

No, OkCupid, we don't want to "talk" - jfong
http://jmtame.posthaven.com/no-okcupid-we-dont-want-to-talk

======
Connaissance
Honestly this felt like a very arrogant post. OKCupid may not be perfect, but
it's _far and away_ the best site out there, and loved by most of its users.

Furthermore the founder wasn't a dick to you in his comment. So all in all,
I'm not sure trashtalking him/OKC is going to help you.

~~~
EvanKelly
I think OP could have used some "BloggingWithFriends". Maybe his friends could
have helped proofread and tone down the perceived arrogance.

Notice how PG always thanks his proofreaders, even for seemingly short and
pointed blog posts.

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draftable
Wow. I was iffy on the OP to begin with after he basically proclaimed that he
had reinvented online dating by essentially cloning www.mysinglefriend.com,
and this just confirms it.

This whole post smacks of arrogance. Essentially you want us to pat you on the
back for giving a big, public “F you” to a competitor because you ASSUME that
him wanting to chat means they want to acquire you? If this is how you act in
casual online encounters then I’m starting to understand why online dating
hasn’t worked out for you.

~~~
scarmig
Well, online dating really is a gigantic clusterfuck. I'm not in the market
(found my partner, of three years, on OkC), but I despised the process while I
was doing it.

I read the initial post and thread about it and was skeptical, but my thought
was mostly along the lines of "go for it! There must be a way to significantly
improve online dating, and I certainly don't have any better ideas."

Now I just think he's a dick, though, and emotionally root for his failure.
Why the hell be nasty to someone for no reason except free PR?

------
scarmig
tldr Engineer from OkC invites company founder to coffee to chat about online
dating, founder picks fight for page views

~~~
Connaissance
Ahah...pretty much.

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alxbrun
"Why do you think OkCupid messages exist? It's not actually for 'connecting',
because who's on there looking for a penpal? "

My friend, to start with you should learn a little bit about women
psychology...

Online dating != Picking up items in an online store

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SilentStump
I will stake my reputation that the girl two up from the bottom left corner of
blendr is "Good Girl Gina," but the image is flipped or something. For most of
the dating apps it's pretty obvious how many accounts are fake.

~~~
EvanKelly
That screenshot looks like it's full of professional photos. Either I need to
get some better headshots or that's a mock-up made by Blendr.

~~~
scarmig
You do need some better headshots most likely, but that's because any given
person on OkCupid likely has terrible, terrible profile pictures.

Good resolution, good lighting, and bright colors. Fixing that can immediately
significantly improve response rates (or give a response rate, as the case may
be).

~~~
EvanKelly
I don't have a profile, but i do remember reading a pretty interesting OKCupid
blog post correlating response rate to the quality of the camera taking the
photo.

Here it is: <http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/dont-be-ugly-by-accident/>

~~~
mistercow
I don't think you can infer much from that beyond the fairly obvious fact that
expensiveness of camera is correlated with interest (and by extension skill)
in photography. Unless you control for that, any connection you draw between
camera price and perceived attractiveness is bound to be spurious.

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el_cuadrado
What is the point of responding to a casual HN comment with a blog post,
besides PR opportunity?

~~~
alxbrun
PR opportunity.

------
runT1ME
What fascinates me about the online dating market is that the optimal user
experience is indirectly proportional to a customer's lifetime revenue in any
site that is ad based or subscription based.

If a company was purely motivated by profit, I imagine that some clever use of
ML would reveal an optimal ($ wise) timeframe for matching a user with their
eventual mate (assuming their matching algorithm was perfect), and it wouldn't
be 'as soon as possible'.

Too soon and you're missing valuable revenue, too late and the user gets
frustrated and quits. Do companies do this? Probably not. As matching
algorithms become more advanced and more people use online dating though...

~~~
goodside
Nobody at OkCupid thinks like this. We want people to enjoy the site so
they're inclined to pay for premium membership, which they won't do if it
sucks. We want people to return to the site if they're single in the future,
and to recommend it to their single friends. Optimizing for ad impressions
over user experience isn't a road we want to go down.

~~~
fossuser
This reminds me of a conversation Larry and Sergey had when they had first
come up with page rank and were trying to sell it to existing search engines.

The companies complained that their algorithm was too good and that users
would leave the search portal too quickly without seeing any advertising.

It was obvious to Page and Brin that this was stupid - pushing them to start
Google.

------
thwest
Is any serious scammer going to be deterred by needing to obtain a facebook
account with 50 friends?

~~~
lnanek2
Meh, it's a numbers thing. If they go from 99% fakes like many sites to 50%
fakes, it is still the difference between a useless site and useful site.

I use AdultFriendFinder myself, and if I only go by profiles and messages and
MSN/Yahoo/etc. chat, then it's easy to get 50 out of 50 girls in a week not
actually be willing to meet and only be after getting me to register on a site
for their kickback.

I've never been asked to do that on AFF's internal chat/webcam option,
however. So even though profiles and messages and mainstream chat are a heck
of a lot easier, I never do them any more. If a site can cut out the spam
accounts, they could have that easier service in a workable form.

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pimeys
Are they trying to get some bigger company to buy them? Facebook and Twitter
are a bit scary already having so much data about everybody. Even though I'm
pretty open how and who I date, it still feels more comfortable to keep it in
my circle of friends and family.

Although I see the potential for this.

~~~
SilentStump
Well, if you take him for his word, he said he doesn't want to be bought out.

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unfed
33.000 members in 4 days. Seems legit.

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leephillips
I stopped after one screen. It was completely incoherent. Do you have to be
following this person's recent life story to know what this is supposed to be
about?

------
intellegacy
Anyone interested in building an alternative to cupidwithfriends?

Email me.

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mbetter
Wow, I love how casually you exclude about half of the world from your little
site.

