
Ask HN: Will there ever be an eHarmony for finding friends? - sendos
From what I know, eHarmony asks you a long list of questions, and then tries to match you up with people they think you would be a good romantic match with.<p>Not sure how well the above works, but I always thought a similar thing that applied to finding people whom you would click as friends would find many applications:<p>Moving to a new city, moving into a new apartment complex, starting a new job, starting college, going on a cruise with a ship full of people you don't know, etc.<p>I guess there are websites that help you expand your network of friends, but as far as I know, no website runs a test that is analogous to the one on eHarmony.<p>My questions are:<p>1) Do you think that a questionnaire + algorithm could ever be developed to find people that you would click with as friends, or are human nature and human interactions too complex and unpredictable?<p>2) Assuming such an algorithm is possible to develop, would it get traction, would people use it, would people pay for it?
======
goodside
1) The former.

2) Not easily. The biggest problem is that the people who most need help
finding friends are the ones you least want to find on a friend-finding site.
Every dating site seems to be drowning in this problem, which means they have
to resort to scam techniques and exploiting new, naive users as much as
possible. OkCupid is the only exception that I've seen. Hard to say whether
you can replicate what they're doing (that is, not sucking) in the Platonic
realm.

~~~
rjett
OkCupid gives 3 ratings: a Match percentage, a Friends percentage, and an
Enemy percentage. Isn't the op's idea already rolled into this?

~~~
Scriptor
It'd just mean using the matcher on people you wouldn't romantically pursue. I
think there's too much of a stigma of okc being a _dating_ site, so that
people think using it as a friend finder would be weird.

~~~
jw84
People use okc to make friends all the time. This problem is pretty much
solved for the 18-30 set. Now, how do you make friends in your 40's 50's or
60's is another problem.

~~~
MC27
They should re-brand it or do a spin-off if that's the case. OK Cupid, just
sounds like a dating website, and I'd assume someone with a profile on that
site is merely looking for a partner.

~~~
jw84
Why rebrand? Guys and gals you don't have sex with are friend zoned.

------
njl
The algorithm is quite doable. A good-enough algorithm would be fine -- I have
higher standards for those I exclusively date than for those I grab an
occasional beer with. An opportunity to meet some new and interesting people
would be great.

The viral loop probably lies in encouraging people to sign their existing
friends up so that we can better classify the kind of people a user gets along
with. I think people would use it, given that it had some mild game mechanics
and some real social benefit. I'd push hard against making it in any way
useful for dating and hookups at first, otherwise it would quickly get a
stigma.

I had an interesting chat with some salesguys a couple of months ago, where we
talked about an application that lets you say, "I'm in Denver on a layover for
four hours. I'd love to grab a beer with somebody who sells into the
enterprise software space and has some time to chat." That's one possible
revenue source. Permission marketing is another one.

If I were to go the social-media-startup-route, this is the problem I find
most interesting.

<http://www.njl.us/social-networking-but-the-other-way-around>

~~~
rythie
I've seen people on twitter with a lot of followers doing the "I'm in such and
such for 4 hours lets meet" invitation, though of course that only works for
people with a lot of followers. So I think there is an opportunity there.

~~~
byoung2
That would be a great feature for Foursquare. They could add a profile for
users, and let you opt in to sharing that with other users who have checked in
at a certain place. It could be interesting to see who's nearby with a similar
collection of badges and interests.

~~~
mikeyk
Meet Gatsby does this with foursquare (<http://meetgatsby.com/>)

------
thristian
One problem that springs to mind is that while a romantic relationship is
usually one-to-one, a friendship is often part of a circle of friends - even
if you'd get along well with somebody on their own, there's no guarantee you'd
fit comfortably with all their friends, to say nothing of whatever group
dynamics might be involved.

If there was an eHarmony-style site for friendships, it would probably involve
mining social networks like Facebook for more information than just a simple
personality quiz.

------
hernan7
Maybe I'm old-fashined, but "a site for making friends" sounds a bit creepy to
me. I would expect it to be populated by crazies mostly, so not very
attractive.

A slightly different approach could be to have a site or sites for people with
some niche interest to meet each other. I don't know, carpentry hobbyists or
amateur blues players. It seems that Meetup already covers this? Maybe you
could see if there are some niches that are not covered well enough by Meetup,
and focus on these.

~~~
notahacker
looking for other people to pursue shared interests would be one of the main
purposes behind "a site for making friends" - at a glance Meetup looks very
geared towards structured group activity and less towards "hey judging by your
profile/blog we have very similar tastes; fancy a drink?" ad-hoc approaches.

The other completely "non-creepy" case where someone might want to use the
site is when they've just arrived in a new city/country (though again there
are plenty of expat-oriented forums and social networks) or people that were
looking for transitory conversation with likeminded people whilst passing
through (essentially couch-surfing without the couch).

yes, you're also going to get the "people who aren't very good at making
friends" and the "people that like to exploit the vulnerable", but they haunt
the dating sites too.

------
qeorge
MeetUp.com does a good job of this, albeit in a different format. Here in
Raleigh, you can always find a pick-up ultimate frisbee game, a developers
meet-up, or whatever else you're into.

I think the idea has legs, and the fact that people use MeetUp.com is a
testament to that. Finding connection is definitely something people want. If
the service existed, I'd absolutely try it out.

------
saurik
Any such site will immediately be used by people to attempt to find dating
partners under the guise of a friendship, defeating the point if it being
"friends only". I know someone (female) who recently tried to use the
"platonic" section of craigslist to find some new friends, only to find later
that all the people who contacted her (a few emails in) started down the path
of "I'm bisexual". Some made continual references to how cute she was, but how
they understand she isn't into that sort of thing, and would "respect her
boundaries"...

~~~
msluyter
This. I would add that meetup.com is a fairly decent avenue for making
friends. At a minimum, folks you meet will have a common interest, and you'll
be less likely to face the problem above (though let's face it, any social
activity can manifest this problem.) There are also generalized meetup groups
more oriented towards networking or simply making friends, which adequately
fill this niche, IMHO.

------
rythie
I don't think going college or going on a cruise are that difficult places to
meet people. In fact I think that holidays in general and college are easier
than every day life since people often have few friends with them and people
are more relaxed and open to making friends.

For moving to a new area, I would expect that real life networking events are
best around a common interest or joining sports clubs.

I think eHarmony and similar sites are aimed at matching two people together,
where as male friendships tend to based around groups of friends, so I'm not
sure how you would modify it to fit. Might work for women though.

~~~
apsurd
ya. being friends with someone is a social thing. If you can't befriend me in
real life, I probably don't want to be your friend. (or rather it just would
not sustain itself)

Also, at least guy to guy, you don't really go out looking for friends. That's
just weird. You just _happen_ to do stuff and gradually, subtly, you become
friends =)

I don't think most people remember how exactly you become friends with your
friends. That's indicative imo. A forum for "friendmaking" is just weird.. as
in it probably wouldn't _actually_ work due to the dynamics.

------
helwr
Music, movies & books are good indicators of taste and therefore you can use
them as parameters in similarity search on user-user matrix. It is called
nearest neighbors search or clustering in academic jargon and there are many
possible solutions, mostly based on some sort of matrix decomposition. Look at
this one for example, the winner of Netflix challenge:
[http://public.research.att.com/~volinsky/netflix/BellKorICDM...](http://public.research.att.com/~volinsky/netflix/BellKorICDM07.pdf)

~~~
sendos
This is interesting, since I've been thinking for a while that your Netflix
queue might serve as a decent proxy in tests about whom you might click with
(either romantically or just-friends).

If I think of the things my friends and I have in common, of all the aspects
of their lives (interests, hobbies, politics, etc) maybe the one where we have
most overlap is in the types of movies we like. Maybe this is not supported
statistically across the population, but I would be curious to see a study on
the correlation between the similarity of two people's Netflix queues and a
measure of how much those two people click as friends.

The similarity of the queues is easily quantifiable, but one would have to
come up with a quantifiable measure of how much two people click. If they are
friends on Facebook, you could see how much they interact: the higher the
interact, the higher they click (of course this may not always be the case).

------
todayiamme
I genuinely believe that you're making a mistake over here; you're assuming
that machine learning is a magic bullet that can solve anything. I am afraid
that isn't the case. Even for a satisfactory level of functioning you need to
factor in these "meta" variables;

\- Emotional stability of the user: You need to be able to judge if the user
can form serious long term relationships before recommending him or her.

\- Level of Emotional maturity: Maturity is really different from stability.
Stability means that you'll be roughly the same a week from today whereas
maturity applies to your ability to handle problems effectively and rise above
petty issues.

\- Willingness for Engagement/Commitment: Your users are in a portal, but the
levels till which they are willing to use your service vary, and it isn't
something you can ask in a questionnaire.

\- Acceptance: This is a part of emotional maturity, but it deserves a
solitary mention. How do you judge if someone is willing to accept divergent
points of view and learn from things?

\- Perspective: What does the user seek qualitatively in relationships?

I think that one day this might be possible, but you're dealing with one of
the greatest unsolved problems we have ever faced. Making a computer
understand things.

Further, I believe that even though you might succeed someday it won't work
for people all the time. Why? Because emotions are really hard to parse, and
what I seek in relationships is far beyond common interests or anything like
that. I seek kinship, love and understanding. How can you possibly judge and
match that without having some degree of emotional understanding? This is yet
again one of those great unsolved problems.

On the other hand, there must be a solution beyond simply matching interests
from a long checklist. Maybe you should approach it like Aardvark. You could
make a friend of a friend based contextual system. Imagine a giant grid of
people remotely connected to each other through friends and you parse the
daily routine conversations between users and create a personality profile
using current psychometric testing (it's seriously inaccurate, but we need a
shot in the dark). After that you offer to match them together anonymously at
first (this is important) and then see how they hit off.

Yet again I doubt that it will work at all due to privacy issues and moreover
it will be too computationally expensive to justify...

~~~
pinksoda
Why would you need to go through all of that for a FRIENDSHIP? I don't think
you read his post.

~~~
todayiamme
Trust me I read his post.

Any relationship I engage in I take it very seriously. I want to be there for
people and love them. That's what it means for me.

On the other hand, I was trying to list what happens in someones mind when
they try to decide if someone should be close to them or not. The list must be
pretty inaccurate, but it was more to show a point than to form a blueprint.

P.S. - I know that I tend to take stuff too seriously, but I just need to
emotionally connect with people. So, I guess that YMMV.

------
jk8
"You can choose your friends and not your family".

1\. I don't think an algorithm could be developed to find friends. On the
other hand, I think people make friends on game sites where, they strike out
on their own to make friends. Even meet up sites, where you go to play golf
with a bunch of strangers or go play chess.

2\. I don't think this kind of site will get traction and people will not pay
for it.

eHarmony exists because it makes finding your potential mates easier, it is
for people who have given up on bars and friend's recommendation. Yes, there
are other ways to meet people but the frequency of finding a good mate will be
very less, I think.

I think people just become friends who get along with each other and don't
look for friendship actively, like we look for dates on a dating site.

The concept of a site finding a friend has always bothered me, like facebook
is trying to find a friend for me or saying "share more info to find more
friends"...

The best thing you can do is launch a portal for like minded people to mingle.

Everything cannot be solved by technology.

~~~
zackattack
>I think people just become friends who get along with each other and don't
look for friendship actively

I think this is right. So the question is can you sift out attributes that
identify compatible partners? Or is it more biochemical?

~~~
jk8
Yes, there may be some common attributes and I don't think it is biochemical
when it comes to male friends.

I feel that someone can look at the problem differently. To make a site based
on a common interest and get people to pay for it. The users of the site will
find a way to make friends.

~~~
zackattack
What makes you qualified to dismiss the possibility of biochemical effects?

~~~
zackattack
for example, tribal identification via scent, status chemicals

------
dcotter
Personally, I lean toward thinking that sort of thing is too complex and
unpredictable to determine algorithmically, but then again, dating sites have
evidently done well in the last 10 years, and analog matchmaking sites did
well before that, so maybe. My problem with solving the friendship/dating
problem algorithmically is that it seems like a good answer to the wrong
question. My best friends are the ones that I have a ton of shared experiences
with (going to high school or college together, knowing each other for 10+
years, etc.), and the best "dates" I've been on have happened serendipitously.
I don't know how you'd address those dynamics with something as necessarily
superficial as a questionnaire. If anything, I could see a questionnaire being
a good screening device for people you almost certainly would not click with,
but I think it'd be almost impossible to predict the opposite. Just my two
cents, though.

~~~
frankdenbow
On the point about serendipity, there is a dating site called HowAboutWe.com
that focuses on spontaneous dates rather than matching.

~~~
listic
US only (demands Zip code). Shame on them.

------
loumf
I feel like meetup is a "good enough" algorithm and found many friends when I
moved to a new city.

------
SoftwareMaven
There was a site called Simler (<http://simler.com>) that attempted to do
this. Its goal was to help you find new people who you might be friends with.
It worked similar to Facebook or Twitter, via status updates.

People tagged themselves with dozens or hundreds of arbitrary tags, then their
engine would recommend people who share same interests.

The challenge they faced was getting anybody to come to their site. You are
not going to get people who feel they are already "friend full" there, which
means your percentage of "abnormal" people (hey, I'm one - people who don't
make friends easily).

I think the algorithms will be easier to overcome than the problems with the
self-selected population.

------
benreyes
Personally I think the whole eHarmony model is dead (or dying).

I'm interested in people's social interactions and how that is changing with
new people growing up with no digital prejudices against technology.

I believe social networking replaces traditional online dating. Especially the
younger you get the more true this is. The eHarmony model tends to prosper
over inflation of the details you put down.

Okay so the trend that I see happening in younger people is that traditionally
Myspace actually took this space for finding new friends online with people
under 18 (non-tech). Facebook has a social contract that you typically have to
meet the person or heavily been in a person's social circle before becoming
friends on facebook.

The site currently ruling making new friends online is Dailybooth and YouTube
which is immerensly popular with under 21s. Not only do participants make
"online friends" they usually translate into offline friends. I have
personally observed a high percentage rate of meetups and "gatherings" with
both these communities.

So what makes Dailybooth popular with making new friends. 1) Use of actual
photos of the person on a dailyish basis: This allows for people to follow
people that they would be generally interested in hanging out with. The use of
images from a webcam also means that you can verify the person, that they are
real, and again images are a very powerful tool in considering if you'll like
the person or not.

2) The details on dailybooth has the standard social networking info and also
the location. Dailybooth users when they gather or meet up with one another
they tend to take a booth/photo of the meetup each tagging the other people.
This drives other people to meetup in groups.

\------------

In consideration of an algorithm I've been meaning to pitch Dailybooth on an
idea to populate a user's photo stream with people that you can calculate
based on the network graph of who the user has followed/followed back. And
based on location, to try and increase the percentage of people making offline
friends using the service. Which decreases churn rate and brand value.

So yeah, I'm heavily researching this area right now so if you interested in
discussing it further my details are on <http://benreyes.com>

I could talk about this topic for days.

~~~
sendos
Interesting stuff, but you mention under-21s. I think this age group never has
that much trouble meeting friends, since they are still in school, see a lot
of people, maybe are less picky than older people in who they interact with,
etc. So, historically, there isn't much need for a website for under-21s to
find friends, but maybe this is not the case with today's youth.

I may be wrong here, but I think any site that would want to attack this
problem and find enough people who would use it would have to do it for people
who are older than 21, maybe people above 25 or 30? These are the people who
move to new cities because of a new job, or move into a new neighborhood
because they bought a house, etc

------
hapless
Sexual love is a human need as fundamental as food and shelter.

In America's individualist society, friendship is a "nice to have."

Dating sites get over the hump of "oh my god this is creepy" because their
users are desperate. It also doesn't matter how well they work: desperate
users will pay money for hope, even if their hope is unfounded.

Without that driving desperation, I don't know that a friend-making site would
ever get traction.

~~~
stcredzero
I've tried match, harmony, yahoo, friendfinder, and tickle. okcupid actually
has compatibility testing & matching that seems to work and that does not
suck. No one else I've seen has been able to do that. The problem with
okcupid, is that it seems that women would rather interact on the site instead
of meeting.

~~~
zackattack
"The problem with okcupid, is that it seems that women would rather interact
on the site instead of meeting"

That's a problem with you, not okcupid.

~~~
stcredzero
When I go out to events and parties, I get their digits and a date. Perhaps
it's my profile.

~~~
zackattack
The vibe in your profile or your messages, yes.

------
stcredzero
This is precisely how my friends use okcupid.

~~~
tfh
Are they men or women?

~~~
stcredzero
Both.

------
SteveC
Would this be possible as a Facebook app? That would help get past the initial
chicken and egg problem any project like this would have.

I'm about an hour away from the nearest decent sized city so something like
this would be useful for finding new circles of friends in my area. At the
moment I meet new friends through existing friends. While I've met many great
people this way I do find it's difficult to meet people who share particular
interests that my current social circle doesn't have.

------
thornad
We're working on it at SimplyAdaptive We call it Inner Space Technologies.
Will release a preview in a couple of month and shooting for a working website
in 6 month. We're doing out of passion with no external funding at the moment
for this project. If interested in collaboration/funding/other details please
contact us. <http://www.simplyadaptive.com/ist.html>

------
DanielBMarkham
This would be an incredibly powerful program if you could make it work.

But the "making it work" part is non-trivial.

Sounds like you are missing a hook -- something that pulls more people in

------
bryanh
I keep bringing this up (I keep my drum on me 24/7), but I run
<http://EveryMentor.com/> and we're trying to be something like that but for
folks that are looking for a more business aspect. Basically, its a place
where you get a workout buddy for work in general. Kinda aimed at startups or
single entrepreneurs that don't have lots and lots of contact as is.

~~~
zackattack
First of all, lol at the drum visual.

It's amazing how much I can learn about my own craft by critiquing others. I
feel like you have wayyyy too much text on your site

That being said, I think your section headings captured the information I
needed anyway, so I signed up. Your distance filtering doesn't work. It's
sorted alphabetically, not numerically.

------
_corbett
Hi there. I'm working on something similar. We're not starting out with
questions, simply with friends-of-friends whom you haven't yet met, but there
are a lot of interesting next steps we are contemplating, that being one of
them. Consider signing up for the beta at <http://Kliq.in>; we're launching
next month.

------
bjonathan
I'm the cofounder of SubMate ( <http://Www.submate.com> ) and we want to
introduce you cool new people in your areas based on your commute. For the
moment , the website is pretty new but we plan to improve that algorithm
quickly to allow you to make new friends !

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Maybe its just that I'm getting grumpy and old, but I'd lose the "cool" in
your pitch. For some reason, with "cool", it sounds almost desperate; without
"cool", it sounds interesting.

------
harscoat
as long as it doesn't look desperate (rather than going on eharmony for
friends destination site, you'd give a service on your favorite
socialnetwork/communities which proposes you //twitter"who to follow") ? For
the "algorithm", why not partnering with Hunch a bit? Actually, it may be a
good idea if it is an information site(rather interaction site not a match.com
w/chat etc): people would just check which profiles around "could" become
friends (based on near values/tastes/etc). It gives you an idea of who is
around in your new town for instance. So that if you meet them IRL, you can
say hello.

------
josefresco
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to hang out with too many
guys/gals who are 'just like me'. Their algorithm would need to account for
that or adjust based on user input before the query.

~~~
p01nd3xt3r
You are very correct and most people feel the way you do even if they wont
admit it. I have worked at sever large hookup and dating sites and all the
problems are the same. The main one called the 90/10 rule is the root of all
their problems.

I am building a dating site right now that eliminates this issue and
introduces a totally different model.

~~~
bengl3rt
Sounds really interesting! You seem to have some domain expertise as well.

Can I help you out? I've always wanted to do something in the online dating
space.

------
fizx
I like the idea of organizing and expanding the idea of "Anyone want to grab
dinner before the concert?". At least you'd have stuff in common, and you'd
avoid the feeling of desperation.

------
shirtless_coder
Well there is certainly a market for it, there are a lot of lonely people, I
doubt the ability of a questionnaire and algorithm to match friends together.
There are too many variables.

------
acconrad
There already is (or...was):

Facebook.

Back in 04 that's how people found friends before they went off to college;
they would look people up in their class who had a common interest in music,
movies, activities, etc.

------
rokhayakebe
I have been using EH for 2 months now. Every week I ask myself, "why couldn't
this just be for meeting friends?"

------
defrex
I know a guy who's working on this: <http://preacquaint.com>

~~~
shirtless_coder
He should change the name.

~~~
zackattack
But you definitely shouldn't, ever.

~~~
shirtless_coder
you don't like <http://shirtlessfriends.com> ?

------
bokonist
meetup.com

~~~
lionhearted
I just joined after meaning to for a while, and it seems awesome. There's a
hash run in Hong Kong tomorrow I'm thinking of going to and an entrepreneurs
group I made a post to asking who wants to have a coffee in Central/Sheung
Wan. I do a lot of my work from a cafe in Central/Sheung Wan anyways, so
having someone stop by for an hour to chat would be a cool way to break up the
day. Looks like a promising for a way to meet people into cool things,
athletics, adventuring, business, etc.

------
rmk
eharmony sucks. If there were a site to make friends that uses an algorithm
similar to eharmony's, it would be a complete failure.

------
zackattack
Finding friends on the internet is going to become socially acceptable very
soon. NicoNaco.com - list your values and get match-ups (e.g, startups,
drinking, bowling, politics, dubstep...) I have found that my only true
friendships are based around shared values.

------
chopsueyar
What? Facebook isn't working for you?

All you can find are "friends" there.

~~~
SteveC
Facebook is more for existing friendships, not finding new ones. From speaking
with people, it seems most people reject friend requests from people they
don't know.

