

Ask HN: new dating site, where do the initial members come from? - metaprinter


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uptown
Some sites seed their userbase with fake profiles. Today you're probably
better off trying to convince people to fill out profiles as part of a pre-
launch viral campaign. People seem willing to provide pretty detailed info as
part of the "securing your username" come-on these days.

Now, when you do actually launch, you're sure to lose a large percentage of
those that signed up. Please make sure to provide a mechanism for easy account
cancellation, and I wouldn't recommend activating every sign-up without
another click of approval from those that did sign-up during the pre-launch
phase. The last thing a happily married person wants is for their profile to
pop up on a dating site because they didn't know they were signing up for a
dating site. But I'm sure you'll get some level of users that convert to
active users of the site once you're live if for no other reason than the fact
that their info is already in there ... they're single ... and they're
curious.

There's really a lot of ways you can go about it though. Maybe a Mechanical
Turk task. Or maybe rewards for referrals that actually convert. Just be
creative and think of what might convince you to sign up for your own site.

------
wmf
Fake profiles, essentially sock puppets of the founders.

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minalecs
what is your site

~~~
metaprinter
I don't have a dating site, it just seems like they are cropping up left and
right and it vexed me as to how their database is initially populated.

