
Towards Better Online Dating - adamsmith
http://blog.adamsmith.cc/2011/02/towards-better-online-dating.html
======
potatolicious
I agree with everything the author said save this:

> _"Then only allow people to access others they are likely to match
> against."_

This only works if you are 100% confident that your matching algorithm is
infallible. The odds of this being the case is about 0%.

I've thought about this problem some, and I think there are a few
unacknowledged issues:

\- Who you _will_ get along with, and are a good match for, is often different
from who _you think_ you will get along with. Dorky Dillon, taking from the
author's example, doesn't want page after page of plain janes similar to
himself - like all humans he wants to date upwards... even though it is
against his long-term interests and reduces his "efficiency" in the system.

\- We have solid predictors of _long term_ relationship success. Similar
politics? Check. Similar religious views? Check. Suffice it to say, the odds
of a hardline Republican and a extreme Democrat working out in the long run is
pretty low, but would they enjoy hanging out for 5 minutes? 10? A month? Part
of the dating site's job is to find _dates_ , long term relationships build
themselves out of that. IMHO there's a big difference between long-term
compatibility (that the poor lovebirds will discover for themselves with or
without your algorithm's help) and short-term compatibility (e.g. the ability
to carry a conversation through dinner that won't put the other side to
sleep). We have good predictors for the former, but IMHO not so much for the
latter... and the latter is also much harder to infer.

So far dating sites - and even the vaunted OkCupid is guilty of this -
conflating personality with opinion. Personality is what matters most in the
initial stage, but none of the sites are collecting meaningful information on
it.

I almost feel like matching people based on _relationship_ compatibility
(i.e., mid to long term) is the wrong way to go. IMHO it's a far better bet to
predict whether or not two people can get through dinner without trying to
kill each other... and just send them on a date. If they click, great. If they
don't, spin the wheel again. The modern dating website, with its hyper-focus
on long-term compatibility seems to be optimizing prematurely.

~~~
strlen
> IMHO it's a far better bet to predict whether or not two people can get
> through dinner without trying to kill each other... and just send them on a
> date.

That's the thing. It's true that a similar world view is important for a long
term relationship, problem is that there's well known sociological phenomenon
where by people will not answer honestly about their actual world view
(choosing one they consider to be more socially acceptable).

The very problem of course stems from the term "online dating". As I stated in
my comment, it should really be about "online discovery of people you can go
on a date with". The algorithms should not be about matching, but about
discovery of people where interest may be mutual.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"it should really be about "online discovery of people you can go on a date
> with""_

I agree completely. Right now our systems are (purportedly) remarkably good at
finding good _long term_ matches, but fail disastrously at getting you first
dates. One thing comes before the other - and let's be honest, compatibility
is something you can discover for yourself.

I'd much rather use a service that can get me regular dates with people I'd
enjoy spending time with, but may not be a good long-term match, than a system
that almost never gets me dates, but on the off chance it does she may be my
soulmate.

~~~
JonLAFT
below is some of what i wrote on adam's blog post. btw - @potatolicious, with
Luv@FirstTweet we're targeting this niche to help you "get regular dates with
people I'd enjoy spending time with" as you say.

I co-founded and just launched Luv@FirstTweet a few weeks ago.

I've thought about many of the issues which Adam describes, although I've
never written them as eloquently and clearly as he has. I'm going to address
some of the issues described in the blog post (note the "you" i reference is
adam obv)...

1\. spamming, hypergamy, and false advertising is a huge problem as you
mention, and a big time sink. People want to use online dating because it is a
huge pool of potential people and because it’s an efficient use of time.
However when you have to waste time it detracts from the value (more on this
below).

2\. spamming - On Luv@FirstTweet you just respond to our Tweets which build
your profile, so you’re not browsing profiles or messaging random people. The
only time you do message someone is after you’ve been matched with them, and
at that point we show several things in common as well as their photo, so
hopefully when you email them it can initiate a real dialogue about things you
care about, not just “nice pic ur h0t” haha.

3\. hypergamy is covered pretty much in my comment above due to the nature of
how you interact with the site.

4\. In terms of false advertising, I guess it could be done if you lie in
responses to all of our questions, but this isn’t a traditional dating site
where people are browsing profiles and a deviant dude hopes his lies will
ensnare an unsuspecting profile viewer…we’re building a profile about you and
then matching, so it wouldn’t have the same impact and thus I doubt people
would feel the urge to do it as much.

5\. network effects are the biggest challenge I see us facing, and it’s
something we’re got to deal with and adapt to. The big players are pouring
tons of money into advertising their self-destructive business models as you
explain, so this makes things tricky.

6\. if there was a “like” button next to Zao Yang’s quote I’d click it –
nicely put

7\. “And to redefine the problem a little bit, I suspect there’s more value
and fun in helping people meet new friends generically, and only incidentally
maybe a significant other.” the nature of our platform could go this way, but
currently we’re sticking with matching for dating. Something cool to think
about though.

8\. business models – looking into the future, there are many different
avenues to monetize which aren’t ad based, but thanks to some good advice from
@schildkrout from HowAboutWe we’re keeping the site free. We want to grow this
bad boy after all and when looking at pt #5 above, can’t add any friction to
the model to prevent user growth

9\. the business model issue you bring up is one of the main reasons I had the
idea for Luv@FirstTweet: “I sign up on the site, and buy a subscription. I
find six or seven girls I like, and send them highly personalized messages.
About 15% of people on Match are premium members, and therefore only one of
those girls can even reply to my message. I get one reply, at most” – that
right there is super super annoying. It is a huge time sink and a waste of
money.

10\. I’m definitely going to read that OkCupid post, it looks terrific.

11\. backend – while we’re not running computer vision algorithms to analyze
smiles, skin showing, etc (which is interesting, but just very different than
how we approached things), we are going to continually tweak our matching
algorithm based on the responses we get and seeing “what kind of matches work
and which don’t” as you mention.

12\. frontend – this is where we hope to be simple and fun. You say a few
points which I totally agree with: “Everyone knows that dating profiles suck
to create and suck to consume (YES) Not only do they lack real signal, they
also make for a horrible onboarding experience. (YES) You want me to fill
eight huge text areas with witty banter, and check or uncheck 250 radio
buttons? (YES…HAHA) Overall I’m not bullish on the trinity of people profiles,
messaging, and people searches. I know that’s how all sites are built today,
but if I were in this space I’d keep an open mind on redefining the
primitives.”

This is the key here to Luv@FirstTweet....

We take a fresh approach and say, hey you’re busy. We respect your lives. Go
to work then go have fun with your friends. Oh and when you have 1 spare
second when you’re grabbing lunch, or walking down the street, or waiting on a
friend…tweet a response to @luvatfirsttweet’s latest question and we’ll store
it and build your profile. We have a web interface of course if you’d like to
edit your questions and answer some previously asked questions, but the core
nature of the site enables effortless and fun profile building.

I'd love to know anyone's thoughts on this. Thanks.

Jon Lehr co-founder, Luv@FirstTweet

------
patio11
It would be interesting to see an online dating site which treated users like
mailing service providers do: "We really _want_ you to succeed with this, but
our priorities are to the ecosystem first and you a very distant second.
You're guilty until proven innocent, we're going to invest a lot of effort
into educating you in how to suck less, and if we catch a _whiff_ of you being
a nuisance you are banned for life."

(It would take some _serious_ guts to say "Your presence in our community is a
net negative. We wish you the best, as long as the best is found elsewhere.",
particularly if you do that in a data-driven fashion. My intuition is that
people's revealed preferences in dating are very, very, very far from socially
acceptable.)

~~~
nostrademons
'It would take some serious guts to say "Your presence in our community is a
net negative. We wish you the best, as long as the best is found elsewhere."'

Didn't OKCupid do that with their "If you have any STDs, please go here [link
to match.com]"?

~~~
pyre
Correction, it was [link to random competitor]. Needless to say, match.com is
no longer on that list.

------
iloveyouocean
How about: Instead of a static profile, a tumblog-style First Impression that
contains a persons consumption habits (movies, music, tv, etc) as well as
pictures, feelings and thoughts. They can update it incrementally to keep it
fresh and relevant. You can follow another persons First Impression to get a
passive view of them over time. Way better than canned answers to canned
questions and filling out surveys.

The service automatically groups similar people (demographics, location) into
groups of ~20. 10 guys, 10 girls. They are then led through a week-long online
introduction process where each day they respond to a prompt about a different
aspect of their life. By the end of the week, hopefully people have gotten a
feel for one another and if they are interested, you help them plan further
communication or a date.

You use the ratings gathered (+ other usage/interaction data) during the week
to assemble the next groups based on similarity, etc.

Group setting = no spammers, no awkward immediate 1-on-1, incentive to behave,
multiple partner options, attentive group-mates that arent off 'playing the
field' w/ 100 other people.

Week long = interaction over time builds trust, more time to learn about other
people, people like to be guided through awkward/ambiguous social situations.

Pay-per-play instead of monthly subscriptions ($10/week) so that a dater can
come and go as they please. You know everyone in the group is currently active
and is available for communication (vs. long dormant profiles, etc).

Etc, etc, etc.

I built this and launched it and it operated from 2007-2010. It was called
FlowMingle.com and had ~25k members. But, I gave up and shut it down. Why?
Because I got tired, didnt have any money, etc. I still think this is an
amazing way to do online dating, and my users agreed. Our sign-up conversion
rate was ~22% (!!), and this is with 0 marketing dollars ever spent.

But you know what I learned? Some people appreciate legitimate interactions
and thoughtful conversation and fruitful behaviors, and some people just want
to 'play the field' and take their chances at landing the big one. The online
dating space is every bit as complicated as the online daters themselves.

I would be happy to share my experiences with anyone who is interested.

~~~
retroafroman
Thank you for sharing this. As I was reading this post last night and the
comments here this morning, I had some ideas about how to potentially solve
the problems. Some of the ideas I had you've outlined and tried. Glad to see
I'm not alone in these thoughts.

------
seiji
Wide-open online dating discussions devolve into the same mechanics of "Is
College Worth It?" discussions.

It can be interesting to read, but most people will end up broadcasting their
life experience masquerading as opinion.

Also, never hire anybody over 28 years old.

------
awt
It seems like there may be no way to make dating easier, due to evolutionary
reasons. If some men find a way (resource) to get access to higher quality
females, there will immediately be as much competition for this resource as
possible. The only way to get access to it will inevitably be through costly
(as costly as possible) displays of fitness.

For instance, paying large amounts of money for access, spending a lot of time
working out to improve your pics, etc.

------
strlen
There is a problem with attempts at making online dating work like "real
world" dating. I'll state my reasons for this belief up front: I'm very
happily in an almost two year relationship with somebody I've met online
(OKCupid) whom I could have never met in person. Before, I've had a happy
(even if not lasting) and amicably ending relationships with other women whom
I could have never met in person.

I'll use my anecdote as one archetype ("geek of one type, seeking a geek of
another") for whom online dating works very well. When I started dating, I was
23 and working full time while atteding graduate school, living in San Jose.
Most of my fellow graduate students were already in relationships. The idea of
work place romance seemed scary to a new comer both to dating _and_ the work
force. I had a very small and limited friends circle.

My career, educational and financial situation meant that even if I had time
for social activities (I didn't), I'd have no ability to relate to a
(statistically) random person my age, irrespective of their gender. They
didn't have a stable job or attend graduate school, they didn't live on their
own.

The latter paragraph makes me sounds extremely shallow, but consider this:
it's not a good idea to have a [1] long term relationship to somebody earning
significantly less or significantly more than you. For example, simple things
that involve a money/time trade-off can turn into cultural conflicts: for
example, hunting 30 minutes for street parking when you could pay $10 to park
in a public parking garage (or in a city, taking the bus instead of a cab).
Dating somebody living with parents is difficult if you live alone; dating
with somebody who expects you to go to happy hour when you're in class or
working is also difficult.

([1] Another factor: I wanted a long term relationship at 23. Most men my age
didn't, leading women who _were_ to almost automatically infer that I "just
wanted to get laid").

Finally, I also wanted somebody who was intellectually inclined. While (for
reasons I can't comprehend), most men are intimidated by intelligent women, I
wanted somebody who could be a great conversation partner; who could discuss
(non-computer) science, philosophy, music and literature. I just didn't want
to hide my geekyness from my partner.

Online dating worked well in this way: I could meet women living in San
Francisco and Berkeley (which have a higher concentration of single geek-o-
phile women than San Jose), places where I wouldn't "just spontenously" make a
trip (given the distance). I only had to send a few messages, as I could
perform intelligent searches based on match percentage and then further narrow
down the results by actually reading the profiles (something most men on
dating sites don't quite do).

In some ways, you could argue I was engaging in what Adam Smith called
"hypergammy". In many cases, I felt the women I met were "out of my league".
However, that's completely silly: how can you know if you're out of somebody's
league, if you don't know what sport they're playing? In fact, one woman whom
I considered "out of my league" also told me she considered me "out of her
league".

Are there problems with online dating? Yes, of course. If you're curious to
what that problem is, ask a woman who actually used an online dating site
about what is in her mailbox. Fortunately, even a simplistic ranking algorithm
(TF/IDF on the message based with the keywords of the recipient's profile to
burry the generic "YO GURL UR SO HOT" messages -- from men who never bothered
to read the profile of women they messaged) can help greatly reduce this.
Helping people discover relevant content is a problem of algorithms (ranking
content and finding meaningful patterns in it), systems programming (building
the systems that could store, modify, retrieve and process the content in
_real time_ as opposed to in batch) and user interface (there's a whole
discipline around this). OKCupid and EHarmony (I've never used it, but they
happen to use an open source project I contribute to) are examples of at least
getting some parts right. Problem is that they couldn't go outside of their
niche (geeks in the case of OKCupid and -- in my perception, reality may be
different - traditional, usually conservative/religious and heterosexual[2]
people in the case of eHarmony).

([2]: I realize that this post is very"heteronormative", my apologies for
this)

In short, online dating should really be called "online discovery of people
you can date". Real dating happens in person and the same rules (e.g., "if
you're a guy be nice, pay and open the door") apply. It's just that you're
exposed to people you might not be exposed to otherwise (and you feel more
confident when on a date with them: you know they're actually interested in
you). Each side discovers something: I discovered that being a programmer
(doing something I have a deep passion for, doing creative work) wasn't
something I needed to hide and play down, while my dates discovered that
programmers can also have an interest in music, neuroscience, philosophy and
literature.

In short, making online dating based on offline social networks makes it
nearly useless. Given the experience of Myspace and Friendster (as opposed
non-dating based social networks like Facebook), it's a non starter from the
get-go: male friends spamming your female friends ruin the "social network"
part, the social network parts ruins the chance of any dating that wouldn't
happen in real life happening due to the use of the site (why, then, use the
site in the first place?)

~~~
Alex3917
"most men are intimidated by intelligent women"

While in theory a man's chances of finding a mate increase as his IQ
increases, I'm not entirely convinced that women are attracted to raw
intelligence either.

~~~
pfedor
[http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercourse-and-
intelligenc...](http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercourse-and-
intelligence.php)

"Each additional point of IQ increased the odds of virginity by 2.7% for males
and 1.7% for females."

~~~
Alex3917
I was talking about odds of marriage, not the age of losing ones virginity.

------
jtm
It's not the backend. Better matching isn't going to work when you're matching
snowflakes.

People turn to online dating because they want more options. Put them through
your fantastic matching algorithm and out of the 1 million members you
supposedly have they are only going to see half a dozen.

So you loosen the matching to return more results. Now they see 15. Why not
just skip to the chase and filter based on age, height and proximity? That
will get you 90% of the way there.

And people like looking at pictures of potential dates/partners. Let them do
the filtering themselves.

That leaves spam and scams, and they can both be reduced with a free-to-flirt,
pay-to-contact model. If someone is not willing to spend $5 - $10 to contact
you, then they can't be too interested in you. And vice versa.

(I've used online dating sites and I work in marketing for an online dating
site)

~~~
eftpotrm
This works only if you're close to the centre of gravity of the site's
population.

I'm a Christian and politically centre-left - not actually very unusual over
here, as it happens, I'm just in a small church so that option doesn't really
work. Even OKC, with its much vaunted matching system, is pretty bad at
finding people who don't cross a red line for me one way or the other. Even
with a tuned profile I tend to find:

* People who match with me on general life outlook are relatively often nowhere near me on religion. I'm not trying to exist in a Christian ghetto but a regular churchgoer and a Darwin fish aren't good matches. I also tend to match quite strongly with Muslim women, which I can't see either side appreciating.

* People who match with me on religion are often politically enough to the right of me that experience says there'd be arguments.

OKC has _major_ advantages over many rivals because it's enormously easier to
find red lines up front and save both parties a lot of time, but even then
there are edge cases where matching can fail. The further away from the
population centre you get the harder matching becomes (just as in the real
world, frankly) and a crude 'local, age, height' filter will slow those people
down considerably.

------
kscaldef
Honestly, I think that meetup.com ends up being a better "dating site" than
most sites that actually position themselves as such. As the article says,
it's better to just focus on helping people find other people they might be
friends with. From there, the relationships just sort of happen. Also, the
social distance problem is largely taken care of because of the focus on group
activities, and also because group organizers get visibility into the behavior
of the members and can, for example, boot the creeps who message every single
woman in the group.

~~~
seiji
Very good point. meetup.com is another site/service ripe for replacement:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2188969>

------
sssparkkk
I really enjoyed reading this post, as I think Adam makes some excellent
points. Whevener stuff like this gets to the frontpage of hackernews I get
really excited, and make sure I carefully read each and every comment it gets.
The reason for my enthusiasm for dating-related discussion can be easily
explained: six years ago I cofounded a datingsite in the Netherlands which
takes a completely different, and hopefully better, approach to online dating.
And so far, the (dutch) online daters seem to agree with us: over the years
we've consistently received very positive reviews (by members and the media in
general), in stark contrast with what is generally being written about online
dating. Since we have the ambition to move the concept to the US this year,
I'm going to go ahead and actually start joining the discussion here by giving
some details into how we've managed to address some of the issues Adam talks
about in his post.

Our site, in a nutshell, basically doesn't allow members to seek out other
members and message them to see if there's mutual interest. It's only possible
to talk to people you've been matched to by our system. In order to increase
the chances of interaction between the matched members we artifically limit
the frequency at which one receives new matches. Also, we give very little
information about the match. The system has good reasons to introduce the
members to each other, they will have to find out for themselves what those
reasons might be. This approach helps mitigate the issue of 'Hypergamy', as
the matching system ensures the match works _both ways_. Furthermore it
prevents spamming (it's just not possible) and deincentivizes fakers.

We can only get away with not allowing people to search for themselves because
we have a great matching system. Adam talked about eHarmony's love-science-
PhD's and noted a statistical approach would probably work better. That's
exactly what we thought, and put into practice. By combining the information
we have of our members (answers to questions, attractiveness scores, etc) with
a feedback loop that tells us which matches actually work out (or don't), we
can constantly improve our algorithm (think machine learning) to make better
matches. We actually have spend years optimizing the crap out of this.

Now, for us to be able to have a fighting chance in the US, we need to also
somehow solve the fabled chicken and egg problem. We managed to pull it off in
the Netherlands (word-of-mouth mostly, a big plus of actually having a good
product), but will have to do more to succesfully launch in a foreign market.
If anyone here has thoughts about this and is willing to share, I would be
very grateful.

------
tomrod
Perhaps encouraging people to unplug and go for a walk in the park?

------
falpal85
I strongly support the points this article makes about what the online dating
space currently has to offer.

Ultimately, I believe that people are better matchmakers or judges of
compatibility than a survey or a machine. Drawing from my own personal
experience, I have played cupid and matched 4 of my friends that have ended up
getting married. Seeing the lack of personal touch in online dating, I started
SocialHack (socialhacks.me) as an attempt to bridge that gap between daily
social interactions and the "social" interactions we have on the web.

Online dating has become a 1B/year business, and SocialHack compliments online
dating by adding that personal touch. Individuals go to online dating sites to
find a date, but don't know where to ask advice about what to wear, how to
respond to a text, where to make reservations, etc. Ideally, I would like to
build out this MVP into a peer-to-peer social advice platform, I believe that
this sort of a platform would naturally disrupt online dating as it exists now
because consultants will want to match their clients with friends from their
own local network. Our female SocialHackers provide online and offline
services ranging from fashion consulting/personal shopping, date
planning/advising, in-field "wing-women" services, and providing feedback for
online dating profiles.

I created SocialHack during the Lean Startup Machine weekend in SF, winning
runner-up and making $100 (per our proof of concept on Skyara.com) via our MVP
socialhacks.me all in less than 2 days. Our success in proving the concept
convinced me that there is a true need for this sort of service. More
interestingly, female enthusiasm for the concept suggests that a chicken and
egg problem wouldn't exist here.

I'd love to hear feedback on the idea and would love to work with anyone
interested in developing SocialHack further.

------
cgs1019
I love the characterization of the current solutions in this space as "just
too O(n)". A poignant, elegant, delightfully nerdy description.

~~~
KMStraub
Sorry, I'm nerdy but I guess not nerdy enough to be in on the joke. Could
someone explain it to me? I'm "the business guy" in my startup, though I'm
actually a girl.

~~~
gaius
It's big-O notation <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_O_notation>

------
ookblah
I've randomly thought about this and one thing i can say is that if you want
to build a successful long-term dating site you HAVE to cater 90% towards the
women haahha. that means making it easy for them to filter, having a safe
place where they don't feel hit on by creepers, or provide an arena where they
know that the men are "quality", etc.

You will always have enough male signups. So for the men it's about balancing
the ratios somewhat so that it's not just completely ridiculous. Dating sites
know this and probably don't care at all because they're getting revenue from
any warm body.

While i agree that it just takes 5 minutes in person to do a quick BS/weirdo
filter, that's not feasible online, _especially_ for women. Women are spammed
much more and have a tough time filtering, let alone meeting many people.

The only way this will work is if the matching algorithm he's proposing is
extremely accurate, otherwise all it'd take is like 3-4 weeks of failed group
dinner meetings to write the site off.

~~~
orangecat
_if you want to build a successful long-term dating site you HAVE to cater 90%
towards the women_

Of course. Seems like one obvious way would be to limit the number of emails
that men can send per day/week/whatever, so women don't get spammed quite so
badly.

~~~
Joakal
An obvious workaround: Multiple accounts can be created. It's that easy.
Otherwise if you add hurdles, single account people would be put off from
signing up.

~~~
amalcon
Here's a possible system:

    
    
      - Free accounts exist.  They have mostly full privileges.
      - A given user can only receive so many requests per period
        of time.  A given user can only receive one request per
        user for a given period.  Others are informed that they
        will be put on a waiting list.  The site could play games
        with the waiting list, like purging inactive accounts or
        increasing the priority of requests similar to ones the
        user has already responded to.
      - Paid accounts exist.  There is at least one incentive to
        pay:  you may skip a waiting list every so often.  The
        cost should be enough to reduce the incentive for account
        cloning and keep the spammers out, as it exists only for
        that purpose.
    

Desirable demographics (really a euphemism for 'women') would pretty much not
need to pay. On the other hand, the site is especially attractive to them
because they are not bombarded with messages. Less-desirable demographics
would still be able to use the site without paying, but they would be able to
pay to not wait around as much.

------
yef
I'm building a dating site. Contact me if you want in on the beta. NY for now,
expanding later.

The first thing to understand is the dating world is fraught with mishaps and
frustration. This is often misinterpreted as specific shortcomings to various
approaches, "bars suck!" and whatnot. The real conclusion is that there is a
lack of transparency in dating: signals must be interpreted; brutal honesty is
simply not socially acceptable. Because there is so much confusion, everyone
has an opinion.

Lots of people want to go beyond their social networks to meet people. There
is no doubt about that. Subscription models are also proven successful at
critical mass.

The challenges are building to critical mass, removing the stigma, encouraging
best behavior, removing spam, keeping the most desirable members, among many
others I'm forgetting.

Dating won't go away, the web isn't going away, and we have fun new social
tools to play with. Lots of opportunity here to go beyond what the traditional
dating sites have done.

------
Detrus
The best data is just hard to collect online. Photos of person in their social
group to deduce personality type would probably fail since there are so many
variables.

Lab scientists can measure biological or physical properties
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGfznq9OgdU&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGfznq9OgdU&feature=player_embedded)
like sweat scent which reveals immune system compatibility. They're getting
very good correlations for long term relationships from these simple physical
metrics.

Some of these metrics can be collected online, high testosterone or estrogen
is visible in the face. Has any dating site used them seriously? Because most
approach the problem from a psychological perspective, with surveys, bios,
chatting, etc.. But long term couples have a very high proportion of physical
compatibility, which happens to be easier to measure.

~~~
law
> The best data is just hard to collect online. Photos of person in their
> social group to deduce personality type would probably fail since there are
> so many variables.

The fact that there's so many variables isn't the reason such an analysis
would fail. The reason is that there's just not enough input to predict
personality type with any statistical significance.

There's just so much that could be measured, but whether any of these metrics
have any correlation with whether two people can, as the author describes,
"just get through dinner" is a very tough question to answer.

~~~
tomrod
>The fact that there's so many variables isn't the reason such an analysis
would fail. The reason is that there's just not enough input to predict
personality type with any statistical significance. Isn't this the whole idea
of factor analysis/singular variable decomposition?

------
bmr
I wrote about a grubwith.us-esque dating site in an Ask HN submission a little
over a year ago.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=878657>

The challenge with this model is that extracting money from users requires
repeated action on their part. That subscription money is so much easier. With
an average account life of six months, match.com gets about $180 per paid
user.

If you went with a Groupon-like model for a site that revolved around sending
people on dates, and assuming you could make about $10 on $20ish dates, each
user would have to get out there 18 times in order for you to beat the
subscription model.

I still think there could be a big opportunity in a site like this, but it's
not hard to see why the incumbents hang onto their subscription models for
dear life.

------
bambax
A site that would help one make new friends would be very interesting. Right
now (AFAIK) there are only two kinds of sites: those where you interact with
your existing friends (Facebook) and those that help you find dates (OkCupid,
Match.com, etc.)

But what about a site that would let you make NEW friends (but "just"
friends)? Would that be awkward? Online dating used to seem a lot awkward and
is now kind of mainstream.

Meeting new friends is incredibly difficult; one ends up seeing the people
they met in school or at work, and that's it.

Or maybe such a thing already exists? Or it's kind of available through
Facebook...?

~~~
droz
meetup.com

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lhnz
I actually think a dating site would do best if it connected people and then
forced them to meet each other. One of the reasons that they aren't great is
that girls get swamped with hundreds of messages and are afraid of meeting
most of the guys in public without XY number of messages. By the time
everybody has jumped through these hoops everybody is bored by the process.

And the thing is you can't really know what somebody is like without meeting
them in person.

Why not organise 'fun' group events for people that are interested in each
other online and want to meet?

------
kingkawn
As soon as I deleted my OkCupid profile I started meeting more people in real
life. At least for me, where I was putting my energy was a zero-sum choice.

~~~
klipt
I haven't deleted mine, but ignoring it in favor of real life activities
whenever possible has served me well so far.

------
jay_kyburz
Here is the Iron Helmet Games dating website. In development soon. (Angels
needed!)

An online dating site where you put your money where your mouth is.

Guys and Girls review each others profiles and rather than making contact and
trading a few messages, suitors buy "First Date Packages" and offer them to
the people they are interested in (the target of their affections).

Dinner and a movie? Paddle boating on the lake? Perhaps a picnic in the park?
Why not even go totally crazy and go skydiving!

Other suitors can see the offers made to people they too are interested in and
can "bid" against them by offering a more impressive or more romantic package.
(You want to attract the whales who have thousands to spend of really special
weekend. Charter a yacht for example.)

As soon as "the target" accepts the offer, the suitor's credit card is billed
for 75% of the date package, and the target is billed the remaining 25%. (The
target must contribute to the date package price to ensure they participate
and are serious.)

Site earns revenue by taking a slice of the price of each package. Once the
site takes off, 3rd parties pay to have their romantic packages on offer.

Its a crazy idea but I think its cool for a number of reasons.

Geeks will like it because you get a lot of help making sure that first date
is going to be interesting. You'll have the package all organized for you.

Girls will like it because when they go on a date they know where they will be
going and it will be exciting. Chances are they choose from a list of
interesting packages.

Go get em people will like it because both parties are jumping with both feet
and instead of trading countless emails only to discover the other party is
just not that interested.

Start your relationship off with a bang!

~~~
georgieporgie
> Dinner and a movie? Paddle boating on the lake? Perhaps a picnic in

> the park? Why not even go totally crazy and go skydiving!

Those are all terrible first-meet, first-date ideas. From experience, I can
say that you want something extremely public, from which you can extricate
yourself quickly with minimal embarrassment. "Want to get a cup of coffee?"
has been a standard for a long time for good reason.

~~~
jay_kyburz
No, thats exactly the point. Coffee is the boring lame idea that everybody
else does. Take the emphasis off the other person, put in on the fun
activities you will be enjoying! Start things of by _actually doing something_
with your Saturday afternoon!

~~~
joe_the_user
If you need to do _something else_ when you're meeting someone, that person
can't be that important.

Having coffee is boring. The person across from you will make up for that if
they are the one you are seeking. And if they're not, go sky dive - alone!

------
benjash
Dating (online and offline) in the UK is a totally different ball game.

If it wasn't for alcohol, i think all British people would die out.

------
analyst74
I was hoping there will be a lot of behavior analysis of the dating game, and
ways to utilize that knowledge in some innovative way to make online dating
work.

Without understanding the mechanisms of the game, a more successful dating
site just means a better conversion technique.

------
l3amm
An example of meeting friends-of-friends is soshi.com. They recently launched
at Stanford and leverage your facebook network to display eligible friends of
friends, it two people express interest in one another, it matches you up.

------
jonathanjaeger
Funny thing about OkCupid is they had a lot of their data in the front end
code (until they caught on). You could see how many messages someone was
getting in the last day/week and their reply percentage (which is then used to
calculate their selectivity indicator). Stumbled across this on Reddit:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/OkCupid/comments/etej8/tilyou_can_se...](http://www.reddit.com/r/OkCupid/comments/etej8/tilyou_can_see_how_many_messages_one_receives_and/)

------
artsrc
Seems like there really are plenty of wonderful creative ideas to improve
these sites, but the problems alluded too seem to have simple solutions.

People who have not paid can't respond? Make it free to respond. Pay to
initiate.

People spam with low quality requests. Make it so you only get a small number
of non-responded requests.

People ignore requests and are not paying attention? Show number of
responded/non responded requests in the last month.

------
donaldc
From the article:

 _Meeting friends-of-friends is the best way to find cool people, because
liking is transitive AND because the low social distances force people to be
on their best behavior._

If I were looking to date friends-of-friends in particular, I think I'd just
use facebook directly. Though more often then not, I've already met such
friends-of-friends via common events.

~~~
aantix
Hmmmm, I wonder if there isn't a hybrid model just waiting to be utilized
here?

Imagine this; by utilizing a particular dating service you would agree to A)
make your Facebook profile open to the person you are mailing and B) If both
parties are interested in each other (designated if both exchange message more
than once) this fact is known on each other's Facebook walls and C) if you go
out on a date with this person (both people making this known to the dating
website) each person open up their profile to the other individual to let the
other person write a review of the date on their public wall?

~~~
cabalamat
I'd surprised there isn't a facebook app for dating. It seems such an obvious
thing to do. (Or maybe there is and I'm just not aware of it).

~~~
minalecs
Both these ideas are already done. Thread and zoosk. Google thread because it
looks like its not active anymore.

------
ahlatimer
Wait, what?

 _OkCupid seems to be at the forefront in this space. They get people in India
to rate the attractiveness of new members and use that to limit your access to
people significantly more attractive than you are._

Is this common knowledge? I'm shocked if it's true, but I'm sort of thinking
there should be a [citation needed] after that.

~~~
georgieporgie
I just checked my archives, and in June 2010, they sent out this email. Note
that there is no indication of using offshore labor to determine this. Also, I
have no idea if there are more categories, like top quartile:

We are very pleased to report that you are in the top half of OkCupid's most
attractive users. The scales recently tipped in your favor, and we thought
you'd like to know.

How can we say this with confidence? We've tracked click-thrus on your photo
and analyzed other people's reactions to you in QuickMatch and Quiver. . . .

Your new elite status comes with one important privilege: You will now see
more attractive people in your match results.

This new status won't affect your actual match percentages, which are still
based purely on your answers and desired match's answers. But the people we
recommend will be more attractive. Also! You'll be shown to more attractive
people in their match results.

~~~
ilamparithi
If it is true, it is too bad. Don't we know beauty is in the eyes of the
beholder? Someone you find attractive is ugly to somebody else and vice versa.

------
nfriedly
Does anybody here want the domain name screwbeingsingle.com? It might make an
interesting url for a dating site.

(I bought it for a buddy to blog on back in high school. He put up 3 or 4
posts, let it sit for a while, and then told me he didn't want it anymore.)

------
zelandpanther
It's very hard to make online dating site that can transfer real life
situations and personal characteristic. Many variables had to be considered.
But it is not impossible, chemistry can work even through line : )

------
bfung
<http://piratedate.com/>, idea already implemented.

~~~
squasher
Where you can meet your (first) mate.

------
squasher
Has anyone tried using video instead of photos and blurbs?

~~~
GeorgeTirebiter
I'm also curious. I suspect once the iPad2 and a slew of Android tablets with
front-facing cameras are in the wild, we'll see lots of interesting
software...

