
Thanks HN: We’ve launched (the dating site about books) - mwsherman
http://alikewise.com
======
rjett
I think a widget compatible with amazon would be cool to attract people to
your site. I.E. when someone reviews a book on amazon, they could click the
alikewise widget that took them to your site and pulled their relevant amazon
data to pre-populate a profile on your site. Of course you could then do the
whole amazon affiliate link thing on your site to reciprocate people back
there.

~~~
mwsherman
Smart! The are other sites with book info too. We should look at their APIs.

~~~
pmjoyce
I've been toying with the idea of creating a basic API for my book site
<http://bookhu.com> (book readership gender analysis). I'd be willing to
prioritise it if you (or anyone else) were interested in integrating it.

~~~
mwsherman
@pmjoyce you'll find my contact info here:
<http://alikewise.com/About/People>. I'm the first Matt. Drop a line.

------
moultano
Not a big fan of the graphic design on the front page. It's usable, and fairly
attractive, but if I squint my eyes and don't read anything I could be looking
at a middleware consulting company.

~~~
proexploit
Agreed, a little too plain perhaps. Don't get me wrong, you've done a great
job by not "going all web 2.0" or a number of other horrendous mistakes, but
there's room for improvement. Try starting by giving the #main and #border
sections the #FFF background color and the #content container a #EEE
background just to set them apart a little (see it at
<http://imgur.com/pn0fR.jpg>).

Little things like that will take you a long way.

~~~
mwsherman
Thanks proexploit, I'll play with that.

~~~
proexploit
No problem, just shoot me an email if you want some simple tips. :)

~~~
mwsherman
Hi proexploit, I don't see your email address anywhere. Would love to chat. My
contact info is here: <http://alikewise.com/About/People> (I'm the first Matt)

------
mwsherman
HN folks were kind enough to alpha test and offer feedback. Thanks! Feedback
is still welcome, of course.

------
listic
Does your site _intend_ to be US-only?

It wants me to enter 5-digit Zip code, insists on that even.

~~~
mwsherman
To start, we are US-only. We are running as fast as we can to go
international. Mostly has to do with legal stuff.

~~~
kksm19820117
Could you elaborate on the legal issues you're facing en route to going
worldwide?

~~~
mwsherman
Well, a lawyer friend described some EU privacy laws and it's not clear to me
what we'd have to change to comply. Or if we even have to comply, since we
operate in the US. We are looking into it.

------
rokhayakebe
Very nice idea. Can I have dating based on my (safe) browser history?

~~~
SapphireSun
Are you sure you wouldn't like your dating based on your unsafe browser
history? ;-)

~~~
rokhayakebe
I think Adult Friend Finder fixed that issue already :) .

------
sinzone
<http://www.pickv.com> has the same concept but with movie,tvshow,music and
food as well

------
blackswan
You might want to check out <http://alikewise.com/Profile/testingstagingagain>
!

Other than that I think the idea is excellent - if you manage to get enough
people then the site will work really well. That's the problem though isn't
it...

Best of luck.

~~~
mwsherman
Ha! Thanks. One of our testing accounts. :)

------
RevRal
Hint to others: Nab the good usernames while they're still around.

I'll put up a profile and see what happens, as I'm not having much luck
searching for people with my taste in books. I see great potential.

I'm debating putting my profile name into my HN profile. . . .

------
kksm19820117
Very nice. How about something that can be used worldwide (India, for
instance)?

~~~
GeneralMaximus
This. I'm tired of most websites assuming I'm an American.

~~~
derefr
Especially if your service doesn't involve mailing me anything, and I live in
an English-speaking country anyway. You don't have to do anything special for
me; just let me in!

...just don't use ZIP codes for anything. That's braindead in this day and
age, even if you _do_ live in the US. Give the user Google Maps and a pin to
drop—this lets people actually be exact with their location if they want to
be, without giving you an address that could be used for spam mail.

~~~
mwsherman
I hear you! We are moving international as quickly as possible. Has mostly to
do with legal stuff. Soon!

------
rudyfink
I'd love to be able to bring in my goodreads or librarything entries. The idea
of sitting there and entering all that data in again just makes my laziness
ascend.

------
jacoblyles
It seems that men and women read different books, so matching based on simple
similarity is likely to be ineffective.

~~~
mquander
I absolutely don't agree with that. I mean, I'm sure there are some books that
bias to one sex or the other, but in my experience, most fiction is universal.
I've met a number of women in my short life who matched very closely my
personal taste.

Do you have any particular reason you suspect this is true?

~~~
jacoblyles
If you are looking for a 20-something MALE who likes Atlas Shrugged, you are
in luck.

I think there are only three females on the site at the moment, but it appears
you would be better off there with Anna Karenina.

------
jrockway
Pretty sure OkCupid is the dating site about books. Or at least every profile
I've ever read there is.

------
aaronbrethorst
The Seattle alt weekly newspaper, The Stranger, covered you on their blog
today. Congrats again!

[http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/04/02/judging...](http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/04/02/judging-
a-date-by-his-books)

------
jacoblyles
Your gender ratio seems to be biased in the wrong direction, probably an
artifact of seeding it with Hacker News folks. In a community site, the
quality of your community is a feature. Features aren't just things you can
code.

------
vtail
Cool idea, but bootstrapping this could be an issue. E.g. as of right now, if
you do a simple search for "Man seeking women" or "Woman seeking women" you'll
only get ~20 results (not to mention that search is broken).

~~~
vtail
Well, the search seems to be working now.

------
djm
ok, I searched for two books -founders at work and the little schemer.

Founders at work found me 'Kate' who is a total babe but sadly in America. The
thing is, founders at work isn't actually in the list of books in her profile.

little schemer found me 'Polina' but she doesn't have it in her book list
either.

I tried searching with and without quotes around the title.

Hope you fix that. I like the idea of the site itself though. Bookmarked for
future use.

~~~
mwsherman
Thanks djm. We start with an exact search and (if we don't find anyone) then
we bring in "related" books, using Amazon's recommendation engine.

Given the small # of people we are starting with, this progressive search is
gonna "go broad" pretty often. So it's looking for all kinds of books relating
to the words "founders" or "work".

Not satisfying in the short term, I realize. As we get more people, the
"exact" part of the algorithm will give better results and the "broad" part
will get less relevant.

And yeah, Kate is a babe.

------
antidaily
Just me or is the search kinda slow (or broken)?

~~~
sutro
Yes, search seems to be broken. My search for "hot young slutty babes seeking
broke, alcoholic, out-of-shape, over-the-hill, married programmers" is turning
up nothing. Must be a bug.

~~~
RevRal
> _"hot young slutty babes seeking broke, alcoholic, out-of-shape, over-the-
> hill, married programmers"_

And I was disappointed when I searched for GEB and nothing turned up.

~~~
ugh
That’s a shame, really.

------
anonjon
I'd like this better if it weren't a dating site.

Like, a place where you can find people who like the same books as you, and
then talk about books.

~~~
mwsherman
Those do exist...check out goodreads.com and librarything.com.

We don't really think of them as competition to what we're doing, btw.
Different goals.

~~~
anonjon
Thanks for the links, I will check them out.

It would be cool if you could integrate their APIs into what you are doing.
(Create Alikewise account based off of already existing Goodreads or
Librarything account).

I guess what I'm concerned about is that it becomes a very niche site without
a community that is hanging out and talking about the books that they are
reading.

Presumably if you go on, you find someone, and you leave, you don't have the
'all my friends are on it' factor. (It is also kind of limited group, a lot of
people will _not_ be looking for partners that read the same books as they
do). It kind of appeals to people you might think of (or who might think of
themselves) as intelligentsia.

But is a cool idea, and is definitely intriguing at very least in terms of
social experiments, kind of figuring out if people are compatible because of
similar intellectual interests. I hope it goes well for you!

~~~
dkarl
I agree, integration would be great. It's a pain to input a bunch of books,
reviews, and ratings. If Goodreads had a "turn this into a dating site"
button, I'd press it in a heartbeat, but there's no way I'm going to start
over inputting books and ratings on a new site.

------
naturalethic
This will never work. Women read trash.

~~~
axod
I don't know why you're being downmodded, I agree. I don't think 'books you
like' is a good way at all to match people up. But then I hardly ever read any
fiction.

~~~
mseebach
It's probably being downmodded because it's bigoted, but you're both missing
the point. It's a niche-site for people who like reading fiction - for people
for whom 'books you like' _is_ a good way to be matched up.

Someone who thinks they like reading because they read the latest Dan Brown,
or people who don't like reading, will be probably be disappointed, but
they're not in the niche, so that's not really a problem.

~~~
axod
Suggesting that Women have different tastes in general to men is bigoted now
is it? He could have put it more delicately, but I believe he has a point.

How many men read Mills&Boon? How many women read Terry Pratchet?

~~~
mseebach
> Suggesting that Women have different tastes in general to men is bigoted now
> is it?

No. Stating that they read thrash is.

> How many men read Mills&Boon? How many women read Terry Pratchet?

There's plenty of trash to read. Some of it caters to women, some of it to
men. And since when is liking Terry Pratchet the shibboleth of literary taste?
While I never got the whole "geeks should like Science Fiction"-thing, I can
see the charm of Pratchet. So we'd probably appeal to different kinds of
partners on a literary dating site, but I guess that's pretty much the point.

~~~
axod
I still disagree @bigot though. People should toughen up a bit and chill out.
"Women read trash" is just like a woman saying men are obsessed with cars...
who cares.

My main point here though is, that I have absolutely no idea what my ideal
woman would like reading. But it sure as hell wouldn't be anything like what I
like reading.

What next? Dating based on what clothes you like wearing?

