

Show HN: HumanamuH predicts which people will enrich your life - HumanamuH
http://humanamuh.de/

======
HumanamuH
... and it will let you meet them.

Hi everyone! I'd much appreciate your feedback, ideas, questions etc.
regarding HumanamuH [1].

HumanamuH is all about efficiently meeting people who you find worthwhile to
meet. It works like this:

1) You search for people

2) You talk to them

3) You rate them

4) HumanamuH predicts who else is worth meeting

Your predictions are based on people who like and dislike the same people as
you do. It's important to note that people don't get a global rating, so there
won't be good and bad people. There will only be people who are more or less
likely to find meeting each other worthwhile.

There are still many issues I have to work on. The biggest challenge I am
currently facing is to get users in order to find out how people feel about
HumanamuH. If you have any advice on how to "go viral", I'd be happy to
listen.

[1] Why this name? Its slogan is "Where humans meet." therefore "Human" meets
"Human" => "HumanamuH".

~~~
lubutu
I think it would be much more inviting if you could at least search for people
without having made an account. As it stands I have no idea what kind of
people I could talk to, so I have no idea if it would be worth giving up my
email address.

Edit: Interesting idea, though. With social networks like Facebook you really
need to have met in order to befriend — it doesn't encourage random meetings.
When I was younger I would find likeminded people by chance on odd websites; I
think that's become harder as I've grown older.

~~~
HumanamuH
Yes, I understand your point. I didn't want to share the user profiles with
non-users. I also haven't looked into how easy it would be to harvest profile
pictures and profile data. Any thoughts on this?

~~~
unconed
"I didn't want to share the user profiles with non-users."

And yet, if someone wants to harvest profiles, they'll just sign up with a
fake/throwaway email address, while legitimate users have to give up real
information to do the same.

~~~
HumanamuH
True. I'm not sure how to effectively prevent harvesting. Limiting the rate at
which profiles can be fetched only goes so far.

------
jkaljundi
You should provide more information on how the service works and what it does
before asking for an e-mail address to sign up.

~~~
HumanamuH
I haven't yet decided on how much of "how does it work" I want to make public.

Regarding your second question. I thought the landing page and the tour would
answer "what it does". Sorry. Obviously, I'd be very curious to know what it
didn't tell you. But if you haven't registered, you probably can't answer this
question.

I'm not blocking any email domains, so feel free to use some trash mail
address, if you want to have a look without sharing your email address.

~~~
naturalethic
I almost didn't sign up because I couldn't really tell what this was. I went
ahead anyway and when I finally saw the landing page I thought, "Oh it's a
dating site. No thanks."

~~~
HumanamuH
Do you know what made you think it was a dating site? The wording?

I thought "meeting people" was quite neutral.

~~~
ElliotH
Asking for:

    
    
      - Looking
      - Orientation
      - Gender
    

And then, 'what do you intend to do with people' or similar wording on the
next page.

I realise it's all innocent, it just sets an odd tone.

~~~
HumanamuH
I'm open for suggestions on how to improve the wording. Quite tricky that
languages are so overladen with all sorts of meanings. Especially challenging
if it's not one's first language.

------
begriffs
Two things I really like about this social network: it's simple, and it's
oriented towards connecting interesting people.

I love that people get to post their intentions. Intentions mean people are
doing things -- and can meet and help each other. This site is not for
photosharing narcissists who are scared to venture outside their circle of
friends, it's for adventurous people who want to meet more people to "enrich
their lives" as the site says.

I'm excited to see HumanamuH take off, and I'm looking forward to using the
"enriching" social network.

~~~
HumanamuH
I hope that knowing what people intend to talk about and intend to do makes
meeting people online a better experience. Especially in combination with
predictions.

After reading online profiles, I often feel that I'm still missing something
to decide whether I want to meet that person. Knowing about favorite movies or
brands or whether someone is bad at describing himself, doesn't tell me much.

------
dylanpyle
FYI - the confirmation email ended up in my spam folder. I'm not sure if
that's gmail's default behavior or whether I've encouraged it to be a little
too agressive, something to watch out for though.

~~~
HumanamuH
That's a pity. I cannot remember anyone else telling me that it was spam
filtered. But that doesn't have to mean anything.

Do you have any suggestions what I could improve to make these emails pass?

~~~
rcavezza
I'd go with sendgrid. I hook up their api to every app I build.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Sendgrid and mailgun are the tops right now, IMO. They both have great
services, but it seems like getting trusted SMTP at lower volumes was cheaper
at mailgun. Sendgrid's API is awesome, though.

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TimPC
Are you doing any machine learning? Are you using an Amazon style
recommendation system where instead of recommending people based on overall
rating you're looking for poeple user's like me rated highly (based on the
ratings we've given to other people so far and our declared goals for the
site?)

~~~
HumanamuH
I am not doing any machine learning (yet). If the site takes off a bit and
generates some data, I expect optimizing the prediction algorithm will become
a top priority. Accurately predicting human relationships sounds incredibly
hard.

Currently, it's looking how similar your ratings are to the ratings of others.
Similar people will influence your predictions more strongly.

The declared goals or intentions are currently not affecting predictions. And
I'm doubtful if they should. Any opinion on this?

------
taybin
Don't these sort of graphs always end up with a couple nodes having the
majority of connections?

I'm leery of the idea of rating people and suspect this will just make
explicit existing hierarchies.

~~~
HumanamuH
It would be great if I had a big enough graph to answer your question.
Hopefully this will change. It would be very interesting data.

My hope is that, given enough users, there will be many predictions across
existing hierarchies.

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autophil
Love the name. Clever. The website is a little more mysterious than I'd
initially like, but I'll give it a try. I wish you success with this!

~~~
HumanamuH
I didn't expect so much love for the name as I've got mixed opinions before
making HumanamuH public.

Please let me know what was mysterious to you. (If it's not too mysterious for
you to know...)

~~~
autophil
I just didn't know what I was signing up for, and the name doesn't tell me
anything. But I like the name a lot. I just think you need a killer tagline or
something.

~~~
HumanamuH
Just curious. Did you read the current tag line, the landing page and the tour
and still felt that you've got no idea what it's all about?

~~~
autophil
Right.

------
juanbyrge
This is an amazing idea. I think it has infinite potential. Are you working in
it full time ?

~~~
HumanamuH
I'm glad you like the idea. I am working near full time on it. Who needs
weekends anyways?

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corin_
Small postcode bug, it won't accept "PE29 3EW" in the UK.

~~~
HumanamuH
Ah, thanks. I haven't yet finished testing all post codes. ;-)

------
FredBrach
I think I got the point of the website finally. You should probably consider
removing the sexual orientation of the profile informations, at least for a
time, because it can be misleading about the goal of the website.

~~~
HumanamuH
(My reply mysteriously disappeared. Second try...)

HumanamuH is not meant to be a dating site in particular. But I assume
wherever people meet, some of them will want to date. I like the idea of
HumanamuH bringing love to the world, so I'm fine with it.

The possibility to state one's orientation and whether one is looking for a
partner is there for at least two reasons.

If you don't want to date, you can make that clear upfront. Hopefully this
will reduce unwanted requests.

If you want to date, it's easier for everyone involved if the orientation is
known beforehand.

~~~
FredBrach
Do you aim private life meetings or not only? Btw, the website is strong,
looks serious and relatively trustable. It's a bit tedious to access the
content but it's not very important, some people will care anyway. Best luck
with it.

~~~
HumanamuH
> Do you aim private life meetings or not only?

Sorry, I don't understand the question.

Can you elaborate what felt tedious to you?

~~~
FredBrach
_> Do you aim private life meetings or not only? Sorry, I don't understand the
question._

HumanamuH is about _meeting people_ right? Will people meet other people like
they would in private life - friends, love etc, or like they would in their
_non-private/professional_ one?

There is a distinction between the two in the real world. So if I seek to meet
people in a _non-private mode_ with HumanamuH, which is what I thought was the
point because of its design, I don't want to see any sexual things in it. In
other words, I will not want to meet, let's say a software engineer, with a
profile which say: " _I'm not looking for a sexual partner right now._ ".

Concerning what's tedious to me, I think the precise thing is _the splited
registration process_ : first the email, then check it, and after I have to
re-enter other informations. Maybe: enter register informations and then just
check the email would be ok.

[edit: change/update _professional_ by _non-private_ ]

~~~
HumanamuH
Thanks for the clarification. HumanamuH isn't fixed to either non-private or
professional contacts. Its purpose is to meet people who you find worthwhile
to meet. Whether you decide to go on vacation with them or do business is up
to you.

Stating that one isn't looking is meant to allow people to discourage dating
requests if they aren't interested. Some people would certainly love to tell
all their co-workers that they weren't looking for a partnership upfront. :-)

With the registration process I wanted to make sure to have a valid email
address of every user. Otherwise people might start using the site, forget
their passwords and then ask me to give them access to their accounts in order
to not lose their established contacts.

