

Show HN: LaughMatch - haon99
http://www.LaughMatch.com/

======
tptacek
OT: Get out of the habit of saying "I built this in 3 days". Most of the time,
people say that because they're nervous about being judged. Ironically, "I
built this in 3 days" probably exclusively attracts the kind of attention that
benchmarks and judges what you built; either way, it's hard to see how it
constructively promotes anything you're doing or planning to do.

Get used to people tearing you down. HN is full of people --- most of whom
have never built anything --- who tear new products down for sport. But the
world is also full of people who will be dismissive in more insidious ways. If
you're going to launch products, build up your thick skin now. The industry is
full of people who launched less impressive things than this, promoted their
work ruthlessly and without neurotic humility, and later went on to run the
table on their competitors.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Somewhat ironically, your comment doesn't have anything at all to do with what
he actually built -- a really cool new take on personality matching.

~~~
tptacek
There. Fixed it for you.

------
pud
I like this. One thing I would add, is the ability for users to submit a
YouTube URL (add a new video).

For example, Mitch Hedberg[1] is my favorite comedian. I'd like to submit a
clip of his in hopes you'll match me with women who like it.

Plus, your job is easier when people are submitting content (you'll need some
vetting process probably).

Plus, you can show people stats on the videos they upload. And "here are all
the women who liked the video you uploaded," which is kind of awesome. I could
write them and be like "Hey.. I'm glad you liked that video I uploaded..."
nice ice-breaker.

Good work.

[1] Here's some Mitch. Enjoy. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7auvTMm47uM>

~~~
vnchr
This sounds like a great added feature. Added feature opportunities like this
seem important to make this app just that...more than a feature.

I'd hate to see existing Match sites run with your idea as-is. Seems like
added depth created by a more tailored experience (this above feature as an
excellent example) would help you differentiate significantly enough to be
significant on a standalone basis.

tl;dr Steal this^ feature idea before Match, etc., steal yours.

------
macleodan
I like the idea. It has the clever advantage of offering something of value
before anyone else has signed up - funny videos. Maybe you should offer more
videos before the signup page. Maybe even split the sign up fields between
videos. Obviously this is a good candidate for testing.

One major thing I don't like though are the highly restrictive options for
gender and orientation. In the case of a dating site, classifying gender does
seem like a neccesary evil, but the options could at least allow more people
to sign up. I would suggest, as one possibility, adding more options, such as
none and other, and also making this a check box selection for people with
more than one gender.

Additionally, why do you ask for orientation? You don't need to know this, and
you fail to ask the necessary question of "which genders would you like to be
matched with". These things are not the same. This section could also allow
check box selection of desired matches.

------
imjk
This is one of those ideas that seem so obvious to me that I wonder, "Why
didn't I think of that." It needs some work, but it's got great potential.
Good luck.

------
JonLim
I really like the idea (as many others here seem to!) but there's an inherent
problem with going beyond the US: some of the funny content is not available
to the rest of us.

I was voting on some dog against a door stop, which was nice, but the
following video was a clip from Portlandia, which I was not allowed to watch
(in Canada.)

There were only the choices to not enjoy, or enjoy the video. There was no
"skip this please" option.

Otherwise, keep working on this, it definitely has potential!

------
danielhunt
Interesting idea, but I find myself bored watching the videos, hoping they get
funny (in some cases ... at all), and it's souring my experience of the
service itself as a result :(

------
sbashyal
I like the idea of using sense of humor as compatibility test. Has this been
done before or did you come up with this idea?

------
AYBABTME
Hey there. Few things that I think could be improved:

1\. The slider could have a wider (in height) clickable area, I find it hard
to click. Make it fatter a bit.

2\. When I decide whether I find a video funny or not, I then click vote and
the video changes to a new one. I did that a couple of time and I was still in
the middle of a video, I would have preferred if the vote was registered but
that I could keep watching the video, and then click an arrow or something
when I want to watch the next one.

3\. I put a bogus postal code, so I can't use the "Meet people" feature. Would
be nice if I could see my "laugh profile" and see people with a similar
profile, without having to be geographically within 20 miles. Or let the
search use different conditions, as 20 miles is kind of random.

4\. Also, it's nothing major but, the rest of the world doesn't use imperial
units.

I'll update as I find more.

------
jplur
Excuse my ignorance, what does MVP stand for?

~~~
citricsquid
Minimum Viable Product. They generally exist to validate an idea before
investing time and money into it.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product>

------
schizoidboy
Pretty cool. Couple of ideas:

1\. Ability to skip voting on a video (looks like you can click "watch videos"
at the top to skip, but then it might come back)

2\. Ability to suggest funny videos, since it seems the selection is limited
(or the random generator is skewed!)

------
aszepieniec
Great idea. My first impression is: "wait, I'm being judged after only two
videos?" You probably want to increase that number to five or so. Good luck!

~~~
tedmiston
I would like to see more about the metric used, for example, an explanation of
the model or formula you're using to weigh the dimensions of my sense of humor
for classifying or clustering.

------
natch
Cool idea.

One nitpick is: you're asking me to vote on whether a set of 30 or so jokes in
a three and a half minute clip were funny. It's hard to do that, because some
were funny, and some were not. Maybe with time addressing of the clips
(possible with Youtube URLs I believe) you could offer up shorter segments and
the idea would be more convincing, and probably work better as well.

------
charleshaanel
Interesting take on behavioral target marketing. Good start. Have you
considered adding a stronger call to action for the sign up process (upper
right).

Also I noticed a blue button. Have you considered split testing red and yellow
buttons? Those colors consistently work. Check out the color of Paypal or
Amazon's CTA buttons - you'll see what I mean.

Good luck.

------
PuercoPop
Nice idea,

btw you should make the Facebook Page a 'Community Page' not a person so I can
like it not have to friend it.

------
darien
I think it's an alluring idea for match making. But what's to stop OKCupid
from releasing this same feature for their audience in less than 3 days. I
assure you that their engineers also read Hacker News. That aside, really
innovative use of youtube, better than Feross Aboukhadijeh's creation of
Youtube Instant.

------
SatvikBeri
Great idea! However, when I signed up, the first clip I found was 7 minutes
long. Based on that it would take quite a while to build up any sort of useful
profile. Some sort of screening questions might be helpful, e.g. do you have a
morbid sense of humor? Do you generally like these comedians? Etc.

------
diminish
I am curious of clustering and categorization of sense of humor which they
used while choosing the videos.

------
mehulkar
I don't like the slider. I'd prefer a boolean :) or :(. Other than that, this
is great.

------
namank
Make the smilies clickable.

Unless you expect your users to make an in-between choice (in that case,
making the smilies clickable will go against what you want)

------
viviantan
I'm loving this idea, except I'd be afraid to date anyone who _does_ share my
sense of humor :)

You're onto something here -- keep us posted.

------
esolyt
Have you also considered doing a browser extension that will display an
interface for voting when you're on Youtube?

------
jbkring
love the stark contrasting colors in your design. wonder how the login/vote
buttons would look if they were flat like the rest of the design. too bad i
already have an awesome gf (with a very similar sense of humor), i would
definitely use this.

------
MitziMoto
The top photo looks kind of silly on resolutions above 1440, but otherwise
it's very nice.

------
sbt
Brilliant! This would be the dating site of my choice had I needed one. Great
job guys!

------
antoniuschan99
dood this has potential to crush it and I rarely see stuff like this. Please
keep working on it and innovate some more.

------
BjoernKW
This is a truly awesome idea.

------
nyddle
Nice but time consuming idea.

------
durpleDrank
This is an amazing idea.

------
wolfparade
Love this idea!

------
albumedia
Wow...good job!

------
stuffihavemade
I would be shocked if you've used a dating site before. Not to critize your
product (the site looks pretty nice), but it's solving a problem that doesn't
exist.

~~~
durkie
For what it's worth, there was a new yorker article from around the middle of
2011 where the feature is online dating. One of the researchers they
interviewed concluded that guys are basically looking for girls that laugh at
their jokes, and girls are basically looking for guys to make them laugh (to
the point that they joked their next dating service would be called
girlsthatlaughatmyjokes.com and guysthatmakemelaugh.com)

~~~
stuffihavemade
I worked on something similar to the MVP shown (not about jokes specifically,
but a "gimic" dating site). The real problems have to do with gender
imbalance, men shotgunning messages, and the fundamental issue with these
gimic sites: attractivness is all that matters online. It really doesn't
matter how witty you can make yourself appear (which, I'm not sure this site
allows for that? seems to just see if 2 users have the same sense of humor,
not how funny someone is), if you're not attractive. Where in the real world,
personality and confidence can have a much larger effect. The unspoken
assumption is not that people want girlsthatlaughatmyjokes.com and
guysthatmakemelaugh.com, It's hotgirlsthatlaughtatmyjokes.com and
hotguysthatmakemelaugh.com.

