain quality in the user base. Uses GPS to get general
location and new iOS 5 face detection to guarantee 1 clear face in the profile
pic. So we shouldn't get people just showing their eyeball or a group photo
were you don't know who you're liking.

We're also native iOS developers. We're a two man band and have done
everything in-house, iOS, Rails and Node development. We've done the promo
video and composing of music in-house too. (Wife did the voiceover :)) All to
minimise costs.

The revenue from our other iOS apps will be subsidising server costs.

If and when we launch on other platforms, we'll be native and use the APIs to
guarantee a certain level of quality both in the App and in the user base.

Generally speaking, depending on how much income we generate will determine
expansion on other platforms. We'll have to react to demand.

