

Show HN: Online dating for people who don't do online dating - HeyImAlex

I've been quietly learning web development for about a year now after getting intoxicated by the media darling startup scene back when it was REALLY going mainsteam with the release of the social network. So I drank that koolaid and joined the club and I resolved to create a semi-competent web dev from my humble highschool CS 1 roots. A year's gone by and my first project is finally done. It's a simple online dating app that tries to make online dating appeal to a more casual crowd while removing a few of the major pitfalls of current online dating websites, most notably fear of rejection, by only selectively showing positive actions and obscuring all negative ones in some way or another. Here's the site.<p>http://www.heyithinkyourecute.com<p>It's not pretty and it's not perfect but fail fast and fail often right? Please tell me what you think!
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DanBC
Good Luck!

White on bright blue hurt (not exaggerating) my eyes.

There's a type on "Head into Matchmaking" - "no thanks if you'rE not"

There's another type in 4, with an extra capital G.

The section "Do your thing" has a funny picture, with "masterful strategy"
written over a crude message. Have you ever signed up to dating sites as a
woman? Have you got market research from women? Women are an important part of
your market, and I suspect that they'd like to know there are rigorous
controls to protect them from creeps. So, maybe add that information before
the joke? (I just noticed that you do have info about a quality block, but
that's hidden behind a roll-over image. It's a great feature! Don't hide it.)

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HeyImAlex
Thanks! About that image; it's a relic from when I first wrote the landing
page (it was late and the copy was decidedly more crude) but I'm changing to
something more in tune with my audience now.

As for market research, I talked to quite a few girls about it but it was
mostly relegated to visual design. The rest was just me using ux stories to
make what I thought would the best functionality for everyone. Not the
greatest strategy I know, but I'm learning

And I've been working on making the contrast between white and the background
more bearable but it's been tough. I'll take another look at it today.

Thanks again!

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md1515
Not a bad idea and UI/UX. I'm checking it out now. Good luck with it.

I was just running through the matches and there are like >10 girls (which is
fine for a young startup). Nonetheless, don't just have a message that says
you're out of matches. Allow the user to start his /her search over again. The
site is of no use to me now because I couldn't see matches.

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HeyImAlex
There is definitely a chicken/egg problem at work here that will be hard to
break early on. In the long run I'm hoping for a pool of users large enough
that reaching the end isn't likely for your average signup, but for now you're
completely right. I worry that repetition could be worse than blatant running
out since a big part of the site is variety (whereas seeing the same girls
over and over feels more like helpless stagnation), but I'll try and come up
with a better way to engage new users while we're still really young. Thanks
for taking a look!

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ugyuyguy
Temp account to just say, congratulations, fantastic idea and nicely executed.
I would change a lot of things, been in the online dating business many years
ago. Great fun...loving it!

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sontek
"We should have sex some time" as an example message to send is probably
giving off the wrong message and will not attract the crowd you want.

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HeyImAlex
Yeah, sorry about that, it was addressed below(above?). It should be fixed
now.

