
Why Online Dating (Still) Sucks, and a Simple Attempt at Fixing It - krausejj
http://remarkedly.com/2012/02/21/why-online-dating-sucks/
======
m0nastic
The rash of online dating startups always strikes me as a misguided use of
people's efforts. I can appreciate that people think there's something they
can contribute to it, and that they see it as a really positive win for social
interaction (and I think people should work on what they want to work on).

But the thing is, dating sucks. Full stop. And online dating is merely trying
to slightly reduce the friction for the very tiniest part at the very
beginning of it. It seems to miss the whole fundamental reason why online
dating is hard, which is that dating is hard, and not easily abstracted.

Online dating is a misnomer, it's basically just online meeting of people.

~~~
spindritf
> But the thing is, dating sucks.

Wait, what? No, dating in person is awesome. New people, endless
possibilities, women laughing at jokes, stories and anecdotes your actual
friends already heard 50 times, that slight rush with every approach, the new
persona every time you're a little bored with your life... it's like
travelling but less expensive and only takes an evening at a time.

Online dating sucks because it turns all that delicate social interaction into
comparing of compatibility lists while those lists go out the window two
minutes into a conversation in real life. Dating sites completely lack the
ability to transmit behaviour, mannerisms, social reflexes, looks (photos
barely count), all those characteristics of a person that actually matter, and
instead basically allow anyone to publish their dating resume.

~~~
m0nastic
You bring up an interesting point, in that I stipulated that dating sucks as a
fact, and that it never even occurred to me that it wasn't a universally held
belief.

Because I can't think of anyone, besides those Seduction knuckleheads, who
enjoys dating. Single people I know hate dating. People in relationships I
know see the end goal that justifies all the awfulness that is dating, but are
happy to move past it. And people I know who were in relationships but are now
single again (divorced predominantly)are horrified by the thought of being
back there.

~~~
Gravityloss
Do you think meeting new people in general sucks too?

I think all the people I've managed to convince to meet me have been pleasant
to hang out with. It's not so hard.

There are a few scenarios that might seem bad. If you're trying very hard to
make an impression, it can make the situation unnatural and you won't feel
comfortable either. Another reason might be feeling disappointed if the other
person is not attracted to you.

I'm quite talkative and interested in many subjects though. If the other
person plays along normally, it's easy to get laid back interaction. It would
have been much harder to go on dates when I was 18. And probably the
"opponents" have improved a lot too.

I also respect other people's right to not be interested in me. We all have
our own lives.

For me the worst part is the early part when you're supposed to get some
response out of the women, to get them to meet you in person. The yield is so
low that it often feels like it's not worth the effort.

I think I've gotten myself motivated when thinking of it as meeting a random,
likely nice and potentially interesting person. And both of you can decide
what happens after that. Most likely not much. But even then it's been a quite
pleasant experience compared to sitting at home on a computer.

Of all the people I've met through internet dating, I've ended up dating with
one, am friends with many and don't keep contact with a few. But all have been
positive experiences.

If I reverse the "filter" idea and think about the women that have had the
most influence on me, I'd say it'd be pretty hard to separate them from a
general mass of good people. So the filtering has probably a really low
probability roof.

In keeping with the reverse problem theme, one could of course try the
Bayesian approach. You take people who you know match and examine what makes
it so you get a probable model. And then apply that model to unknown people.
There are probably some general models (people like this are attracted to
people like that) but also person specific models (this person is attracted to
people like this).

------
nhashem
Online dating is a sausagefest. It's the biggest sausagefest ever. I'm not
basing this on any scientific or quantitative information at all, just my own
personal experiences from online dating from 2004-2008, the end of which was
when I met my now-fiancee.

The "sausagefest syndrome" is inherently why so many online dating sites suck.
Guys sign up and get barely any responses to their profiles or messages. Girls
sign up and get immediately overwhelmed with messages, some interesting but
the rest mostly boring or creepy. Guys get frustrated at the lack of traction
and leave. Girls get overwhelmed by too much attention and leave. It doesn't
help when the online dating sites start using fake profiles and pictures to
give the false illusion it's not a sausagefest.

I've seen friends sign up for Match.com and be like, "this sucks, they have no
matches for me," and then I find they're looking for half-Asian half-Russian
college-educated non-smoking dog-owners in a 2.5 mile radius, or something
like that. That's almost guaranteed to not work. Unfortunately the alternative
is some sort of "shotgun strategy," which if done poorly, means sending a
message to 50 girls with the same copy-pasted canned sentences, which only
contributes to the women being overwhelmed. You still need to aim the shotgun.
I effectively had a routine where I'd spend an evening looking through
profiles, only ruling out absolute deal-breakers, and then sent a message that
while mostly short, at least made some reference to the actual girl. Out of 20
messages I'd get like 5 responses, which would lead to 2 phone calls, and
probably 1 actual date. Rinse, repeat.

Yeah, it's kind of annoying to fill out a profile and all that, but to me
that's never been the problem. I feel there's a lot more social friction to
get women to sign up for these sites, because while online dating to guys is
basically, "well, why not, it's another possible way to meet girls," to girls
it's, "this is admitting I am incompetent at/undeserving of finding love."
Until that's overcome, online dating will always be a poor experience for a
lot of people that try it.

How do you overcome it? In a drunken night with friends a couple months ago, I
started rambling about an online dating site that _embraced_ the male-female
disparity, and basically would pair up something like 3-4 guys to every girl,
and set up dates where you'd all go out like "The Bachelorette." There's a lot
of reasons why that idea would be a hard sell, but if anyone ever does
successfully do it, just make sure to give me my cut[0].

[0] <http://xkcd.com/827/>

~~~
jquery
The male/female ratio on major dating sites is much closer to 50/50 than the
message ratio would have you believe. The fact that men send the vast majority
of the messages is the inevitable result of a positive feedback loop stemming
from men being slightly more aggressive in the dating arena.

For the "unfortunate" women who tragically receive too many messages, just
implement something like LinkedIn's brilliant "InMail" system. Make it cost
money to send a premium message. Now these women can focus on premium messages
if they don't have time for the spammers. Even better, let the women choose
how much it costs to send them a message. There, real-life dating boiled down
to its essence.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"The fact that men send the vast majority of the messages is the inevitable
> result of a positive feedback loop stemming from men being slightly more
> aggressive in the dating arena."_

I think it's more complex than this.

It's a convergence of many problems really. The first, and _greatest_ problem
with online dating is:

 _1_ \- Words are a really fucking shitty communications medium. Few people
are good writers, and even fewer people are good writers when limited to the
span of a few paragraphs. Body language and personality are far more self-
expressive, but we have no good ways to pushing this information across the
internet. Because of this, there is a _tremendous_ reduction in range of
communication. All the profiles start to read the same, because we've
essentially topped out how expressively a regular person can get with 3
paragraphs to describe themselves.

In other words, when you've crunched down people's self-expression to really
short paragraphs and a bunch of multiple choice answers, _personality
disappears_. And its place, the only sane metric one profile from another is
physical attractiveness. Which leads to the next big problem...

 _2_ \- There are _no_ salient indicators of competition online, quite unlike
the real world. How many of us here go after statuesque model-types,
exclusively? Bueller? But we do it online, because without the ability to
appreciate someone's personality, looks are the only measuring stick you've
got left. In the real world this is balanced out the fact that competition is
extremely visible, especially in an environment like a club or a bar.

You see a girl being hit on by an endless stream of guys. Do you line up and
join the fray? Or maybe you find something else?

Online these signals do not exist, which means all men will simply line up to
hit on the hottest subset of the population without knowing just how long this
sausagefest-line is, and the complement of this is that anyone who isn't in,
say, the upper quartile of physical attractiveness, will get crickets (or the
spamalot shotgunner-types).

tl;dr, the problem is twofold: poor communication medium means that
personality and unique traits are impossible to express well over the dating
network, leading to physical attractiveness becoming the only major factor in
almost all decisions, and _everyone_ (guys and girls) become way pickier than
they would be IRL. Lack of visible competition drives traffic to only most
attractive portion of population, where in real life visible competition will
drive a considerable amount of "traffic" back towards average lookers.

~~~
jaredsohn
>Online these signals do not exist

On OkCupid, they show a dot on each profile to indicate how responsive the
person is. My understanding that any woman who gets an extreme number of
messages will have a red dot, since it is impractical for her to respond to
all of those messages. They also have star ratings, which should indicate how
generally desirable the person is on the site.

~~~
DanBC
Except people are unlikely to give someone a one or two star rating, and are
likely to give four or five star ratings.

~~~
jaredsohn
At least for women rating men on OkCupid in 2009, that's wrong.
[http://alvanista.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/another-okcupid-
st...](http://alvanista.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/another-okcupid-study-
preselection-rears-its-ugly-head-again/) "Women on OkCupid have rated 80% of
the men as unattractive." "The median man averaged 1.5 stars out of 5"

Also, all 1, 2, and 3 ratings are seen only by the person who made the rating
so there is no penalty for rating someone low.

But it doesn't matter if the ratings are distributed evenly; there will still
be some variance. Users who pay to have "A-List memberships" can use those
ratings to search for matches of at least {3, 4, 5} stars to restrict their
matches to the more heavily sought.

------
donall
A minor point: when filling out my political orientation, I noticed that
"socialist/fascist" was an option. I really don't want to start a debate, but
I think these should be separate. It seems in the US they are often both
considered equally dangerous extremes, but in the rest of the world, there is
a pretty significant distinction between the two camps.

~~~
itmag
Yeah, that made me chuckle. The USA is pretty quaint sometimes.

Then again, to us euros, all Americans are worldview-challenged religious
fundamentalists who mock dying poor people in the streets while brandishing an
Uzi in one hand and a quadruple cheeseburger in the other. So it goes both
ways.

------
LaGrange
Real names? Never. It's way too easy to get a stalker even if you're initially
anonymous. It would be just dangerous to use a dating site like that,
especially once you add that location function into it.

Messages are a pretty important part of the online dating thing. Same thing
with profiles. How someone reacted to your profile, how someone presents
themselves, all that is really important when looking for people you'd like to
talk with. And, personally, I have written quite a few messages on OKC, and
never a canned one. Even if someone didn't answer, I hope I provided a bit of
entertainment or amusement.

Now, the fact that OKC does thing like showing you profiles of people across
the globe even if they're not interested with interacting with someone they
might never meet – that's annoying.

------
swang
First off, you need women on your dating site. That's it. Just like bars, you
don't need to target guys, they will just go where the women also are.

I'm not a girl, but the top reasons that I hear about from girls in regards to
online dating. 1) there's still a stigma about online dating that some girls
won't get over. 2) too many "creeps" who message them. 3) they fear they are
getting "played" or are getting a message from someone who just spams the same
message. 4) they get way too many messages to sort through.

In fact most girls try to set up filters, "Don't message me if you can't spell
or if you don't know the difference between, 'your' and 'you're'". Honestly
though I find it hard to believe that girls are that concerned with spelling.

I, as a guy, have to deal with having to prove to girls that I'm not creepy,
or spamming message, and on top of that have to message them something to
catch their attention. Personally, it's even worse for me when the girl has
nothing at all in her profile for me to ask them about.

So what I suggest is, automatically filter out "hey whats up gurl" messages
for women. Conversely also filter out any messages that are more than 2
paragraphs in length. Show women pictures and have them rate the pictures by
whether or not they would date said person then algorithmically find people on
the site that look similar to pictures she favored.

I'm trying to think of some more, but basically make it easier for girls to
filter out people they would never date. And somehow make it easier for the
guy to know that the girl has some interest in him, besides weird, "winks" and
icebreakers.

~~~
minikomi
How about a site where guys / girls set up challenges that guys have to
perform in order to be able to contact them?

* Write a 250 word essay about your favorite british guitar pop

* Make a video of you cooking something using pumpkin (my favorite)

* Write me a song using the words panda and musk rat, and about Michigan (bonus points for name dropping the coffee shop with the best cheesecake in town - you'll know it if you've been)

etc.

~~~
fatbat
Hmmm I like this idea. Are there any that implements this so far? Maybe
something I can look into. :)

------
shalmanese
Here's the real reason why online dating sucks:

1\. The only good sites are the ones your potential mate is on. Size is a
bigger feature than any you can design.

2\. If your site sucks, then people get frustrated and everyone leaves. If
your site is great, then people get paired off and everyone leaves.

Online dating doesn't just suffer from network effects, it suffers from
_second order_ network effects. Unless you're getting a constant stream of new
customers into your site every day, your site will fail.

All innovation in online dating comes from the customer acquisition side, not
the product side. If you manage to figure out an innovative new form of
customer acquisition, you can make a go at creating a viable new entrant to
the market. If you can't, it doesn't matter how good your product is, you will
fail.

~~~
unawz
There's a solution to that problem - peer to peer - as in file-sharing. Create
software that sits on each persons computer. This is freely downloadable.
Users input as much information as they want into it, and it reaches out and
grabs other users' data like file-sharing, and filters it to any sort of
criteria.

This solves the chicken and egg problem.

People can make money on this by offering hosting services. It can be a hassle
for the average user to run and update the software on their computer so many
might opt to pay for a cloud service.

This model can also be used for business discovery. Google and ebay can only
do so much, you might want complex querying and reporting.

edit: The software solution can be as simple as publishing rdf data. The
Protege ontology editor (open source) is already available. Users could simply
start publishing their data profile right away, and conventions would form
around what you should be putting in it. Protege also has querying facilities
built in already. This was actually the semantic web vision.

~~~
shalmanese
That's not a solution, that just pushed the problem one step up the chain, how
do you convince people to download and install that piece of software?

~~~
unawz
Same as how people are convinced to find dating sites, create a profile, and
spend hours/months/years finding the right person. Downloading a program and
having it automatically do complicated filters to find the right person is a
cake-walk in comparison. People are motivated by money and sex, they'll climb
any hurdle to get to it. Installing desktop software is not a big one.

~~~
joering2
no you still missing his point. people were convinced to created their profile
because other users were already in the network. your idea does not solve
chicken-egg problem. I will not sign up for profile or download your software
UNLESS you have a database of couple thousands men/women to go through. Unless
you have a 25,000 single friends that you can eblast and beg to fill out the
form or pay each a dollar for their time, you will fail. it wont matter
whether it is profile registration or software download the value is in
network.

~~~
unawz
It is different to regular dating site. It isn't a couple of guys. The
software would be open source, I suggested starting with Protege. Since there
is no single authority, a whoie bunch of entrepreneurs could pursue this,
potentially in the thousands, seeding it with all their friends. Also, the
functionality you get over traditional dating sites (and this also applies to
business networking/sourcing such as linkedin/ebay) can be immense. You can
run multiple queries over the profile data, whereas a site such as
plentyoffish can't afford to. That alone should convince many people to
contribute to this. I recall similar projects about a decade ago, such as rdf
foaf, music brainz, but they didn't take off because their wasn't enough
bandwith and computational power at the time (downloading millions of rdf
pages wasn't possible then - now users routinely download gigabytes of video).

------
leeb
> You see real names

This would be a complete dealbreaker for me, even without all the other things
that this service would share from my profile. I would never want there to be
an easy way for people from the dating site to be able to find me on another
site - you can shut down a dating profile or discontinuing using the service
if someone's bothering you, but with this it sounds like complete strangers
would be able to find/message me on Facebook outside of the site's control,
and I wouldn't want to stop using Facebook because of some creeper. And if
it's using publicly available Facebook data, it means I need to make a ton of
my information public and accessible for the service to be useful.

That's not really worth the risk of using the service to me, and is probably
why you don't frequently see dating sites that reveal full names/near-exact
locations as you're suggesting. If you can find a way to display Facebook
profile details without revealing the person's full name, you'd probably have
more luck recruiting people.

~~~
krausejj
Essentially, the only data available given the "basic" settings on Facebook is
name and friends.

Your name is already out there all over Facebook - friends of friends, random
people in groups you're part of, people going to your events - they can all
see it... why is it different to give your real name to a (real) person who
matches very specific criteria that you set yourself, and which basically just
signifies "I'm Single, and you may be a match" ?

~~~
leeb
I guess I see a few major differences between this and friend-of-friends. Most
important is accountability - a friend-of-a-friend isn't likely to send me a
creepy/sexual messages, since there would probably be social consequences for
them from mutual friends. There's no such social barrier for people I don't
know at all, so the only consequence would be me blocking/reporting them (and
you can easily make a new Facebook account if that happens).

For members of groups who I might not know - yes, people in groups I'm in know
my full name, but probably don't know enough about my life to make it worth
behaving creepily towards me - and if they did, any actions would likely
remain virtual. However, your service is telling people my full name, _and_
states that it will "sort by location" - so now someone knows my name, knows
around where I live, AND knows that I am single (so it's more likely that I'm
not living with a male)? That's not information that I'd feel comfortable
broadcasting to people who have no accountability.

I know I'm focusing on the creeper/stalking issue, and I'm sure that's
frustrating feedback when the majority of your users will be using this
service with honorable intentions. I'm just trying to explain why I and most
of my female friends would be instantly turned off by a service that shares
this information - and from what I've read, attracting female members is a
huge issue in the online dating space. It's really something you should try
talking to female friends/family members/a focus group of potential online
daters, because I don't think it would be an uncommon point of view and you
don't want it to keep people from joining your site.

~~~
krausejj
it is a valid point, thanks

------
phzbOx
Every time I pitch startup ideas to my gf, she always tells me it sucks and
gives me great reasons.. but the other day, I had this idea about dating
website and she kinda liked it even though she would never want me to work on
something like that.

Instead of trying to use the Internet to solve a problem that is better solved
in real-life (i.e. meet people and talk), why not create a whole fiction world
where you can be anything you want. Basically, it's a game where you put the
profile picture you'd like to have, and the 'about me' you'd like to be. So,
you talk with lots of strangers and avoid the awkard thingy while still having
fun and meeting people. Of course, after some time, it will naturally start to
be more intimate and it'd be possible to share more real stuff.. but that's
not even necessary.

Think about all the guys and girls in couple who'd like to have fun dating
again but can't because they're already in relationship? Or single players who
just want to have fun?

Here it is. It's rough around the edges but I hope it inspire someone.

~~~
lsb
That sounds like a pretty cool idea, create a whole fiction world where you
can be anything you want.

People have implemented that in meat-space as the city of San Francisco.

If people find that the rest of their life tugs on them, perhaps you could
sell an all-in-one escape month? It'd be perfect for the baby boomer who wants
to try one month at not being the same person. Just take care of all necessary
daily/weekly/monthly chores for a month.

(Obvious expansion into doing people's chores for them, pairing with tourism
boards, etc.)

------
kanwisher
The list of reasons doesn't seem well thought out, rejection is part of the
dating experience, I would think its much worse in real life when someone
ignores you then simply just not responding to an email. I really wouldnt want
to tie this to facebook for the reason of stalkers and weirdos now have
personal contact with me. I would prefer to keep my dating life seperate.

------
valladont
Really not interested in having to put my sexual and relationship ideals up on
facebook where friends and family can see them... Facebook is where I go to
talk to people I do not want knowing a lot about my personal life.

~~~
krausejj
This isn't how it works - it connects with Facebook so it can filter _out_
your Facebook friends - the whole idea is that only new people who you don't
know can see that you're single and looking to connect.

~~~
valladont
This app connects to my facebook to check my friends and stuff, then I tell
this app the stuff I am into sexually and romantically, and then it connects
me to others on facebook who have the same interests, I get that. But the
simple fact is, well, keep my romantic life out of my social life.

If I want my romantic life and social life to intermix that will be my
decision, not that of some webapp. There is a reason Dating Sites exist
separated from Social Sites, and it is not because no one has thought of the
idea before.

Personal Preference: Ne'er the twain shall meet.

Just to be clear, it is a good idea, but I personally would not trust that
small a level of separation between social and romantic life. There may be a
market in it, I am not a member of that demographic.

------
jquery
Online dating does more than reduce "Hi, my name is" friction, it also allows
you to find people who have rare attributes and personality traits you desire
in a partner, before you make the commitment to spend money/time on a first
date. Lists of interests and questionnaires are exactly what online dating
does right and moving to Facebook would be a step backwards.

EDIT: In other words, my Facebook profile is not a dating profile.

------
stevenj
The dating space is interesting. I think it's ripe for disruption. But thus
far I haven't been able to figure out how to attack it, let alone where to
start.

I think YC was right when it said you have to concentrate on solving the
chicken-and-egg problem.

 _"...anyone who wants to start a dating startup has to answer two questions:
in addition to the usual question about how you're going to approach dating
differently, you have to answer the even more important question of how to
overcome the huge chicken and egg problem every dating site faces. A site like
Reddit is interesting when there are only 20 users. But no one wants to use a
dating site with only 20 users—which of course becomes a self-perpetuating
problem. So if you want to do a dating startup, don't focus on the novel take
on dating that you're going to offer. That's the easy half. Focus on novel
ways to get around the chicken and egg problem."_

If you're passionate about building an online dating site, I'd spend all of my
time iterating ways to get users. Try a bunch of different ideas. And fail
fast.

#8 <http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>

~~~
xp84
Yeah but on a dating site with 20 users you could conceivably bang EVERY GIRL
ON THE SITE! Achievement Unlocked! ;)

~~~
fatjokes
On a site with 20 users, they'd probably all be male.

------
mhartl
_Am I missing anything?_

You're missing at least two things. Assuming (as is reasonable) that you're
principally aiming at the heterosexual market, you face these issues:

1\. Men and women are different. How do you address gender imbalances?

2\. Not all women are equally appealing. How do you address attractive women
being overwhelmed with male attention?

Some may object that I didn't include "attractive men" in #2. See #1. In
particular, even the most attractive men are virtually never overwhelmed with
female attention on online dating sites. (Those who are probably enjoy it.)

~~~
jessriedel
> In particular, even the most attractive men are virtually never overwhelmed
> with female attention on online dating sites. (Those who are probably enjoy
> it.)

This is really interesting if true (which I think it probably is) because real
life is the opposite, at least if you measure by sexual partners: by
definition, the average number of partners for men and women (in a
heterosexual population) is the same, but it turns out that the variance for
men is much larger; a few many get many women and most men get few, while most
women get a typical number of men.

~~~
mhartl
You've got the wrong metric. The reason some men have lots of sexual partners
is because many men _want_ lots of sexual partners, and some have the ability
to do so. On the other hand, most women of even mediocre attractiveness _can_
have lots of sexual partners, but fewer of them want to. This is just as you
would expect based on the relative energy investment men and women make in
producing offspring. Other animals with similar asymmetries in energy
investment have similar sexual behavior to humans.

Incidentally, this observation puts the lie to the idea that having a
stud/slut dichotomy is a "double standard". Having different standards for men
and women makes sense; being a stud is _hard_ , while being a slut is _easy_.
Indeed, the vast majority of whining about "gender double standards" can be
rebutted with the simple observation that men and women are different.

------
arrakeen
my response to the article and many of my friends who've had a similar
experience with online dating boils down to 'ur doin it rong'. here are some
tips:

* CAREFULLY write your profile so that it will attract the kind of person you'd like to meet. be playful, fun, and funny.

* DO NOT BE OVERLY SERIOUS: unfortunately there's still a bit of a social stigma against online dating so people are often already on their guard and will already be wary of everything they read. so keep the profile and messages light and playful.

* okcupid has a great feature that lets you see who has visited your profile, use this to your advantage. you've already carefully written your profile to attract your ideal partner, so see who it's attracted. if someone has visited your profile a couple times already, the chances that they'd be receptive to a message are much higher

* do not get hung up on a single person. "OMGZ my soulmate didn't reply to my message! IM FOREVER ALONE!!" well, if you two were truly compatible, don't you think they'd find your profile and message interesting?

tl;dr be playful, have fun, and don't take yourself too seriously

------
perlgeek
IMHO the real problem with online dating is that it's explicit. You need to go
hunting for others, set up your profile etc.

Imagine a world where nobody is concerned about privacy. After a while, your
search engine of choice infers from your search queries that you don't have a
girlfriend, and occasionally shows you a message along side the result page,
telling you about a girl who has search for several similar topics than you
have, roughly your age and living not too far from you. She'll get a similar
message, and if you both agree, a communication channel of some sort will be
made available.

Don't reject the idea as being creepy. It might sound creepy, but it could
actually work. Search engines know a lot about you, and might find matches
without you having to set up a profile, and mostly bypasses the incentive to
lie in order to make you look more attractive.

Oh and of course it wouldn't just work for dating, but also for finding
friends in general.

If I had a job at Google, I'd love to try my hand at prototyping such a thing.

~~~
itmag
I would actually _love_ a site that finds me male friends. I always need local
people to do eg martial arts, hacking on projects, going out to sarge,
discussing philosophy, etc.

------
jtokoph
I love the bashing of this idea in the comments. Everyone saying that they
wouldn't want to use a website like this.

What they don't realize is that the simple choice of which service they use
can act as a filter. For instance: I wouldn't want to date you privacy freaks
and you wouldn't want to date me. Already filtered down the sea of singles by
just signing up.

------
therandomguy
I wonder if people will find dating and facebook too close for comfort.

------
kristenlee
The facebook thing is an absolute dealbreaker, what don't engineers understand
about people not wanting to use facebook for everything? So annoying. If you
want people to use real identities there are plenty of other ways to go about
it, furthermore it is not that difficult to create a fake facebook profile, i
have three myself.

~~~
jfarmer
Are you kidding? Engineers are one of the most privacy-conscious demos out
there, especially under 30.

Just read any post on HN about any site that uses Facebook Connect. Half the
comments will be about how they refuse to so much as look at that button.

I disagree that going full-on-public is the right approach.

For women, especially, they get bombarded with all kinds of creepiness. I
think it'd be hard to get people to waive their right to hand out information
at the pace they feel comfortable.

Anything that alienates women from a dating site is a deal-breaker, IMO. The
dating sites that do well are the ones that can attract and retain female
users.

That said, there's a kernel of an interesting idea here. The process of dating
is revealing increasingly intimate details about ones life. If you reach a
point where it feels uncomfortable, you break up.

For the "online" portion of online dating, e.g., sending messages back and
forth on OKC, this is very explicit. Guy sends girl a message. Girl responds.
Guy reveals name. Girl reveals name. etc. Until eventually contact information
is exchanged, and then you arrange an offline date.

So the "core" problem of online dating is one of building comfort.

One Facebook-powered feature that could build comfort might be to show how
many friends you have in common (but not who). Another might be to show where
your Facebook likes intersect.

But forcing people to reveal all their information immediately really runs
against the grain of the whole idea of dating.

~~~
krausejj
regarding "forcing people to reveal all their information immediately really
runs against the grain of the whole idea of dating" -- in most cases, the
public Facebook profile is hardly "all my information," and sites like OKCupid
that do online dating the "traditional" way are already out there. this is an
alternative - for people who want to try going against the grain.

~~~
jfarmer
I'm not saying it's against the grain of today's dating sites. I'm saying it's
against the grain of dating, per se.

------
itmag
My ideas on dating sites:

<http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-misc-dating-site-ideas>

[http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-
slideshow-a...](http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-slideshow-
audio-voiceovers)

[http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-profile-
improvem...](http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-profile-improvement-
team)

[http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-that-
gets-r...](http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-that-gets-
reluctant-female-s)

[http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-with-
gamifi...](http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-with-gamification)

[http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-walk-in-my-shoes-
dating...](http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-walk-in-my-shoes-dating-site)

[http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-my-dating-profile-
did-w...](http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-my-dating-profile-did-well)

[http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-staff-of-
fe...](http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-staff-of-female-
helpers)

[http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-smartphone-video-
speed-...](http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-smartphone-video-speed-dating)

<http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-adsense-for-dating>

[http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-photo-album-widget-
for-...](http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-photo-album-widget-for-search-
result-pag)

(I just pulled this out of Google, so it's not sorted by awesomeness or
anything).

------
erikb
Seeing that something sucks is not the important point. Everybody can do that.
You must ask WHY, before working on solving your problems with the situation
on hand.

And I think the reason for dating sites being quite bad is not, that nobody
sees the problems. It's just that there are way bigger problems that need to
get solved first and when these problems are solved you don't need to solve
any other problem anymore to be successful (at least in the short run). And
the big problem of all social communities and market places (dating site is
something of both in my eyes) is that you need get people to come in. If there
are a lot of people, other's will come automatically. If there are no people,
nobody will come. The software or the service quality is only a second rank
problem. So I wonder, how do u solve the community problem first?

------
MBlume
I don't understand why you're so determined to hide my friends. I _like_ my
friends. I might conceivably want to date some of them, and in any case, I'd
like to show them my profile for con-crit. Is there a way to turn the
"feature" off?

~~~
krausejj
I considered that but I figured if you already know someone and like them, you
should just ask them out in person.

------
unobfuscate
My advice, make the facebook connect a feature, not a requirement. I know this
is no simple change, but you would get a lot of buy-in if you sell it as a
value add.

"Setup your account! Don't want your friends to see your profile? click here!
Want to see more people? Click here!"

So people connected through facebook can see everyone (minus their friends),
and people who aren't can only see others who are not. Keep pushing them on
facebook connect, when they do a search, tell them how many people they are
missing out on! (3 results, 98 results if you click here!)

------
Vermeulen
I think this is pretty brilliant, the ease of use and simplicity - but the
fundamental problem is the requirement on Facebook. Even if your not posting
on user's wall trying to spread the site I think people will still be hesitant
to connect their Facebook profile to a dating site, Facebook is just too
personal for something that most people would prefer to be done anonymously.
Not that there is anyway around that, since Facebook gives so many other
benefits for this idea

------
kingkawn
I've had a pretty good experience with Internet dating. I've met a lot of
women, become really good friends with some, had brief flings and long term
girlfriends. They all are deluged with messages from creeps, but that really
shouldn't impact men who aren't creeps. Many reject me, but who cares? That's
true in general. I dont want life to be softer on me, I just want to go HAM on
life. If you're not satisfied with the Internet hit the grocery store checkout
line.

------
krausejj
if anyone has any feedback - especially with regard to user acquisition or how
to make this more viral, i'd really appreciate your ideas.

~~~
LokiSnake
You're implementation still feels like a slight twist on what we've seen
before. You list criteria which are used as filters, and you either show
interest or don't. OKCupid is pretty much the same thing. Sure, you take away
the profile filling, and uploading photos part, but it's still the same thing,
but slightly different. Thing is, after a match is found, you don't solve the
"well shit, what do I do now?" problem. You're back to awkward and possibly
creepy part of messaging and setting something up.

I remember seeing a very interesting idea for a dating website a while ago on
HN, where you're matched based on activities/events you're interested in going
to. I really liked the idea, as it matches based on interests, and it
automatically answers the what-are-we-going-to-do question.

~~~
natrius
Maybe this was the site you heard about: <http://www.howaboutwe.com/>

They've been doing a significant blast of advertising lately.

------
cwilson
Online dating sucks, and is hard to solve, because real-world dating sucks,
and is hard to do, unless the following applies:

\- You're attractive

\- You're a social person

\- Both 1 and 2

You can be an attractive person, but shy, and still get dates pretty easily.
You can be just average looking, but very social and outgoing, and still get
dates pretty easily. If you have both, the world is likely your oyster. These
types of people generally never visit dating websites, because they don't need
to.

With that in mind, we can conclude the following:

\- Dating websites are mostly full of people who do not apply to the list
above (e.g. unattractive introverts).

\- There are still of course attractive and social people using these sites
for various reasons, but they are the minority.

\- Some of those reasons that minority exists may be because they have
"issues", and regardless of being attractive and/or social, have trouble
maintaining lasting relationships offline.

This means we have a mix of unattractive introverts not only mixing with each
other, but mixing with attractive extroverts who are unstable in
relationships. Then you have the "sausage fest" factor that has already been
mentioned in the comments tossed into the mix, along with some dating websites
simply being really, really bad (the only good one I can think of, which still
has all of these problems, is OkCupid). This all sounds like a recipe for
disaster to me.

My theory on what might actually work, and how online dating needs to evolve:

\- In my experience, my best relationships have been a product of serendipity.
You can filter through potential matches all you want, use data to try and
find that perfect someone, but 9 times out of 10 when you actually meet,
you'll feel absolutely no spark or connection, even if you both love all the
same things. It's that spark that matters, and I've never experienced this
through anything but a serendipitous encounter.

\- The actual problem is that we shouldn't be sitting in front of our
computers looking for potential mates. We should be out finding them, in real
life, where the interactions actually matter, and serendipity can do its
thing.

\- This means we're trying to solve the WRONG problem. We're trying to make
dating websites better. Instead, let's make it easier to get out of the house,
and do the best we can to "engineer serendipity", or at least put you in
situations where it's more likely to take place.

\- While I'm not going to plan out an entire solution here, it would likely
involve some of the following: It has a mobile aspect, it involves overlapping
friend circles (think degrees of separation, or how you'd meet a match at a
wedding or dinner party), it involves social events and situations, and it's
built in a way that is perceived as safe, non-creepy, and by people who
understand real world social situations and complexities (i.e. not made by the
introverts who can't date without a website).

At the end of the day, we need a solution that helps you easily put yourself
into social situations you wouldn't otherwise be in, and replicates what
happens and actually works in the real world, without feeling creepy or
forced.

------
sudoscience
My best advice is to reword the filtering section. The fact that you need to
outline in red that it might work differently than people expect is a good
clue that it is too hard to understand.

Other than that I think this is really nicely done and a great idea. However,
apparently there are no 20-40 year old girls in Seattle yet. :)

------
prawn
I have an idea in this space that I'd be keen to get feedback on. Have only
ever seen one person mention the rough/loose concept before. If you have
experience in this field or figure you're pretty good at picking a good/bad
idea and have a spare minute, can you email me? My details are in my profile.

------
tsunamifury
I can never get over the fact that online dating will always be a very distant
second to meeting people in real life.

Why don't more sites stop trying to force some artificial romance virtually
and study how to get groups of people to meet in person and foster
relationships.

------
Cyranix
As a guy who met a girl on OkCupid and married her, I found the author's list
of faults in existing online dating systems to be rather puzzling. Most of
them seem like a) perils of dating in general or b) perils of interacting
online in general -- problems that may not be solved by Yet Another Dating
Site.

> Fake pictures. People always try to game the system, and the realm of dating
> is no exception. It's not unheard of to create a fake Facebook account for
> casual social engineering.

> Poor filtering. My personal experience doesn't match with this but YMMV.
> OkCupid has rather good filtering using not only quantitative data (e.g.
> location, age range, tagged interests) but also more qualitative data (e.g.
> question system). I suppose Match.com was somewhat less effective.

> Can't tell who is actually interested. That's dating for you. Also, being
> direct isn't creepy unless you're directly being creepy.

> Creating a profile is a huge pain. Probably the most legitimate beef with
> online dating. I found OkCupid pretty straightforward and well-incentivized,
> but YMMV. I wonder how indicative someone's Facebook profile is, though, of
> what they offer in a relationship; plenty of people have profiles brimming
> with the minutiae of daily life instead of statements about their
> fundamental beliefs and desires.

> You may see someone you know. This doesn't have to be a huge deal. I saw two
> of my friends on OkCupid, one of whom I was romantically involved with
> previously. We had a good laugh about it and moved on. Don't buy into the
> assumed social stigma of online dating -- it's not the end of the world for
> someone to know you're putting yourself out there.

> Data never disappears online. I didn't know what to make of this point,
> honestly. Don't people just delete/archive/ignore old messages? Is there
> some concern that these become public knowledge?

> Rejection is painful, and there is more of it online. As another commenter
> has said, dating is a numbers game. Online dating increases exposure to
> potential dates, so rejection increases -- though (based on my experience
> and those of friends who have also done online dating) roughly in proportion
> to what is experienced with in-person dating. There's always a point in
> dating where someone can get rejected; it can actually be liberating to have
> small rejections up front instead of big rejections down the road (for
> several reasons, not least of which is the lost opportunity cost of the
> failed relationship). No matter how much a site tries to shelter a user, it
> can't last forever. [ See also Rejection Therapy discussed on HN:
> [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=rejection%2...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=rejection%20therapy)
> ]

> It just feels juvenile. OkCupid allows good flexibility in how you express
> yourself. The question system helps some people elaborate on topics that are
> particularly salient to their interests; other people are more comfortable
> writing short essays; still others are comfortable summing themselves up in
> a few bullet points. Also, on this count you've disregarded a crucial
> intermediate step between one's online profile and an in-person date: online
> messaging. The profile establishes interest, messaging confirms interest,
> in-person dates explore whether interest becomes a relationship.

krausejj, I'd be interested to know which sites you've used to reach your
conclusions -- and, sincerely, best of luck refining the concept and creating
a successful product.

~~~
krausejj
I think OKCupid is a great service and I've heard of several people (like you)
who've found success with it. My idea is meant to be another alternative - for
people who haven't. Also, there is nothing wrong with being on multiple types
of platforms if you're serious about finding someone - most people are.

In response to a few of your points: 1) It is very hard to fake a Facebook
account. It's hard to get those 1000 friends and tacky drunk pictures from
college. 2) OKCupid already does qualitative filtering ad nauseum - the
efficacy is debatable but for someone who wants more objective filtering that
they can understand and doesn't take a long time to implement, Circl.es could
be better. 3) Rejection is part of the game, but it can be reduced by making
sure that you're only considering people with whom you have a shot - allowing
people to say "no" before you even see them, filtering both ways, and forcing
people to make simple choices early on can reduce the pain.

To be honest, my biggest beef with OkCupid is the complexity. A new user
coming the site can barely understand how it works - it takes time and a lot
of work to use the system. The other day I had a friend join and I just typed
okcupid.com/profile/his_name into my browser and pulled up his profile (I'm
not a member of the site). He was horrified! I know they have privacy
settings, but it takes time for new users to "get" this. Furthermore, I have
personal doubts about whether personality matching really works - I think the
depths of the human psyche might be a bit beyond computing.... but that's just
my opinion.

Ultimately, OKCupid is a very cool site - many people love it. My site is
different and, if it is successful, will have a different set of strengths in
terms of matching people. If you weren't married I'd encourage you to at least
Circl.es a trial run to see how different it is!

------
krausejj
the male to female ratio on Circl.es just swung wildly towards the males since
launching on HN (it had been primarily female). hacker girls - you have very
good odds right now!

~~~
jarek
Hacker girls have been unsuccessfully looking for online dating sites with
"very good odds" for _ever_ , to be sure.

------
discountgenius
I had a very, very similar idea (but with more facebook integration) less than
two weeks ago. I'm glad it's already built. Now we just need some girls to
join...

------
iza
I'm slightly offended that you combined Socialist with Fascist in the
political views section.

~~~
Robin_Message
(This is off-topic, and I see how it is slightly offensive, but the biggest
Fascist party, the Nazis, called themselves "National Socialists". And in
terms of the effects — for example, the gulags, war-like nature and
authoritarian rule, they appear quite similar. Now I assume you are the good
kind of socialist, that wants good for all (e.g. modern Europe), rather than
bad kind (e.g. the USSR), (and I agree with you) so I can see why you would
want to distance yourself from the Fascists, but historically they are
similar.)

On topic: Can I expect more or less dates if I put my political views as
Fascist...?

------
georgieporgie
Facebook was the best dating site ever invented, until they killed the ability
to search on sex and relationship status within arbitrary networks.

By the way, to my knowledge, nobody has tried peer-curated online dating. i.e.
an interested friend does the awful work of searching and matching, forwards
minimal details for approval from both parties, and coordinates the meeting.
In other words, online dating which more closely approximates traditional
social methods.

