
Show HN: Dating turned upside down - Tomonotomo - pratikpoddar
http://www.tomonotomo.com
======
rnernento
The name is awful, sorry. Too hard to pronounce / understand and certainly not
worth the trouble since it doesn't convey meaning.

The color scheme is ugly. I like the gradual change over the name on mouseover
but purple to yellow through brown is not the most appealing... That being
said the layout is good.

I'm not sure I understand the value. Friends of friends are the easiest people
to meet / hookup with already. The purpose of online dating sites is to meet
strangers you don't already have an in with. Is there really a problem there
that needs solving?

The passive cute / not cute thing sounds interesting. Maybe make that the
focus? That's something that isn't already built into Facebook and would
definitely solve the problem of some awkwardness.

~~~
w1ntermute
> The name is awful, sorry. Too hard to pronounce / understand and certainly
> not worth the trouble since it doesn't convey meaning.

As someone who speaks Japanese and instantly understood what the name meant, I
agree. This is an absurd name to use for an American/Western dating site. I
can't see myself mentioning this site to my friends.

~~~
stingraycharles
Out of interest, what does it mean / reference?

~~~
detcader
the about page says it: tomo no tomo short for tomodachi no tomodachi (friend
of friend)

~~~
otikik
Reduce it to "tonomo" or "notomo" then.

Also beware of extreme reduction, as "tonto" means "stupid" in Spanish.

("notomo" means "Idon'tdrink" in Spanish, but that's less obvious)

------
danso
Congrats on launching and having a user base. Here are some suggestions for
the landing page, where first impressions are key to this kind of service:

1\. Get an editor to rework the copy and fix mistakes. There's a lot of
phrases that are almost-but-not-quite correct, such as "safe friendly trust"
(which is the first thing that people see)...You don't want people's mental
spam-alerts to go off at first glance. A lot of the text is also awkward and
slows down reading (avoid using the forward-slash...e.g. use "attractive"
instead of "cute/handsome"

2\. I didn't want to give access to FB to use the site so I don't know how it
works other than the landing page...but is the only way to express interest is
through calling someone "cute" or "handsome"? Other sites have used "I'm
interested" as a way to express...well, interest.

3\. Try to replace that stock photo with something unique when you can...and
if you have to use a stock photo, don't use one of all white people, unless
that's specifically the audience you're catering to.

4\. Also, don't describe your users as "boys and girls" unless that's
specifically the audience you're catering to.

5\. Cut as many adjectives as you can out of the copy, it doesn't engender
trust. Also, don't use the word "disciplined"...it doesn't have useful
connotations in this context.

edit: After reading the About page, I have a couple more things to add:

6\. There are so many reasons why people have negative feelings about
traditional dating sites and you can't possibly enumerate all of them...so
minimize the amount of telling people those reasons, as you make too many
assumptions as is.

7\. Related to that: there may be situations in which the phrase "call girls
or prostitutes" is applicable, but the promotional copy for your positive
online dating website is not one of them -- in _any_ context.

~~~
silvertonia
All good points, but #2 stuck out the biggest for me. It's not just the
wording, but the fact that the only reason I'd be interested in dating someone
is because they're physically attractive.

It makes this look like Facebook Stalking Pro.

Just changing this stance to, "someone you find interesting" or better,
"someone you might want to get to know better"\-- leave the reason open-ended,
because we all have different things we look for in people. As it stands, I'd
never use the site because it sounds like your active userbase is full of
people I wouldn't want to date.

~~~
peterwwillis
I disagree. First, how do you think people usually decide to date other than
by appearance? Most people in real life do not fill out a form to see if they
are mutually compatible before they go out. "Hey, you're cute, I like you,
let's go out."

Second, the wording is actually good as "cute/handsome". These are words that
have a positive association with image without being sex-driven words, and
aren't overly powerful towards seeming like a line.

Also keep in mind it's a mutual interest feature. Only once both people have
listed each other as cute/handsome is a person notified, so it shouldn't
result in negative behavior.

But you're right - there could be lots of reasons for interest other than
attraction. Those can be individual features, like "There's someone who likes
your taste in music" or "There's someone that wants to invite you to a FB
event". The tool could probably be best served by allowing for a mix of these,
so while Phil is attracted to Jackie's book smarts, Jackie is attracted to
Phil's interest in social justice.

------
milesokeefe
Some suggestions on how to improve your site.

1\. Replace that stock photo with something less rigid and fake looking.
Stocksy is a good resource.[1]

2\. Change the h1 and body fonts. It looks good on the company name but not
elsewhere. Any good looking sans serif that isn't helvetica.

3\. Change "boys and girls" to "men and women". The former implies that they
are under 18 or generally young which shouldn't be the case for a (legal)
dating site AFAIK.

4\. On the third feature, "looks cute/handsome" doesn't really make sense, so
change that. Perhaps "no risk".

5\. Change "safe friendly trust" on the pink image overlay. Make the third
word an adjective or adverb to match the other words.

[1][http://www.stocksy.com/](http://www.stocksy.com/)

EDIT: danso's comment covers this better, read that

~~~
pratikpoddar
Thanks for the feedback Sir. I appreciate that you took the time out for this.

All points well taken and implemented. Please have a look at it, and provide
another round of feedback if possible.

I found this font attractive though. Is it just me? I am bored of the regular
fonts anyways. Can you suggest a font to go well with the theme, please.

------
s_q_b
I love that you built something. But let me be brutally honest, because that's
what I would want.

I don't see the value-add. Maybe it's 2x better than e-harmony, but it's not
10x better, like some of the new competitors are.

Take Tinder for example. Dead simple app. See a picture of the a potential
date nearby. Vote yes/no. If you both vote yes, it opens up a chat thread much
like sms.

Tinder incorporates friends-of-friends in the ranking already. I can see how
many friends I have in common with a potential match, and I'm more likely to
be shown potential matches with mutual friends.

But Tinder goes a step further. It integrates with Facebook, so that it can
match on similar taste in books, movies, entertainment, religion, philosophy,
based on likes in the profile. Finally, from a cultural perspective, as a
smartphone app it's much more free of stigma.

So I don't see the improvement here. It's a good idea, with a growing
userbase, but it seems slightly behind the wave, which is defintely going to
be location aware mobile dating apps.

~~~
Spearchucker
I'm a bit of a veteran of online dating, did it for 6 years, and after quite
literally hundreds dates _eventually_ found the mother of my son. So, with
that in mind -

What you describe (Tinder), and what Eharmony, Match, Guardian Soulmates or
any other site does, does NOTHING to speed up the process of finding Mr. or
Ms. Right.

All that a site can do is to appeal to specific character types (like to use
your phone? Shy, and prefer an introduction? ...).

Facebook integration will appeal to some (you, for example) but not to others
(me, for example).

If you're just looking to get laid you can game chicks on _any_ site. If you
want to meet someone to love unconditionally, you just need to bite the bullet
and settle in for a long haul.

NO web site can predict chemistry or love based on some funky new process and
meta data. You need to spend time with someone to see if there's anything
there. This means that dating sites are little more than databases of people
that maybe, hopefully want what you want. Success is when they want it with
you.

I learnt quickly that I had better odds by using as many dating sites as I had
time for, because (apologies to the romantics) it's a numbers game.

~~~
s_q_b
I'm not interested in so much finding Mr./Mrs. right. I'm interested in the
business problem.

The waves I see coming are: a shift from long term romantic involvement to a
trend toward shorter term interactions among my generation, a cultural lack of
social stigma in smartphone apps vs. websites for dating, and an opportunity
to use data that wasn't explicitly entered by the user for the purposes of
impressing a prospective date.

And while no program can predict love, it can reduce transaction costs, from
e.g. distance, lack of social network, social anxiety upon meeting new people,
etc. That friction is leading a lot of people to sit home alone when two
apartments over there's a lovely person who would be thrilled to be out on a
date with them. What type of commitment they make from there is beyond the
purview of the technology.

All the best to you, your wife, and family. It's fascinating and wonderful to
me there are little humans running around very may not have existed without
the communication the internet enables :)

------
detcader
[I'm not sure how a website that on its face seems to perpetuate the
culturally normalized obsession with appearance and thus supposed sexual
compatibility and success as the highest determinant of evaluating potential
and real relationships, provides a service that "turns dating upside down,"
but]

The idea of mutual trust is dubious at best. What prevents two parties from
conspiring in advance so that a third is tricked into believing things that
are not true? I will say this: the majority of rapes and sexual assaults are
committed by those who are very close to the victim, not by strangers -- and
the rapist believes what they are doing is "sex".

~~~
peterwwillis
What prevents any two people from doing this at any time, anywhere?

~~~
detcader
This service would likely just make it easier, and it would happen more often,
is my point

~~~
pratikpoddar
Your point is valid Sir. But as P. Omidyar says - "People are basically good."

~~~
detcader
Maybe the people that he hangs around with..

------
nandemo
> _Trust and Privacy are two sides of the same coin and both are sub-optimal
> in dating websites because the way they are seeded_

But the Terms page says:

> _We may get additional information from or about you in other ways not
> specifically described here. We might sell or rent your personal information
> to third parties for their marketing purposes without your explicit
> consent._

~~~
pratikpoddar
:) I am sure you understand the intent Sir. My intentions are clean and good.
My approach is good. That is just meant for the lawyers.

------
jacques_chester
I wish you all the best, because online dating can always use improvement.
However I warn you that it will be a great challenge to overcome what seems to
be the insurmountable and persistent contours of the online dating market:
that there are more men than women, and that everyone hits on the attractive
people.

Also, your name strikes me as the sort of thing that you will be spelling on
the phone forever. Consider changing it or at least buying typo variations.

~~~
krmmalik
I think there are more men that women in some parts of the world or in certain
cultures only. In my ethnic group there are way more women than men, and due
to the demands of our culture we tend to marry into our own quite a bit (but
could still benefit from a site like this)

~~~
pratikpoddar
Thanks for the feedback Sir. I am sure I will improve both the website and
myself with time. I have changed the representation of the name to make it
more readable.

------
jonthepirate
I've created dating apps and I learned the market is totally won by a few big
companies. I could never overcome the chicken & egg problem. Not knowing
anything about your project, I would have to honestly say the 80k people on
there is probably a frivolous claim. You may have scraped some other site and
put that many bogus profiles on there.

I suppose any other dating sites that break through will be based on extremely
simple ideas with elegant or new user interfaces. For example, How About We is
an extremely simple idea. The concept of dating friends of friends was already
tried several times. The last time I heard of it it was being done by
circl.es. I would suggest trying something that is really unique that nobody
has ever heard of which would help you break out. I hate to say it but one of
the other stories in the last year that was a break out story was Ms. Travel.
Try to package what you're doing in a really crazy way. I hacked together a
crazy photosheet interface that I've never seen before and it just wouldn't
catch. Trying to think of any other thing I could think of which nobody has
done, I tried the idea of online dating via the unix command line. That _did_
get me some exposure but certainly not enough to get the wheels of traction
turning.

For what it's worth, here's a story that came out on Jezebel.com about my
project at the time (which I shut off after a couple of weeks after this
article came out).

[http://jezebel.com/5934969/new-techy-online-dating-site-
is-u...](http://jezebel.com/5934969/new-techy-online-dating-site-is-
unsurprisingly-a-boys-club)

Good luck w your project!

~~~
pratikpoddar
I did not mean to offend you. I am saying 80k users are in the network. That
does not mean 80k people registered. Its a "friend of friend" website. So,
your degree 2 is also reachable. So, with 200 registrations, my network is 80k
users. I am sorry if I misled you.

Once you login, you will see that there are a lot of potential dates for you,
if you have even 2 friends on tomonotomo. That's the beauty of the website,
imho.

The intent was never to cheat you. Since apologies if I got you offended.

------
ralphos
We tried to launch pretty much the same concept a few years ago (dating
through friends of friends on Facebook) but it didn't work out. It was called
'Trustcircle' and we still own the domain (www.trustcircle.com) in case you
are interested in buying it! It might be a better option than tomonotomo! Just
sayin' :)

------
VeejayRampay
I was working at a Parisian dating startup about two or three years ago, we
had that friends of friends kind of vibe (it was actually called that) and it
didn't prevent us from failing.

More men than women on those websites, the few women you get don't engage
anyone for some reason so you usually end up having to buy cheap leads on
silly marketing platforms and fake all the figures (men/women ratio, number of
users, etc). Good luck though.

------
peterwwillis
Feature requests: mutual references, ID checking. See couchsurfing.org for how
they implement friends, references, and ID checks. Adds extra degrees of
trust.

Another feature request: easy scheduling of events, so as a "first date" you
could meet the person along with your mutual friends to help break the ice. I
find the traditional 1-on-1 date puts a lot of pressure on people to perform
well, vs getting to know each other in a relaxed social setting. I would keep
these events private so they're only viewable by the immediate friend matrix,
though.

(and definitely fix the boys & girls wordage)

------
01Michael10
Like dating a co-worker, I would never date someone who is a friend of a
friend or a relative. This and the fact need a Facebook account makes
Tomonotomo useless for me.

Is it just me or does the site design look cheesy?

~~~
cuttooth
This whole thing is pointless because it doesn't do anything useful. There is
literally no difference between using the website or simply asking your
friends if they know anyone you might hit it off with, and in Facebook's case,
there are plenty of superfluous "friends" people have who may actually be
terrible people. They allege "social pressure" in these cases, but on the
whole it's a stupid term that generally doesn't mean anything.

OkCupid is still the pinnacle of online dating and probably will be for a long
time, because the whole point of dating is that you actually go out with
someone and see if you hit it off. Just because someone is a friend of a
friend doesn't mean they're any better or different than Random Person A, and
if anything, you're greatly limiting your pool of options. And lastly, if
you're having trouble meeting someone and don't live in the sticks, the
problem is likely you.

P.S. -- The site name is exceedingly dumb.

~~~
personlurking
I tried a few sites in my day and I'd have to agree that OKC is the best I've
tried, even if I didn't have luck with it. It was the most pleasing to use and
it seemed like the people were of quality.

I'd like to see a site where an algorithm is used to match interests only, if
you match there, then photos can be viewed...or maybe not, but at least rely
heavily on the interest metric. Maybe a site for intellectual-leaning people
(or however one would want to word that) would also do well, or one that
relies on Myers-Briggs (though I know that's not for everyone).

------
victoriap
Good luck with the idea and I believe there's market for that. It will
definitely help a certain category of people. But some other people will
quickly say they don't like it because they don't want to date friends of
their friends. It all depends on the particular person.

I love tomonotomo and actually I have a similar web site for job
search/recruitment through connections discussed here,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6327275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6327275)

------
alan_cx
Only facebook sign in? That was the end of the experience for me.

~~~
pratikpoddar
I am sorry to disappoint you. Its a social dating website. It has to be built
on facebook.

You do not share anything that is not required. We do not post anything on
your wall. Facebook login is just to understand your network. I hope you will
trust us, and become our user. Thanks

------
buro9
Interesting.

I'd actually hoped this was going to be more like Hire My Friend:
[http://www.hiremyfriend.io/](http://www.hiremyfriend.io/)

That's a job recruitment app based on the notion that someone in a job can't
publicly announce that they are seeking a new job, and so their network
advertises their availability anonymously.

That trick though, of getting people who know, to be the one to recommend
someone... would work perfectly well with dating.

~~~
pratikpoddar
Cool. Interesting stuff.

------
xsace
I for one think this is very clever. Most of my dating experience was eased
whenever the person was a friend of a friend already.

------
armansu
Sounds familiar. Is it by any chance created by the same guys with whom Paul
Graham and Harj Taggar made public office hours at Startup School 2011:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9m9vPAlb_0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9m9vPAlb_0)
[the intended part starts at 25:05]?

------
uptown
Congratulations on launching.

Despite the critical reviews here, you've built something that seems to be
attracting users. How long has the site been online, and if that user-count on
your homepage is legitimate - what methods have you used to attract your first
100,000 users?

------
jeremyaarts
I think it would help a lot if the 'no' in Tomo _no_ tomo were accentuated
with a different colour or so. Then it would be easier to see that it are in
fact 3 (Japanese) words strung together. I think that would make it a lot
better to remember.

~~~
pratikpoddar
Thanks for the feedback. I addded spaces instead. Please let me know if that
works better for you Sir. Thanks a ton.

------
pratikpoddar
After 64 comments and great feedback, I have made all the changes and the
website is up again. Thanks a ton everyone.

[http://www.tomonotomo.com/](http://www.tomonotomo.com/)

------
_glass
This is practically the reason why I turned off to show my FB friends:
Acquaintances going through my friend list, and writing random messages to
good-looking ones.

------
barodeur
Dating with friends of friends, looks like
[http://acquaintable.com/](http://acquaintable.com/)

------
runn1ng
>0 friends are using it

>"Page Not Found! 404" immediately afterwards

>My Little Pony picture

>closing it, never planning on using it again

First impression is important.

~~~
pratikpoddar
Thanks for the feedback Sir. There was a minor bug. I would love to talk about
it. It was too deep in the system.

I am sorry. I hope you will be forgiving and let us serve you. Thanks

------
markyc
why the impossible name though?

honest question: is it that difficult to find a decent-2-word-combination.com?

~~~
jamesknelson
"tomo no tomo" is roughly "friends of friends" in Japanese - so I guess thats
what they were going for. It is a bit of a mouthful, though.

------
edwardliu
this is just like hellol.com lol.

