

Flirting Social Network Likealittle Hits 20M Pageviews In 6 Weeks - webwright
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/19/likealittle/

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kloncks
More than anything, I'm just impressed that this made it to the 50+ campuses
without the tech world having any clue.

edit: ...and I'm in college. I wonder if this says anything about me :P

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stevefink
Sometimes I still wish I was in college to figure out how this is on 50+
campuses, and today is the first day I'm hearing about the company. I'm
married, and my college days are behind me, but I would have been all over
this service in my younger days. I wonder if it'll go the Facebook route and
eventually serve a more global market? Love the idea.

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thenayr
The 20M pageviews are likely from people trying to figure out how the hell to
use the damn site. UI is TERRIBLE. 90% of the "updates" look like spam.
Spelling mistakes are rampant throughout the entire front-end. Looks like the
whole thing was thrown together in a weekend. PLEASE let this thing die a
quick and painless death.

 __* quick edit - Also, from the looks of it, they are hiring for EVERY
possible type of position (ui, design, backend, front-end, marketers etc.)

In all honesty the entire thing just feels like a desperate attempt to
duplicate the success of facebook with a bunch of fake "statistics" and
randomly generated content.

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coffeemug
_Looks like the whole thing was thrown together in a weekend._

FDR once said that nothing "just happens". Twitter looks like it was thrown
together over a weekend, bit.ly looks like it was thrown together over a
weekend, Hackers News looks like it was thrown together over a weekend.
Everything most people ever poured thousands of hours of thought and sweat and
dedication into probably looks like it was thrown together over a weekend. 20M
Pageviews In 6 Weeks do not "just happen". I guarantee you that there is a
team of very talented people working around the clock to make this product
what it is. You can question the quality of their work, but there are tens of
thousands of people who clearly disagree with you, and they didn't come about
over the weekend.

 _PLEASE let this thing die a quick and painless death._

I never understood why someone would say that. There are people who spent a
long time thinking about the product, building it, tweaking it, pouring their
work into it, and inevitably someone comes along and says "let this thing die
a quick death". Does it detract from your life? Does it detract from anyone's
life? It makes people happy, otherwise they wouldn't be using it. Why would
you wish failure upon someone else's work?

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nailer
> FDR once said that nothing "just happens". Twitter looks like it was thrown
> together over a weekend,

I agree with 'nothing just happens', but Twitter, right now, doesn't look like
a weekend project. Maybe Twttr did when it first started though.

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emilepetrone
I just threw up a fake post as a blonde girl - 3 replies from guys:
"Boysenberry says let me take you out...baby girl you're a cutie let me take
you out, to a dinner and a movie?"

I think they may run into the Chatroulette problem...

But very impressive growth indeed!

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nl
I don't like to be the cynical one (hmm), but I'm not at all convinced. An
awful lot of the "dialog" looks like it is generated content. Maybe not all of
it, but there is a lot that sets off alarms for me.

<Insert obligatory thread about Turing tests, Twitter, 4chan etc here I guess
/>

If I'm wrong, then please pretend you never read this, and DON'T THINK AUTO
GENERATING CONTENT IS A GOOD IDEA!

~~~
jackowayed
I go to Stanford. A _lot_ of people were talking about likealittle within a
couple weeks of its launch. Not startup nerds, people who found the product
fun. Based on the number of mentions of it I hear about (including some people
in my dorm posting >5 joking flirts in the course of 10 minutes while hanging
out), I find the high number of posts and comments totally believable.

College students love wasting time and love interacting.

Also, I'm looking at the posts from my dorm, and I know for a fact that at
least most of it is real.

~~~
nl
It doesn't surprise me that it works & gets interest, but I do wonder how they
got over the cold start problem.

I guess I'm just overly suspicious.

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vaksel
to be honest, it doesn't seem like it would have that much staying power. The
dynamics are just not there.

Right now there is a ton of traffic because it's the hot new thing on campus,
but essentially it's the missed encounters section of craigslist.

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callmeed
Except that (a) it's more real-time than CL and (b) CL has done little to
innovate in what is now a mobile/location-based world.

Ignoring that, it's still not a bad thing to be compared to CL.

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dgallagher
You'll likely see companies successfully spin off of "parts" of Craigslist,
which are being neglected. The major issue with Craigslist is that it's not
organized well. It's extremely chaotic, requiring users to spend lots of time
searching the site, learning where stuff is, and memorizing its ebbs and
flows. It's this giant database of useful information which is screaming for
somebody to make it simpler to use. CL prevents this with their lack of 3rd
party developer support, so different databases will pop up and slowly chip
away at them until they either open their API's, or die off.

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shawnee_
Blue, blue, blue. . . twitter is blue, facebook is blue, most of
microsoft/bing is blue, even gmail (default) is blue. A more creative / edgy
design would help a lot.

Design critique aside, the idea is a very good one.

~~~
megablast
Apple love blue too: Finder, Mail, Safari, iTunes, Xcode, Application Loader,
iDVD, Quicktime Player, the Folder. Even Word and Photoshop.

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light8
Having recently been in college, I know first hand how addicted people get to
facebook, always having it open in a tab. This looks similar because now the
information isn't stagnant and always available, it's constantly changing. If
you don't check it, you might miss out on that cute guy/girl who noticed you,
and everyone is always looking for that..right?

I think it's a great idea - but just as quick as it's blowing up, it can also
deflate imo. As someone else mentioned, it shouldn't get that chatroullette
syndrome, where every post from a girl is met with "down to fuck??!!" and
"here's a pic of my penis ___". If it gets labeled as "stalker, creepy, gross,
lame" by girls and they leave, guys will obviously follow suit...something to
watch for

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poet
Recent comment by PG on the outing of startups who anonymously post jobs:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2022335>. In my eyes such a thing falls
in the "not-unethical-but-something-you-shouldn't-do" category. There's
nothing strictly wrong with it since you are just using publicly available
information, but it is a courtesy not to. Sure perhaps someone else will out a
startup, but you don't have to be that guy.

~~~
patrickaljord
Unless this was just a plot from them to get more publicity.

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poet
If so than they can anonymously leak their identity themselves. It's still not
necessary to have someone else do it for them.

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robryan
Love how something gets tech crunch overage when they are trying to keep a low
profile when all these other startups who bug them by email constantly
struggle to get a mention.

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throw75
Their URLs are also great:

<http://likealittle.com/omg/show_choices>

An omg controller?

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michaelbuckbee
Probably just an OMG route.

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aresant
I am suprised by detractors - come on people: social dynamics, plus anonymity,
plus flirting, plus cyber stalking?

This has the perfect viral pull of "I wonder if anybody likes me" - kind of
like that brilliant old Classmates.com line "Is an old classmate searching for
you?" or HotOrNot.com

Facebook-attaché Formspring.me has nailed the anon part alone and been
rewarded with insane, fairly sustainable traffic:

<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/formspring.me/>

I'm not sure this is a huge, revolutionary business but I'll bet that these
guys do pretty darn well and as a feeder to dating sites they'll crush it
(which incidentally powered a huge part of FB's early revenue and is still an
important cornerstone).

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pat2man
I totally agree. Facebook has become a bad place to flirt. Who wants to share
pictures of their grandma with their latest crush? This has the potential of
becoming the standard for dating.

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theklub
I agree its a great idea. Feels like real time missed connections for college
kids. Craiglist should of seen this coming.

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jacquesm
I can see a facebook 'team acquisition' in the near future.

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clarkm
Is this any different than <http://isawyou.mit.edu/> or
<http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~spottedatharvard/>?

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brianmwang
Penn's "34th St" magazine has been doing this every semester for a while now:
<http://www.34st.com/content/2010/dec/shoutouts-fall-2010>

The formula works.

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mtkd
At least we know who that anonymous job advert was for last week.

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greenlblue
The idea definitely has potential. The current market they are targeting is
the best setting for this kind of application. A bunch of horny college
students in a confined location, i.e. a campus. If the founders manage things
right I think they could turn this into a great platform for developers and
advertisers and this comes at just the right time because everyone and their
gandma at this point has a location aware mobile device.

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nivertech
I imagine to myself LikeALittle.com pitch deck slide:

Total Available Market: "A bunch of horny college students in a confined
location, i.e. a campus"

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scorchin
How has nobody compared this to the FitFinder yet? It was clearly better
executed than this is and had gained traction in the UK.

The only reason it was shutdown was because the founder was told he would be
fined heavily and wouldn't receive a degree if he didn't.

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marcamillion
Let's see how long before this post gets canned. Or is the cat out of the bag
already?

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jacquesm
Given that the link is to techcrunch...

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petdog
Awww, I had the same idea last year, while taking the daily train, but I never
really believed in it. Actually I was also hoping to have iphones regularly
advertise the owner's page on which to anonymously comment.

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veb
Apparently you get a refund if you don't find your 'future mate' within 28
hours.

<http://likealittle.com/about>

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weaksauce
It's a free service from what I can tell....

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veb
I'm sure someone will email, complain and demand some non-existing money back!
:-)

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patrickaljord
Looks like it's already being abused <http://likealittle.com/stanford/>

